“On the other hand why you need to lay off hundreds of people while you are still very very profitable makes a little less sense.”
Downsizing is a management technique to lower costs and ‘motivate’ the remaining employees. They do it because they can hire new people for a lot less than the existing employees. They view employees as no different than a desk or computer to be replaced at will.
Never did much care for the term human “resources”.
Things run smoother, although not without problems, in places that have personnel departments or small firms that just have partnerships amongst employees.