having heard the arguments made by some VP + C-levels throughout the Tokenmaxxing Tulip Mania, I think the interpretation that those mandates were made intentionally for "forcing employees to start leveraging AI in meaningful ways" is too charitable.

Most companies focused entirely on doing "what everyone else is doing" at best or "to see if Programmer Joe can be as productive as the entire team so we can fire the rest".

And many indeed fired employees in droves because they were "underperforming in token spend".