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By what measure did it work? I am curious if you are going by share price, or ROI or Revenue per employee? or uptime?

The website stayed up and there wasn't any big short term existential political problems.

(Not speculating on whether it's wise, just that it's feasible in the short term.)

It may have been a catalyst for the timing of accelerating the announcements slightly but I doubt it was a catalyst for the layoffs directly. Large public companies consider the perceptual impact of negative announcements on the stock and brand and there's some benefit to being perceived in a trend vs an outlier.

that's a difficult pill to swallow, but I think you're right.