Whatever the messaging may be, I can assure you, MS is using this as an opportunity to clean house of low performers and particularly low-revenue generating teams, see: HoloLens team.

Consider this: you have a high-performer and a low-performer. You have a mandate to reduce your team size by 1. Who do you choose?

No matter what language they use e.g., layoffs, the net result is still the same. People who aren't having as high impact or on high revenue generating services are going to get culled. I'm assuming the same is going to hold true for Google, Amazon, whatever... if they don't do that, they're at a competitive disadvantage.