Honestly, I doubt they did it for _financial_ reasons. Likely an old division that is being closed or downsized, like they specifically mentioned last time (the old cable tv divsion was being downsized in favor of the online streaming divsion). Most companies do layoff rounds at the turn of the year. Honestly, I think firing people can be a good thing. How many people do you work with that are total dead weight and you wish they were fired? It's normal business practice to do this, and 500 people out of 153,000 is 0.0032 or less than half of a percent of employees.