Necessary is a tricky word in this case though

-No it's not, it means there's not a better option.

If she laid off that metric buttload of people to preserve somebodies multimillion dollar bonus, I would say that's not necessary.

-Is this how you think things happen? Let's assume, and it's a huge assumption, that she laid off all those people so that people at the top could have bonuses. What would that tell you? Would it tell you that perhaps those people at the top were essential to the organization and would take their skills elsewhere if they couldn't max out their earning potential? Would it tell you that those that got laid off weren't essential to the ongoing function of the organization and were therefore more expendable?

Lets say a business is like a basketball team. The team only really needs 5-10 players, but they have 20 on the team. Their top 5 players earn the most and the team pays them handsomely to keep them. But there is a salary cap coming. They could drop 5-10 players and still keep paying the 5 starters handsomely, keeping them happy or they could cut the 5 starters salary and likely lose them to another team. What do you think they're going to do? What would you do?

This is how it goes. I've been with my company for 6 years and I'm just an employee number to them. They have 60k employees. That's reality. I wouldn't fault my company for laying off whole divisions of people if their roles became unneeded or unjustifiable from a cost perspective. Necessary is not a tricky word. There's no "10 people are more important than 1.. cuz fairness and stuff." Companies have an objective, -to make money. Period.