Layoff’s

my friend works at google and says it's easily overstaffed by 2x

The decision makers don’t care what I think 🙂

Whenever any manpower cost rationalisation is to be done, Companies have to ensure they dont lose their best talented folks. Hence, if you cut salary for everyone, the smart folks would be the first to leave the Co as they can easily get good hike in the market outside and you’re left with average folks only. But if you layoff say, bottom 10%ile performers, your company output might actually go up and everyone is also pushed to work harder from there on. Hence, always layoffs should be preferred over salary paycuts.

Better to cut the C suite salaries and shareholders returns. Firing your average employee would not save as much money.

If you are a C level or managers reading this. Remember you caused all this because of your greed for growth. I love that Apple managed to not fall deep into this trap