> I appreciate the one clean cut vs prolonged bleeding.

That's a false dichotomy, you could reduce headcount via attrition which is better in some ways.

There's also no reasoning on product impact. Is the strategy to cut products that aren't making money? Is the strategy to cut 40% across everyone because everyone can go faster?

> Owning the decision

Does it? It came across to me as an inevitability of AI, not "we over-hired". Layoffs are always a mis-management issue, because the opposite (hiring) is a management issue. If management failed to see where the market was going and now needs a different workforce, that's still a management issue.

> respecting the people that got you there

There's words, and there's money, and on these it's pretty good. But there's also an empathy with the experience they're about to go through and I'm not sure there's much of that here beyond the words. To do this well you'd need to think through what folks are about to go through and look for ways you can positively impact that beyond actions today. I've seen some companies do this better, helping teams get re-hired elsewhere, splitting off businesses to sell to other companies, incubating startups, there are lots of options. Hard, especially at this scale, but possible.

> But realistically, you can't pen a better (or, well, less bad) layoff announcement.

And this is the crux of my point, I really think you can. This was a good one, one of the better I've seen, but it's still within the realm of SV companies laying people off. In some companies, countries, industries, this would look very different, and better.