I think that's an interesting interpretation of these events. According to TechCrunch's post, the people laid off were part of teams that "weren't making money.

I think that's an interesting interpretation of these events. According to TechCrunch's post, the people laid off were part of teams that "weren't making money." According to SFX, "To allow us to adapt and improve our service, it was necessary to make some organizational changes." Translation: the savings realized by cutting unproductive (or less productive) parts of the organization can be put to use in areas that management believes have higher productive potential. Even if the motivation for "looking at the finances" more closely was the fact that SFX is now publicly-traded and has a new set of shareholders to answer to, what's the problem with this? Most companies (established or not) don't have the luxury of indefinitely letting performing parts of their businesses subsidize underperforming parts of their businesses. In many cases, the best and/or only source of needed investment dollars can be found in expense reduction. As for feeling bad: layoffs are always unfortunate and it's worth noting that, from what I have seen at least, the good times of the past several years have left many, engineers especially, with the mistaken impression that they're impervious to the financial realities of their employers. It's always a good idea to understand the relationship between your role/team and your employer's finances regardless of how valued you believe you are in the org chart.