Correct. IBM laid people off for years making sure to stay under the amount which would legally oblige them to report it publicly.

I don't know how California works, but in some other states when you fire someone without cause, the company is on the hook for additional unemployment payments.

Forcing 12,000 people to quit instead of firing them would save Facebook millions.

Would be awesome of those 12,000 didn't quit and just did the absolute minimum/nothing until they were actually fired. Wonder if facebook (or any company) would blink. But game theory dictates every employee thinks about self-preservation and would try to be the first one out.

The maximum unemployment benefit in CA is $450/week[1], $100k/52 weeks is $1,923/week. Even if Meta paid the full amount of $5.4M per week the net is they are still saving tens/hundreds of millions with the reduction.

[1] https://edd.ca.gov/en/Unemployment/UI-Calculator