Hard to defend a company run by 'leaders' whose convoluted approach to workforce reduction amounts to an inexorable process of adverse selection and a resulting employee base with ever-diminishing capabilities. In other words, although layoffs might be unavoidable, it's who you layoff that matters most.
An employee's level of compensation is often (though not always, of course) a reflection of his/her true value as an individual contributor. When layoffs are necessary, companies all too often allow their 'bean counter mentality' to take over and they resort to sorting the list of employees targeted for layoff simply by their individual level of compensation. It's a foolhardy approach, of course, and can even impact the company's viability as a "going concern," which at the moment seems to be very much the case for Chesapeake. Glad I got out when I did...