> less than 1% a month could be relatively easily “hidden”

If your a public company it’s not hidden. Analysts are watching everything. A one time even might hit your stock and then it starts to recover soon after, but an ongoing event would raise suspicions of a deeper problem.

maybe they could start to move to more 'contract/project' folks, vs 'employees'. rotating short term contractors would be similar amount of 'churn' but might be seen as more strategic/focused investments vs having to grow headcount only to want/need to do layoffs regularly.

Also, you make these announcements to appease analysts, not to be hidden from them.

Yeah I agree. Something about actions being louder than words here. I will say spreading it out creates a worse environment of fear from employees. It’s like pulling a bandaid off slowly. This way, the survivors know they’re safe for some period of time and can focus on longer term things. They likely feel that they can tread water performance wise and make it through the next year too. They can also approach their personal finances from an assumption of having a paycheck for the next year at least. These things are typically to address the under-performers and misfits that come with hiring thousands of people each year. It forces the business to reevaluate its needs based on its goals on a cadence. Otherwise you end up with a bunch of Milton’s in the basement (to use an Office Space reference).

How would that work? Identify the 10% in December and then slowly remove them? Or have your management go through a 1% low performers identification process every single month? The logistics of both options are difficult to pull off. It is especially hard to keep the layoff list secret.

Department A, in January we need you to cut the lowest performing 10% of your employees because we're raising the bar of excellence.

Department B, in February we need you to cancel the lowest-ROI 10% of your projects as part of a strategic realignment to focus on our core goals.

Department C, in March we need you to lower your ongoing costs by 10% by whatever means you think is best, to ensure we're on a stable footing financially.

Department D, in April we need you to chase the last Widget Classic users onto Widget Cloud and wind up the team working on Classic.

Department E....

"Performative" _is_ the word that comes to mind most often when I think of the years I spent at Salesforce.

A lot of people still love the idea of rank and yank even if you can't do it overtly.

There's a reason that slowly removing people one-by-one is a common horror movie trope.