Or a way to only retain employees that are willing to work under Musk.

Wouldn’t people unwilling to work for him self-select out anyway? And by quitting you wouldn’t have to pay severance.

Quiet quitting might be a thing. Maybe this gets rid of all the people who would have shifted to doing the bare minimum but wouldn't rage quit.

I hate the term quiet quitting. It implies that you're somehow not doing your job. If your employer is not firing you it means by definition that you are doing the job. Quiet quitting is one of those bullshit terms made up by corporate overlords to extract more labor out of you.

Well in this case, those people might be getting fired.

Sounds like quiet quitting is the worst of the two. You still support the company by working there and at the same time don't agree with the values of the company.

If a company is asking you to come back, then you have massive leverage and only a fool would accept a worse contract.

If they fire you as an individual and then bring you back, certainly. If it's part of a layoff done this rapidly, its much more likely that it was just a categorizing error. So you probably don't have massive leverage.

That said, you definitely shouldn't accept a worse deal.

Yeah, I’ve had this happen, and I demanded twice my salary.

It was a contract position, so you can’t be “let go.”

A fool, or someone without many options.