This has nothing to do with charity. Every employee can contribute to the bottom line. It is the company's responsibility to organize and empower its employees in such a way that added value is created. If this is not achieved, the employees have still given up their time and must be compensated for it.

You are welcome to optimize your processes so that you no longer need any employees. But society will still consist of people who need money. And if you don't pass on the surplus you have accumulated in the form of salaries, they will get what they need from you by other means.

What information do you have that they weren't contributing to the bottom line?

The CEO saying "the business isn't viable" says a lot.

That sounds a lot like the CEO is throwing 50% of the company under the bus for his own failures to you know, make the business viable.

And would it be better that the whole 100% go under the bus for his own failures?

Did I suggest that? I'm pointing out the blaring hypocrisy of a company sitting on $350M in cash that opted to double the size of their company without having a clear strategy to become profitable. Then after laying off half the company, the CEO publicly states it's because the laid off workers don't have the skills they need for "the new era". I would really like to see in these scenarios the CEO accept a tiny bit of responsibility for their failures to set strategy and over hire, instead of publicly shaming 70 people they chose to hire in the first place. That's a failure in leadership, not in employees.

>the CEO publicly states it's because the laid off workers don't have the skills they need for "the new era".

Where did he say this?

It’s better for startup investors if it goes big or fails sooner. That’s the entire purpose of investing 100’s of millions into these companies.

If the CEO has no idea how to do that they should shut down the company or stand aside and find a better CEO, not try and milk as much money from they can by keeping the company shambling along as long as possible.

If they thought they would make more money on net with the employees than without them, they wouldn't have laid them off?

130 employees making <$3m in revenue seven years in means you have to do something else. The information we all have now is that the bottom line is not very much so whatever they were contributing to the bottom line can't be that much.

You have to go find a different business when this happens.

$2.8m revenue with 130 employees is about $21,000 per employee.

The numbers here don't look good.

What information do you have that they were contributing to the bottom line?

The burden of proof lies with the person making the claim (even if implicitly), not with the person questioning the claim.