It was a sacrifice for themselves and their equity. What does the cap table look like? Not laying off employees prevents a morale issue and gives more resources to keep building product. Don’t confuse other employees by trying to say it was a sacrifice for them, that is misleading, it wasn’t, but I’m sure the founders would love to sell it that way: “We’re doing this for you!”

It depends on whether you needed those employees for the company's survival, or you kept them on doing under-productive work worth less than their pay.