I'm not disagreeing with you exactly - there are obviously reasons for doing all those things and on the surface they may seem sensible as well. But there are also good reasons why you'd do the exact opposite and my point is that in a group of independent thinkers you'd see greater diversity of opinions and outcomes. I was a middle manager involved in some of those layoffs (on both sides!) and saw the sausage made up close. Thing is, yes it's a shitty thing to do to someone personally, but nothing of what I saw could be justified in objective terms.