As to the actual issue, though, there are arguably two factors mitigating Orrick's behavior (neither of which I buy): (1) in November the full year's receipts hadn't come in and on November 13, when Orrick announced, the S&P was at 850 (it closed under 700 today in case you somehow missed that tidbit), so they didn't know just how bad the long-term outlook was going to be; and (2) there has been a pretty substantial callus built up in the past few months for layoffs of ever-increasing size, so there was still a lot more concern about the PR hit at the time – now firms can get away with cutting as deep as necessary with less concern for the repercussions. Yes, the ballsy move would have been to just rip the bandage off, cut deep and tie up the ends as neatly as possible. But they were still in an environment where "look and see" by cutting as little as possible was the prevailing mentality (in which case you could rightly argue, "why cut at all?").