> We foolishly thought that we would naturally be protected from any layoffs, being a team that reduced costs of any team we partnered with. In retrospect, that was a little naive. A team that reduces costs of other teams is not on anyone’s critical path.

> The whole Probability division was laid off as a cost-cutting measure. I have no explanation for how this was justified and I note that if the company were actually serious about cost-cutting, they would have grown our team, not destroyed it.

It does sound naive, but it's also possible that this is plain wrong. Just because your team results in some cost cutting does not mean that your team is generating enough cost savings to justify 50 headcount. I'm sure there are teams at meta with very large / existential cost cutting needs, and it doesn't sound like any one of them was relying critically on your team for enough of their cost cutting objectives for them to make a case to keep this investment going.