AFAIK, you can tell someone today, “Get out” without prior notice, but then you have to continue to pay them for the duration of the WARN period.

Regarding this story, this situation only exists because companies have gotten so secretive about layoffs. I have been through multiple rounds in the past few years and management loves to dance around the issue. No hard numbers on people cut, the teams, or even the dates when it will be effective. No surprise that those with the ability sought to get hard data on the scope of the action.

I also enjoy how the company framed this as practically hacking people’s PII, but I can believe it just took querying the internal company directory for some key metadata. Recently added to the “TO-BE-CUT” OU or something.