Coming from a different region of the world, with much stronger labor laws, I always wonder why we seem to view layoffs so differently.

Where I come from, a layoff is stronger regulated and many things are out of control of the company. For example you say your layoffs weren't performance related, but since you picked the people with no public criteria, that may or may not be the case, we will never know. Where I live, you have to set up public criteria (like age, number of dependends, salary, number of years in the company) and then select the people based on that.

Unless there is an equally public reason that cannot possibly be attributed to the company leadership (lets say Corona lockdowns and airlines), a layoff is a very public admission of company and company leadership failure here. Two layoffs in a year certainly are. I'm not even sure when I heard about it the last time, except for companies that went belly up two months later.

Why is it that in the US, I never hear company leadership step down after such a failure? It's not SE alone, I have not heard that from others either.

Can you shed some light on the cultural differences, why is a layoff just something the leadership in the US shrugs off as something that just happens every few years?

Coming from a different region of the world, with much stronger labor laws, I always wonder why we seem to view layoffs so differently.

Where I come from, a layoff is stronger regulated and many things are out of control of the company. For example, you say your layoffs weren't performance related, but since you picked the people without any public criteria, that may or may not be the case, we will never know. Where I live, you have to set up public criteria (like age, number of dependents, salary, number of years in the company) and then select the people based on that.

Unless there is an equally public reason that cannot possibly be attributed to the company leadership (let’s say Corona lockdowns and airlines), a layoff is a very public admission of company and company leadership failure here. Two layoffs in a year certainly are. I'm not even sure when I heard about it the last time, except for companies that went belly up two months later.

Why is it that in the US, I never hear company leadership step down after such a failure? It's not SE alone, and I have not heard that from others either.

Can you shed some light on the cultural differences? Why is a layoff just something the leadership in the US shrugs off as something that just happens every few years?