The wasted cashed is only part of the story.

Just think of the wasted man hours spent on integrating 30K new employees that supposedly the company didn't need. The time spent in meetings about restructuring departments, new points of contacts, reassignment of duties, figuring out who to promote, training the new hires, etc.

Now the company gets to it all again in reverse with much lower moral and excitement. The amount of hours & employee focus wasted on the bureaucracy of the hiring and firing over 30K employees instead of spending that time on improving the business should get you fired from leadership.

Tech shareholders want executives to take risks building new products. Of course they’d prefer the products be successful but if the options are “hire 30k people 50% chance we have to lay them all off” or “don’t build new products” most tech shareholders want option 1.

Politics.