On the brink of mass tech lay offs you'll start reading propaganda about how they are focusing on 'efficiency' and being lean and that was the reason of the lay offs, they had too many workers when a mythical 'efficient' worker would be able to do more work than 10 workers.
But it has nothing to do about that. Big tech profits were never bigger. And they won't maintain productivity after getting rid of those many people. And that's not the plan anyway. What will happen is they'll hire new people. But the trick is that new employees will have of course a lesser salary and considerably less benefits. Importantly, they will be expected not to WFH.
You won't sere them maintain productivity, and this is going to come at a massive (yet temporary) cost in productivity. But they are aiming at a bigger goal. It's a rollback in worker's leverage. A reset after the pandemic made people realize they can just WFH and be as productive or even more productive. A way to artificially turn the job market into one that benefits employers instead of the state it was in until now. But will it work?