> The error is often not in the layoff. It's in over-hiring in the first place. And that changes the "how evil are these people?" equation rather drastically IM

> The error is often not in the layoff. It's in over-hiring in the first place. And that changes the "how evil are these people?" equation rather drastically IMO. Starting any topic with kind/evil dichotomy is never a way to bring a rational perspective on the table, indeed. Over-hiring can happen through different situation. One is bad luck: market evolution removed the the ground under the feet of a sound projection assuming a reasonably stable context. An other possibility is incompetence: acting in reckless attitude with the business strategy as if it was a past time board game without considering it will have concrete impact on real people that will engage in its progression. Yet an other one is draining all skills in the market to gain dominance on its segment. Thus endowed, it will be easy to kill any possibility of fair concurrence. Then later, drop the monopolized workforce out of the train, that was known to be superfluous to achieve production goals. Of course, this drop should occur only once there is no credible chance these employees could find a decent job in this sector anymore. That is after they contributed to the hegemonic position of the organization. In short, over-hiring is not necessarily an error.