I worked at IBM for too many years. This is nothing new. Their MO around 2010-2015 was to do quarterly reductions in order to minimize the press interest.

In the UK the redundancy lists were often based on completely inaccurate "employee job codes". These were seemingly set when you joined the company and there was no process to review or update your code. At one stage I was on the redunancy list despite working in a 'Strategic' area. I only managed to dodge it after my Exec/Partner lobbied for someone to see sense.