How about talking to the employees. How about managers having input on if arbitrary performance metrics were reflective of the value of their contributions? How about not shifting blame on a reduction in growth/ necessity to do layoffs on perf metrics? How about not asking the people you just fired to write you a “long letter” expressing their gratitude?

That was my point, why should the layoff be assumed as a given? That was as much of a decision that someone made as the messaging around it.