> Can you think of any confounding factors in this analysis? How do you control for important factors like, say: whether the board is in enough financial troubl

> Can you think of any confounding factors in this analysis? How do you control for important factors like, say: whether the board is in enough financial trouble to downsize? You're correct, obviously, on the general correlation aspect of companies having financial trouble and having to do layoffs. The thing with many of these tech layoffs though, is these are in some cases companies with no trouble whatsoever. Companies with so many billions in the bank that they could continue to pay all salaries to everyone for a century without breaking a sweat. So they have zero need to reduce expenses.