You can lay a lot of sleaziness at Pincus's feet, but announcing your bad news on a Friday, when it gets mixed with other bad and important news, is just good strategy. If the news will get the least play on that day, he even owes it to the shareholders to do it that way.

What exactly is the ethical way to announce layoffs?

I may be missing your point, but today is Tuesday.

His point is that there's no great time to announce layoffs, and it's perfectly acceptable to announce it or any other bad news at a time when it will get the minimum media attention. Everyone does it, and it's in the best interest of the company.

Besides, whom does it really help for the news of layoffs to get lots of play? If there's a salient case for this move being sleazy, it only holds up if he's actually wronging some party in the process.

The only argument I can really think of is that the more other employers that hear about it, the easier time the laid-off have finding jobs, but that's a very tenuous argument to make

His point was that even though the event was shadowed by Apple, there's still three days left of mainstream news coverage. There's a reason bad news is announced on a Friday, after all, and arguably this story could receive more coverage than one broken on that day.

No, that's PR business. What would be sleazy is if he undercut so that remaining employees still have swords hanging over their heads. "Cut once, cut deep."