[rossdavidh]

I worked for about a decade in the semiconductor manufacturing industry, at a time (90's) when it was mostly moving out of Silicon Valley (and then overseas). There was a clear pattern that companies that hadn't done layoffs very often, were clumsier (which often felt like "brutal" to those affected), and the ones who had done it through several previous downturns were less clumsy at it.

One of the lessons that companies learned, is that you should do it all in one wave and be done with it (until the next recession), rather than hoping that a small one is all you will need, and realizing a few months later that you were wrong and need to do it again.