Typically higher scores are better. If SpaceX used this query they would fire their 600 best employees. Or they use bad column names.

On top of the lame SQL reference this diminishes the true severity of firing 600 real people. We have no reason to think the firing was this nonchalant. This diminishes the work and humanity of everyone involved.

It appears to be a weak reference to stack ranking.

Do you have any reason to believe this is probdbly how they identified people to be let go?

Default ordering would be ascending order, smallest to largest. You would need to specify DESC to order the higher numbers first.

Yep, too late and too many beers to be commenting on HN.

I did find it amusing, as the first thing I did seeing the SQL was also run it through my head.