Stripe has laid off employees behind TaxJar

Why would they be safe? What am I missing?

Almost every company above a certain size, irrespective of overall health, can/will use the opportunity to do layoffs.

Some of them may even be hiring aggressively on the side.

Probably for at least a quarter or two, they can artificially jack up 'productivity' by changing the denominator on the quotient. Then they look good to investors and shift out of that mode to whatever they think they should be doing next.

I'm not necessarily justifying anything here, just highlighting some of the general dynamics.