[danpalmer]

It's a nuanced trade-off. It's worse for the company as you said, it may be worse for the employees because some will leave from burnout without severance, those remaining will have more work to do typically.

But my point was that what was presented was a false dichotomy and that framing it as such is disingenuous to employees receiving those comms.

[fastball]

It is not a false dichotomy. Reducing headcount via attrition is a subset of "prolonged bleeding", if you've already decided it needs to happen.

[danpalmer]

I guess you could consider it that, I read "prolonged bleeding" as more smaller layoffs. That's a fair point. Although then I'd say it's still disingenuous to frame it that negatively when many may see it as a better option.