> A lot of this is, as Aqua mentioned, an exercise for their conscience.

Just as important to build (some...) trust and preserve culture among remaining employees.

Imagine this from the lens of remaining employees: A) The new big boss wrote an algorithm to fire our friends B) The new big boss had to make a tough decision to fire our friends but went out of his way to do right by them

Which one sounds better? I think the algorithm was a good idea to explore possibilities, but I'm not sure about the subsequent blog post.

There are recent examples of these layoffs among tech companies who had to make a pivot due to Covid and took approach B. Ritual is the one that immediately comes to mind for me.