[vishnugupta]

> you got rid of the people you didn't actually want to get rid of

And to add salt to the wound you will end up retaining those who are good at surviving such layoffs by doing some optical work. It's the worst of all the worlds.

It should also be pointed out that people are not plug-and-play parts of a machinery. They carry domain knowledge, context (Chesterton's fence), intra-company network they have painstakingly built and such intangible value. Besides, layoff doesn't mean the work disappears. It gets distributed, often unevenly, among existing workforce. I've seen it first hand and the aftereffects are just terrible.