[wisty]

> If you feel genuine responsibility for the people, then figure out a way to NOT fire them.

That kind of sounds like saying "if you're poor, make more money". It's not bad advice but odds are, they tried.

If a company can take a hit to its bottom line by being bloated and inefficient but saves jobs, is that the right thing to do?

Edit: I can see good arguments either way. The neoliberal idea that all waste should be eliminated seems almost communist / soviet IMO. The USSR grew like crazy by putting people into factories and working them as hard as possible, removing all waste. But with no slack they couldn't innovate and productivity growth stalled. Our productivity growth has also stalled. We outsource or privatise so much that everything is just a race to the bottom with no space to grow, and finding looopholes in metrics or rules is the way to get ahead (like soviet factories finding out that they can churn out crappier products that no one wants but it helps hit a quota).

OTOH boated orgs kinda suck.