Very often people will defend these kind of layouts as the result of overhiring but then shouldn't the leadership that over hired 30K people also be held accountable?
It's not like over-hiring or laying people off is a crime. The employees presumably knew the deal going in (that they could be laid off). They got compensated for the time they worked.
No one owed them a job at Oracle in the first place. (Again, not to diminish how bad it feels / shocking it can be to be laid off!)
they do?
For over hiring 30K people.
Bad leadership. Costing the company a ton of money and goodwill. Need I go on?
Just think of the wasted man hours spent on integrating 30K new employees that supposedly the company didn't need. The time spent in meetings about restructuring departments, new points of contacts, reassignment of duties, figuring out who to promote, training the new hires, etc.
Now the company gets to it all again in reverse with much lower moral and excitement. The amount of hours & employee focus wasted on the bureaucracy of the hiring and firing over 30K employees instead of spending that time on improving the business should get you fired from leadership.
That's all money.
If a CEO is bad at his or her job (e.g. wasting billions of dollars on employees that they don't need), apparently he or she can fire 20% of the company and give himself a bonus for making such a tough decision.
They literally failed at their job. Came up with a 30k headcount budget shortfall. If I did something like that I'd certainly be fired.
I personally don’t agree with this, but it’s easy to say “overhiring was bad”, when at that point, it might’ve been a great business decision. Things just have changed now.
For the long term health of the company it's near a certainty that would have been better. The effects of adding ~20K then laying off 30K in such a relatively small period of time are gonna be felt for years