I think his go-to "how did you handle layoffs" interview question is interesting and probably a good heuristic, but I would think that a discussion of individua

I think his go-to "how did you handle layoffs" interview question is interesting and probably a good heuristic, but I would think that a discussion of individual firings rather than mass layoffs would provide a better data point for evaluating managers. Layoffs are bad if they involve a lot of people, no question about it, especially if there's been a sense of dread around them for the days/weeks leading into the announcement. But at the end of the day, "we're laying you off" means one or more of: "our business is not healthy enough to support the team we think we need" and/or "we made a poor managerial decision and mistakenly hired a whole bunch of the wrong people" and/or "the nature of our business is changing and we don't need you to do what you currently do". Telling people they don't have a job sucks, but it's a lot harder to fire individuals for underperformance, especially if they've been trying hard and don't want to go....they like their jobs and they don't want to deal with the finality of "we don't want you to work here anymore, $name."