Whether billionaires should exist or should be able to buy hundred million dollar homes aside, the timing just plain looks bad. As mentioned in the other discussion thread, the price of his home is "enough to give everyone who was laid off slightly a severance of more than $120,000".

Obviously Armstrong was never going to give a dime of his personal net worth to an employee, much less a former one, but there are such a thing as optics and public opinion. The juxtaposition of that purchase with layoffs at his company just doesn't look good.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31739997