[qqqwerty]

The hiring market for software engineers went absolutely bonkers during COVID. Salaries shot up. Nearly everyone was hiring.

This "70%" advice was getting thrown around by every two-bit "thought leader" back at the start of COVID. I could totally see how following that advice would result in your competitors scooping up all of your former employees. And then you would be stuck in long and expensive rebuilding process just to get back to where you were, but now you would be stuck with more junior employees making higher salaries to boot. Oh and let's not forget that the 30% of the employees that you so graciously let stick around all probably dusted off their resumes, resulting at least a handful of defections. Accounting for those circumstances, I could absolutely see how a deep layoff in early 2020 would sink a company. COVID was a once in a generation opportunity for certain businesses as the entire world moved from IRL to online. Even some of the biggest tech companies struggled to keep up with the sudden demand.

[rkk3]

Realistically engineering and product impacts just play out over a much longer period of time & the outcomes were already baked in for the next few quarters of 2020, even at a small startup. Engineering Layoffs in March aren't why they didn't catch the Covid boom in April. They were never positioned to ride that wave.