[curiousllama]

When I see a layoff story, I think two things: 1. Those poor folks losing their jobs... 2. That company must be under a lot of financial pressure

The comment above yours is basically saying: #2 might not be the case, especially with only 8% being laid off"

[wutbrodo]

Exactly, and the nature of the layoffs in this situation only supports this: Cruise (like other SDC companies) has switched their stance from "launch is imminent" to "we have more technical work to do". The fact that business development, product, and marketing were the lion's share of the layoffs seems like exactly the strategic move that a pushed-off launch date would imply, economic downturn or no.

Evidence against this is the fact that they also laid off lidar engineering staff in Pasadena; I don't know Cruise's business, but this also seems like the kind of consolidation you'd expect a relatively healthy company to do (though "healthy" is a weird word for a pre-product R&D co).

Source: https://electrek.co/2020/05/14/gm-cruise-lays-off-8-of-staff...