It is just regular layoffs, and doing so admits they don't know what to do with the 1,600 people anyway, and probably didn't know what to do with them for years.

AI isn't going to help, but it bandaids over the issue so the investors aren't spooked.

That's kind of what I was getting at.

Laying thousands of people off often implies you hired thousands of more people than you actually needed, which makes investors feel like you're wasting their money. If you say "no they're all being replaced for $200/month of Claude Code!" then it makes you look like there was actually strategy to this.