Managers are basically never consulted on layoffs. At a high enough level in the organization, you might find out a week or two before everyone else and mark some people as critical, but that's about it.
Basically every company I've worked at can be roughly divided into the finance side and the business side, and IME all the important shots are called by the finance people. The business side has to justify itself in terms the finance people set, not the other way around. As for how it makes financial sense, I can't speak to that, but things do tend to work out the way the CFO predicts. That's hardly surprising, because the other finance people working on Wall St. are looking at the same spreadsheets and following the same economic theory.
By the way, I don't think this is a good way to run companies. But it's the way I think almost all of them are run.
Basically every company I've worked at can be roughly divided into the finance side and the business side, and IME all the important shots are called by the finance people. The business side has to justify itself in terms the finance people set, not the other way around. As for how it makes financial sense, I can't speak to that, but things do tend to work out the way the CFO predicts. That's hardly surprising, because the other finance people working on Wall St. are looking at the same spreadsheets and following the same economic theory.
By the way, I don't think this is a good way to run companies. But it's the way I think almost all of them are run.