Not good...
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=462269
It's the life cycle of any MMO. Things start big and then fall back to a sustainable population level or drop so low the game becomes unviable. I think SWTOR will drop to a point and then stabalise. It's sad when people loose jobs but I guess in the MMO business it's a chance people have to take.
Sadly there's too much comparison with WOW which I think completely bucked the trend and is unique amongst MMO's. They are the exception rather than the norm
i was thinking about it today and came up with something like: they were hiring people during the development process before the launch and they've reached a peak. So it's kind of natural that after a certain point in the project they started to "sack" some of the staff. Of course there has been impact from that 400k lost subs announcement, but i'm far away from thinking that being the only reason.