> My answer is that it shouldn’t be, and that if we had a culture where the Chief Executive feared for their job, they might take a different tact with the comp

> My answer is that it shouldn’t be, and that if we had a culture where the Chief Executive feared for their job, they might take a different tact with the company. It would probably be worse for the company. The biggest problem with layoffs for a company is that it creates a culture where employees fear for their jobs, which leads them to perform worse, and quit the moment they have any leverage, making the company far more inefficient. One of the major reasons tech companies are blaming the layoffs on pandemic hiring is not because that’s the truth or that the execs believe it’s the truth (although it might be) is that they can use the pandemic to present the layoffs as a one time thing extraordinary event, to prevent fear of being fired from setting into the company culture.