Leopards Ate My Face

I can totally believe that someone who's never worked in the private sector has such a fanciful view of how layoffs work. My first job out of college was in the government. My views of what constituted "waste" were hilarious, like we got a flashlight (because we occasionally would go outside at night) and it was definitely a pricier flashlight, with some features we didn't really need. I told my friends at home, "Gosh, the government is so wasteful, look at this overpriced flashlight I got". Of course they made me turn it in when I left, but still.

Then when I got into the private sector I realized private sector waste is a whole different animal. Obviously there's the insane CEO pay packages, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Definitely I've seen some multi-million-dollar projects that never should have happened and were just the result of our slick salespeople. When I left one job in a layoff I had no way of returning a $3000 laptop because the person I'd return it to was laid off too. It ended up being a nice gift for an amoral friend. Of course layoffs themselves are crazy wasteful, you have tons of hard-earned knowledge walking out the door. They're almost always random and driven by a desire to temporarily boost the stock price as clueless shareholders are left holding the bag when the company collapses a few years later.

Point is government waste exists, but it's like a leaky faucet that drips a little. In the private sector, it's like a faucet that's constantly running on full blast because everyone is incentivized to maximize the rate of flow.