If you're laying off an entire division, sure, your comment applies. However, from anecdotal experience at Meta, the layoffs seemed entirely random that hit both ICs and Managers. People internally tried to reverse engineer the formula used, but it wasn't always clear why. It also seemed unrelated to several projects getting killed. Those employees were simply asked to change teams if they wanted to stay.

It's weird to me that these companies, all of them, still very much flush with cash, have now engineered this an environment of FUD in everyone's mind. For creativity to thrive and ideas to launch during the next boom, you need an environment of safety. Tech had always been been synonymous with optimism.