I disagree - it's not properly addressed, but it's nice to see it at least brought up.

Layoffs are always awful, but seeing companies talk about "changing economic realities" amongst continuing revenue and profit growth - often all time highs - is a real morale killer for those who are left behind.

Microsoft/Amazon/Alphabet/Google are trillion dollar megacorps who are insanely profitable, but they're firing people because they no longer have to pretend we care about you at all and will instead try to cater to Wall Street (who will never be happy - if I had $10000 for every quarter where a big tech corp "beat expectations" and the stock dropped anyway I'd retire). It's a hard pill to swallow and will increase bitterness and cynicism in the remaining workforce and kill any chance of your employees caring about your vision or putting in any extra effort.

> they no longer have to pretend we care about you at all and will instead try to cater to Wall Street

The company isn't "catering" to wall street, wall street is their boss. The owners of the company vote on what they want the company to do, and hire the person in charge of the company. And besides, do you care about your company? If you got a job offer to make twice your salary doing something you'd enjoy more than what you do now, would you stay with your current company out of care for them? Maybe you would, but I know of almost no one who feels that way towards their employer, outside of those working for small tech startups with their friends.

For almost everyone I know, their mindset is that they're going to do the best job they can right up until something better comes along, at which point they'll switch to something better. And I fully expect that if my best work is no longer worth more to them than my salary, they'll lay me off. In the meantime, they're paying me a ridiculous amount of money to do a job I enjoy. It's a deal that 99% of the world is envious of, and I don't think it should inspire bitterness and cynicism

In this case, the "our revenue continues to grow" is not transparency, it's deliberately obfuscating the increase in expenses that led to layoffs being necessary. Not mentioned is the insanely expensive legal battle that they launched with WP Engine, which is already a massive drain on resources and a huge financial risk given how strong WP Engine's case is.

"Our revenue continues to grow" doesn't matter if unnecessary expenses outstrip it.

I might agree with you, if the "why we're making changes" section had listed even one reason to lay people off.

When was anyone naive enough to think their company cared about them?

On the other hand, why should a company keep people around that they don’t need?

And the last point, speaking more about Microsoft/Amazon/Google, if you have worked for either company for any length of time, there is no excuse for you not to have a nice nest egg to tide you over especially considering the severance amounts they give you.

You might be forced to sully yourself and become an “enterprise developer” and make around what most of the 2.8 million developers in the US.

And yes, I did a bid at Amazon and within three years, I paid off some debt, saved a chunk of change, got my 3.5 months severance package and found another job quickly that was my target compensation (not enterprise dev).