The point of takeover layoffs is that problem you describe in the first paragraph is nullified.
A well publicised example was the recent takeover of Musk of Twitter. He started by firing everyone at the top first, before moving on to cutting general staff second.
That's usually exactly the way to fix this problem, because BS-ing middle management requires apathetic upper management who're only concerned with milking their positions as long as they can (requiring no-one upset the apple cart). That in turn requires owners who are too dispersed, distant, or incompetent to band together and root out such parasites from the top down.
A well publicised example was the recent takeover of Musk of Twitter. He started by firing everyone at the top first, before moving on to cutting general staff second.
That's usually exactly the way to fix this problem, because BS-ing middle management requires apathetic upper management who're only concerned with milking their positions as long as they can (requiring no-one upset the apple cart). That in turn requires owners who are too dispersed, distant, or incompetent to band together and root out such parasites from the top down.