> So why did SV companies fire a lot of employees recently, if the severance and WARN act outweigh the positive impact on the share prices?

I didn’t say they did.

I said that if you can get people to leave voluntarily, that’s better for the financials.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t conditions where the best available option (from a serving the shareholders perspective) is layoffs. Just that, ceteris paribus, its better to shed the headcount without the added costs imposed by layoffs; the benefit (when there is a benefit) of layoffs is reducing the headcount, not bearing the severance, WARN Act compliance, and other costs particular to layoffs.

Well, my impression regarding the latest rounds of layoffs is that they are intentionally trying to create headlines about those layoffs. The C level is more interested in higher share prices than they are interested in costs for the layoffs themselves. But, admittedly, it is hard to prove the truth of such an impression.