There are many good reasons for lay-offs, for example, in the case of Twitter, as they would have run into cash flow issues without them. However, the recent lay-offs appear to be copycat behaviour. All the companies had plenty of cash, good revenue, and staff turnover rates multiple times the lay-offs. A hiring freeze would have been sufficient. Most of the companies affected are still hiring and will likely ramp up hiring again towards the end of 2023 if a recession is avoided. As flagged up by other commenters, there is still plenty of cash for events, execute flights and other excesses.

Depends on numbers I suppose. One employee - not a mistake. Twelve thousands employees - looks like a quite big mistake?

At least he is being more honest than the CEOs in the previous tech layoffs

"While we have made substantial progress in right-sizing our cost structure, and focused our resources on our core strategic priorities, we have more work to do," Schulman said in the note. "We must continue to change as our world, our customers, and our competitive landscape evolve."

It is a very trying time for all the CEO’s parties. It’s challenging and stressful to have to keep them secret because of the bad PR that would arise from the optics.