With the crap ton of marketing buzz in the post, and the casual mention of the layoffs, I don't think the CEO or the new board seem to care all that much about the laidoff employees.
Again, this is my personal feeling and may not be the truth.
Why would that indicate the CEO is incompetent?
Doesn’t it stand to reason that management would and should take advantage of the whatever is happening in the wider scheme of things to advance their narrative, and that doing so is indicative of competence within their frame of reference?
The CEO likely doesn’t give a hoot about HN’s opinion.
They probably care about their bonus and how it all advances themselves on their career path.
That doesn't sound anything like the priorities of a competent CEO. I think you're missing my point, too.
But the way you do those layoff is part of the CEO responsibility. And from this perspective, doing so with marketing bullshit sounds bad as your demographics are mostly engineers.
With that, CEO doesn't seems to know what peoples are using its services so it use "generic" (aka marketing) line.
This is the general explanation for why companies keep being seemingly so bad at PR: they know that this kind of reputation doesn't matter at all.
I can’t imagine why a CEO would plan layoffs for a time in the distant future rather than executing them as shortly after the decision as possible.