Your math makes no sense. The fewer the employees laid off, the more the dollar per employee will be. What does that mean? If a company lays off only one employee, then all of the CEO's salary could have gone to one person?
I think it just shows that the CEO earned enough to give every laid off employee a whole annual salary, so you could argue that the layoff could have been prevented for at least a year.
Sure, but no doubt a Silicon Valley programmer could take a 50% pay cut, still have plenty to live on, and double the salary of 3 cleaning staff that work at their company.
> Hate to go there on HN but there _is_ a moral side to this.
No there isn’t. Wasting money to keep employing people isn’t good for anyone. The labor market is still tight right now so the employees are better off going to a company that actually wants them.
And if they'd over hired, their business could still be in the same place (or worse) next year. People should just say they don't think executives should earn that much money (in good times or bad) rather than making moral justifications like this.
