The fact that a significant portion gets swiftly laid off with seemingly no consequence suggests these complexity concerns are overstated.

> seemingly no consequence

This is the same fallacious statement in reverse. You couldn't build LinkedIn in a weekend because they do a lot of things you don't see. Also, when they fire a bunch of people, it will affect a lot of things you also don't see.

Could someone compare today's and yesterday's Wayback Machine results for your company's website and demonstrate the value everyone at your company generated today?

I've worked at lots of companies where the product isn't optimized, it didn't handle Chinese or Arabic queries, or there were organizational issues. These things don't make a company fall apart suddenly, although they could be impediments for growth.

That is, in fact, not what it said.

It didn't say that you absolutely needed tens of thousands of staff, but that tens of thousands of staff often made sense to hire.

Don't know what consequences you specifically mean here, but some projects won't get done, some sales won't be made, some research won't pan out. Some institutional knowledge will be lost so the next rev won't go as quickly.

There will be many consequences, just perhaps not obvious for those on the outside looking in.

Except the original comment wasn't that. At all. It was a genuine question because a lot of us aren't familiar with these tech giants and how they're structured.

There was a time you could... Now? no way, at least not without some Flappy Golf type of viral hit.