Overhiring always being a mismanagement issue due to incompetence is a cute narrative for the labor-vs-capital arguments, but it's not literally true unless you believe that failing to read the future accurately is mismanagement. Management's job is to do the best they can with the forecasts they have, and no reasonable person believes that forecasts can be accurate every time.
You can rephrase management's duties to "predicting the future" as a way to maximalize the so-called difficulties of their roles, but that's an unrealistic description. And it is in fact management's primary duty to understand the evolution of their organization and to have mitigation strategies. Simply hiring when you can and then firing at the first sign of trouble and when investors throw a hissy fit is about the most amateur, incompetent approach available. A monkey could perform that role better.
I was recently laid off just a year after being hired. The layoff was described as not cost cutting but restructuring. The reality is that no restructuring has happened, morale has tanked, and attrition in key positions has occurred. Me being laid off means that management couldn't even plan out a year. Further, this company had a restructuring (i.e., layoff) in 2020 as well. If you need to "restructure" every three years, you don't know how to manage.
At will employment is a poor setup because companies hold all the cards. They should have much more pressure on abiding by contracts.
Predicting the future is literally a core upper management job duty. It was fairly obvious and should’ve been assumed that interest rates would eventually rise.
