Corporate Culture
This is one of the things that I really hate about modern corporate culture, and probably why I'd make for a horrible C-Suite exec. Each one of those numbers on some spreadsheet is a person's livelihood they're just causally discussing like it's of no more significance than the weather.
And as another commentard alluded to, no doubt they won't be trying to rehire any of the people they laid off, but will instead go with primarily newly minted college grads who will work for peanuts and put in long hours without complaint. IMO, not that it's worth much on this matter, there needs to be a law mandating that companies have to offer the newly created positions to laid off workers before they can hire someone new. With stiff penalties if they are found to have half-assed it or not done it at all. They should be required to submit records showing they contacted every single employee laid off within the last year in the same general field, and at least offered to interview them for this new position. If the former employee already found a new job, fine, but if they were still looking they have to be considered first.
If I'm not mistaken, in California in the States, if you lay someone off you're representing to the state, in a legal, under oath, capacity, that you no longer need that role and then cannot fill it for at least a year. Though, companies frequently get around it by just giving the old job a new title and maybe ever so slightly tweaking the duties. I saw it happen once. Boss' boss got laid off, then a month or two later they hired someone new for what was effectively the same job. Took over the same managerial role as the previous person and if you were to ask any random rank and file employee they'd tell you they were doing the exact same job. I like to think I had some small part in the person being laid off, since not only did they force one of their personal friends on both of their direct reports as a temp, then arranged to have that friend hired on in a part-time capacity, they then pressured her direct report (my manager) to fire me to make room for their friend full-time. I made sure to tip off the "ethics line" of the company about the nepotism, and it wasn't too much after that when a former colleague mentioned that the person had been laid off. So, in that one specific instance, I don't feel bad about the company replacing the person with someone younger and cheaper. But as a general rule, the state needs to do a much better job of cracking down on this kind of bullshit.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
