Well a ton more that didn’t get laid off borrowed money to exercise that have likely had their valuation crushed.

The fact that the C suite felt comfortable doing this (even if there were no layoffs) is completely rotten and indicates far more about them and the company than the number of people affected

It almost seems like securities fraud. Lie to the people you are encouraging to borrow money to buy stock?

Depends on the timing and the conditions, but if my CEO did that, I'd be looking for a way out.

YMMV, but this worked out quite well for me.

In my case I'd worked with the founder at their prior startup, where they saw a nice exit (but I was too late to significantly benefit). When I later joined their next startup, they offered a no interest loan to early exercise my options, so that I could go the 83b route and see some tax benefit.

Like I said, this ended up working out quit well for me.

I was more referring to lying about layoffs