It might be authentic in this case, but I expect a lot of people will use this story to frame layoffs as positive instead of a sign of weak performance.
In fairness, workforce strategy changes should be decoupled from financial performance except in extreme cases. Making money is not a reason to keep people you don't need, nor is losing money a reason to cut people as long as you can still afford them.
Making money doesn't always mean growth and vice versa. You don't hire Santa Claus impersonators in January even though you just had the best month of the year.
Layoffs are always a sign of bad management. 99% of the time layoffs are because someone high up overextended.
In the mythical ~1% where layoffs only affect "low performers", I would argue it is still managements fault for allowing hiring practices that result in the need to cut a substantial percentage of the company.
> Layoffs are always a sign of bad management. 99% of the time layoffs are because someone high up overextended.
That seems like too strong of a statement to make. There's certainly macroeconomic factors that management can't predict, and if they cause layoffs it's a stretch to call that "bad management". You could argue "well maybe they shouldn't grown as aggressively as they did", but under-growing is arguably "bad management" as well. After all, the purpose of a business isn't solely to be a jobs program. If you grew 50% in the past decade but your competitor grew 200% in the same timeframe, that's arguably also "bad management", even if it meant you you were able to avoid layoffs in the last recession.