Your post is getting downvoted because it displays a tremendous lack of empathy, and because the company in question displayed a tremendous lack of professionalism.
> It's sort of ripping off a band-aid: it's better to have it done all at once, than dragging it out over the course of a few weeks.
It could have been done in a week, and in a way that 1) maintained security/access in a reasonable way, and 2) that allowed people to get their shit in order.
Back-of-the-envelope calculation: It takes a week to lay them off. During this week, productivity will be down 50%. You have 654 employees (ex-post). Say they each cost $200k/year (taxes, office space, etc), that gives (1/52) * 0.5 * 200k = $1.92k/employee in lost productivity, or almost $1.3 million in total.
That’s not how people work.
What are the future losses from not being able to hire top candidates (and maybe even loss of business if customers start boycotting it), since obviously Bird is a shitshow of an employer?
Customers don't stop using Facebook over the clear and present erosion of their freedom it presents, so thinking they would be concerned with how a company treats its employees is absurd.
As for prospective employees, it's going to be a buyer's market from here on out. Universities have been pumping out CS grads en masse, and the startups have been hiring them. With the startups going bankrupt, there will be a glut of unemployed programmers.