If these laid-off employees have an average fully-loaded cost of $400,000 (which probably isn't too far off), then linkedin will save about $460,000,000 annually by not keeping them on the payroll.
That is not small change, even for a company the size of Microsoft.
They may have been contributing more than that to the bottom line prior to the recession--hard to know--but the recession changes quite a bit of the calculus around long-term bets.
Speaking of assuming too much: You have no idea who I am, or my employment history.
The top-line going even lower still doesn't materially change the calculus. Those people cost money to pay, and multiply it by almost 1,000 people and it makes a real difference.
> The top-line going even lower still doesn't materially change the calculus.
There’s a big difference between $50-100M and $460M, almost an order of magnitude difference, so yes it does change the dynamics.
> Speaking of assuming too much
I made no assumptions about who you are or your employment history, I stuck to the figures presented. Software engineers are barely as high as the figure you first provided for fully loaded salary on average, hence the comment about the software bubble. The rest of the LinkedIn org makes no where near those numbers on average.
That is not small change, even for a company the size of Microsoft.
They may have been contributing more than that to the bottom line prior to the recession--hard to know--but the recession changes quite a bit of the calculus around long-term bets.