[somedude895]

> you can rapidly shrink your workforce through attrition.

That would be a terrible move. The people who change jobs are generally the ones with better options. If you just do attrition you'll end up losing only the good people and you have no control over which projects / departments you starve of resources.

[Retric]

If your most senior employees are your worst employees then you have much deeper problems than the need to downsize.

The best people leave when conditions deteriorate not simply because you have a smaller workforce. Shuffle people between projects and scale back workloads as you scale back the workforce and nothing seems wrong.

It’s true not all jobs are findable so you’re going to need some onboarding and to let a some people go but that’s just a normal part of business.