There's a lot of advice on how to handle these situations and a lot of it is good, even when conflicting. It's all situational. One thought though, for whateve

There's a lot of advice on how to handle these situations and a lot of it is good, even when conflicting. It's all situational. One thought though, for whatever little it may be worth: >>For me, I think I'd just quit if I was told to lay off people on my team. That has been my personal emotional reaction many a time. As I spend more time as a manager though, I try to force myself to look harder and harder at what will this course of action actually accomplish? And the self-righteous emotional me hates that the rational conclusion is: it'll only accomplish negative things, i.e now the team that remains has lost your support. Bluntly, it will not "send a message", it will not "change things", it will not "make them realize what they're doing / what they're losing". Literally the only thing it'll do majority of time is make things even crappier for those who remain :-/. So I would put it in inverse: the hard thing in the moment is to NOT go with your emotional reaction, and consider truly how can you be of best benefit / support / help to the team. Basically, I would say most of the time one quits for personal reasons (whether positive "I can get more money there" or negative "I hate this place and everybody in it"), not for the benefit of others.