Those comments are totally consistent! If you hadn't hired X employees in the first place, you wouldn't be laying them off now. And, conversely, if you can affo

Those comments are totally consistent! If you hadn't hired X employees in the first place, you wouldn't be laying them off now. And, conversely, if you can afford to lay them off now, you could have afforded not to hire them earlier. Apart from avoiding layoffs, hiring less quickly also lets you be more intentional about quality and culture. How can you expect any real continuity in your culture if like 30%–50% of your engineers are new in any given year?