In a way, I think this is better - it's quicker, everyone knows where they stand, there is no uncertainty about it.

However, I do agree that

1) the communication from the CEO could be better

2) people should be given an opportunity to then still ask questions, either for HR or their managers(if still employed).

I was in a company that had a mass layoff (well, it was getting bought for IP/assets and a few employees). I found out about it from my boss one morning, knew I was getting laid off, then scheduled meetings with my direct reports later that day. It was pretty easy to find time to schedule the meetings since it's not like anyone had any project work to do any more.

By mid day the cat was pretty much out of the bag and everyone knew what was happening, but I and other managers still held the individual meetings.

Managed to hire most of my my former direct reports at my new job.

It doesn’t have to take all day. Managers meet with the people being laid off in the morning. If it is too large to do 1on1, you can do small meetings with a few people and their manager.

Point is that it should come from your direct manager (or the closest direct manager in the chain if managers are also being laid off).

Yeah, I imagined all of this and it seemed like exactly what a competent company would do.

Any questions about "why" are reduced to essentially "your individual job performance and role does not matter, it's just that this business unit ceases to exist as of yyyy-dd-mm". Any questions about "what next" are answered by "Here's the details on the severance conditions for you - the exact same as for the other 899 people".

I believe a good approach would be to have those first line leaders (who actually have that relationship built with their subordinates) break the bad news and then the CEO speak to everybody and own the decision.

Surely after seeing your relationship status change on Facebook, they would understand?

What if the whole chains are axed? Recursive "or the next manager" could easily lead to exactly what happened: a CEO lucky to have a pandemic voiding all expectations to do something like that in person.

The entire reason companies have hierarchical power structures (in theory) at least, is so that information can be passed along with the log of the company size.

Having every manager have 10 min call with each direct report, or in the worse case a team meeting, would be much more human and could accomplish the task of notification in roughly the same time window as an all hands firing.

Is it? I can plausibly make the other argument that not having to do it yourself and offloading it to middle managers/HR is also "objectionable and disrespectful".