Business people run companies according to business principles. The board and shareholders will focus on the short term and the stock price. Also, are these layoffs really about keeping companies afloat, or are they about maximizing shareholder value?
In the case of Facebook, at least, even after the layoffs, their staffing levels were just putting them back at the 2019 levels.
If Google laid off all of their engineers that were working on money losing projects that they are going to probably cancel in a year anyway, no one would see a decrease in service and their net income would increase.
As far as tech startups, they are mostly Ponzi schemes anyway where the investors were planning to pawn off their companies via either acquisition or an IPO.
Can you name one major tech company that has IPOd and created a profitable sustainable business in the last decade besides AirBnB?
Business people run companies according to business principles. The board and shareholders will focus on the short term and the stock price. Also, are these layoffs really about keeping companies afloat, or are they about maximizing shareholder value?