I remember this royally backfired with Microsoft in '08 and '09. They did some rounds of layoffs, froze raises, etc. whereas all the other major tech companies held off on doing the same. There was _massive_ attrition and Balmer had to do multiple emergency pay bumps to the entire company's engineering roles to keep people from jumping ship in the following years.
As an outside observer, I'll note that Microsoft's share price left its decade long nothingness in ~2010-11. Whether causal or not, perhaps it was worth it for them.