[rsynnott]

Presumably, this company will want to hire again at some point in the future. At that point, people will look back to now, and some will go “perhaps not” RE the poor handling of layoffs. If nothing else, this stuff doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and one might be forgiven for assuming that if they can’t do layoffs properly, they are likely poorly run in other ways.

Personally if I was looking for a job I’d be sceptical of potential employers who handled layoffs notably poorly; it’s just not a great sign of their general competence. There’s nothing rational about advertising that you’re bad at this stuff.