[throw3823423]

It often has to do with the size of the company: the larger you are, the weaker your decisionmaking.

I work for a very large corp. As part of a round of layoffs earlier this year, they cut an entire foreign office, to the man. The decision was made from very high up: VPs were informed after it occurred. For some departments, the losses were small. For others, they were crippling: It was a very important group, doing things nobody else did, and which we couldn't cut.

The end result? The VP realized that the cuts had been extremely unwise, and now almost everyone that worked on that group has US visas, and is working from a new office in the US, with American salaries instead of their far, far lower ones. Not a costs savings, not an improvement in capability... just more expensive, and with projects that got delayed for months, as everyone was out for about 6 months.

For US layoffs, the decisions were not made quite that high, but still high enough that people in the know of salaries and performance were extremely confused about who got cut. Some great, cheap people were cut. Some expensive people that are poor performers by any standard remained. But nobody that managed ICs was involved with the decision making.

A large organization either makes very slow decisions, or acts basically blind. Sometimes they really fail, and do both!

[nerpderp82]

The pain is real. Those layoffs forever changed the company. It killed the culture, ultimately the controlling stock holders were the decision makers. It is their company and they had a message to send.

The message was that they were in control. That they could cut off their nose to prove a point. This layoff event will be their downfall.

[ethbr1]

I'd summarize it as: at large scale, M&A cuts happen only at the department budget level.

No one is looking at individual people or teams.