Still, regarding profit, I'm not sure that firing people in profitable companies effectively contributes to higher profits. Sure, you pay fewer salaries. However, that comes at a cost, such as supposedly cutting programs the company deemed valuable and eroding the company's ability to conduct their business.
Also, it seems Google's reaction to drops in profit was to fire 6% of their staff. Does that even register in Google's accounting? I mean, payroll is typically 20-30% of a healthy company's expenditure.
And would a hiring freeze not reach the same goal without causing any disruption? I mean, apparently Google is still hiring and has a large volume of job openings. If the amount of people in their payroll is too much as is then why are they hiring even more?
