I'm sure it wasn't easy to fire them, but don't try and make the situation rosey. The folks who decided on the direction of the company decided wrong and now they have to fire the people who executed those decision.
Edit: Would you all prefer the word "Terminated"?
"Fired" implies wrong-doing on their part.
"Laid off" or "let them go" means the company couldn't afford to pay them, or didn't need them anymore. It leaves no black mark against their name.
When I get laid off there is no expectation that my job will come back.
Can't put my finger on when exactly, but during one of our recessions they stopped getting called back, and then companies started to realize once the local union was busted they could hire new workers at a fraction of the price, and...here you are.
When I was growing up, it felt like there was a clear distinction between "fired" (with cause) and "laid off" (bad revenues, can't afford you). But over time I increasingly saw people refer to all terminations as being "laid off".
Then "let go" entered the fray, and I heard of recruiters who told people to refer to any for-cause firing as "being let go".
Whatever term you use on this, people will abuse until it doesn't mean that anymore. They want to make it sound like any termination wasn't for-cause, while having plausible deniability if anyone calls them on it.
And yes, I know the usual ivory tower lecture about "that's how language normally works!" But normally it's slow enough that you can reasonably infer what someone means because of mutual knowledge of what the words mean. Not here. And probably, not ever.
What made it worse was the morning of the lay-off, one of them told me a joke: "What's the difference between a recession and a depression? A recession is when your neighbor loses his job, a depression is when you lose yours". You know why a good manager goes into his office and closes the door after executing the "terminations"? In my case, it was to hide the fact that I was crying.
So different, in fact, that I have been "laid off" when the employer really had a mind to fire me for poor performance but wanted to avoid hurting my future prospects.
Here, don't take my word for it:
The problem with these moves is that the top 20% often see the writing on the wall and leave shortly after. Then the second 20% start testing the waters. Then...