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I mean, imagine that you are leading a team of 4 people.

Are you sure that you will always be able to accurately tell if you need a fifth person or not?

Or you have a team of 5 people. Can you tell if you have a one too many?

Maybe not. But typically natural attrition rates would let a hiring freeze take care of most of this. Layoffs are kind of normal current day, but a 20% layoff is not.

The common argument against relying on natural turnover rate is that the most competent workers are also those who are the most likely to leave because it is easier for them to find a new/better job. So if a company just freezes hiring instead of doing layoffs it will experience a reduction in the competence of their workers.

I don't know if this is empirically true or not, I haven't seen any statistics. But I don't see any obvious logical errors in this reasoning.

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