Hiring, onboarding, firing, and severance are all massively expensive in terms of money, time, employee morale, and company reputation. There's no evidence that

Hiring, onboarding, firing, and severance are all massively expensive in terms of money, time, employee morale, and company reputation. There's no evidence that this was long-term or even short-term rational. You know how everyone whines about "a single bad hire is devastating" as a justification for whiteboarding, leetcode, etc.? Well, these were hundreds or thousands of bad hires for each company. The other self-inflicted wound is that a hiring binge naturally raises employee compensation due to market forces, demand and supply. It's going to be difficult to undo the expectations that have been raised, to claw back the salary levels, because even if you lay off a bunch of people, the remaining employees are still making the higher compensation and will continue to expect it. If a company lays off a bunch of people and simultaneously attempts to cut employee compensation, they'll have a massive revolt on their hands. The damage has already been done, the compensation needle has already moved. You mentioned "moving projects forward", but in addition to layoffs, many companies are also canceling or postponing projects, so it's not clear that temporarily moving projects forward added any actual value.