IMO, it really depends what teams they are from. If you lost 88% of your engineers then that would be a big problem, I just don't think that will be correct. I'm sure for people that were deemed indispensable at the moment were offered more money to stay on. That is something I've seen elsewhere during massive reorgs. I could be wrong; I can't speak for Elon. He seems like a loose cannon at times, but I don't think he's making all the decisions alone.

I saw an article backtracking on some things reported, with Twitter being a lot more flexible with people deemed "essential," which lends itself to my general view.