2dos: The person who mentioned $60K/year specifically said that would be the AVERAGE cost. You know how averages work, right?
Yes, senior staff will get well above $60K in severance. But for every VP or Sr. Director who gets a six-figure severance package there will be 10 people in the V to E bands who get less than $60K. Some will get much less. This is how you arrive at an “average” of $60K.
And if you do the math of $200-$250M in total severance at an average cost of $60K, that gets you to about 4,200 employees. Also remember that 4,200 employees is roughly 5% of the company. And 5% is actually a low amount compared to several other Fortune 500 companies that are currently trimming their workforces by as much as 20%.
In other words I don’t understand why you think 4,000 is too high of an estimate. If anything it may actually be too low of an estimate. I think the final number of layoffs is going to be somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000. The math supports that estimate too.