The usual estimate of ramp-up time for employees at a startup is considered to be a month or two, but the business cycle is measured in years, so if you expect a secular downturn, firing people makes sense.<p>I think oil is actually complicated and rare enough that it might actually be an example where you don&#x27;t want to lay them off, since finding replacements may be quite hard if you lay off those positions for a few years, so you may want to try and weather the storm while the Saudis flood the market with oil.<p>Having said that, companies make bad decisions all the time since making good decisions is a lot harder than everyone seems to think.