Tell me why this is correct or wrong. In the scenario, I think I align more with the CEO's take. I don't necessarily believe in layoffs to reduce profit, but I do agree with the fact that there is usually some optimizations in labor that can help a business reduce costs and increase profits. A company doing well financially will eventually have the bandwidth to hire more, layoffs and hiring are just part of the business cycle, and the tough truth is that there is no such thing as a stable job, everyone will eventually find another job and the company will eventually rehire. If I were to do things differently, I would probably just try to layoff as little as possible, $30\%$ seems pretty excessive to me so I think that bringing that number as low as possible will do good things for overall morale.