[skylanh]

Depends on if you have comb-selections of the people hired.

If we follow one path all the way to the end: If you can bring on a large number of people, then you can potentially evaluate them as "up-and-coming" high-quality talent. Those talents can be soaked in your business and technology stack, and become internal experts. Over that talent's life within the company, you may also underpay them relative to bringing in the same equivalent 10+ year veteran and training them on your internal assets.

On another path: You can also develop a broader population of mid-grade, quality talent which can strength workforce resilience.

During the mass layoff, procedures are different, and you may not have to follow quite the same fire-process as with an individual, and without some of the individual recourse processes regarding discrimination.

FWIW, Microsoft used to (still does?) had a certain percentage of layoffs every year. In a good environment, it's weeding; in a bad environment, it culls good talent.