> Does anyone know why the big companies didn't scale back their TVC (Temporary, Vendor or Contractor) usage before laying off full-time staff that take an order of magnitude more resources to hire and fire?

> I was under the impression that flexibility was one of the big reasons for TVC use, much easier to scale up or down, akin to cloud computing resources.

I think many companies use them for flexibility, but my impression is that social media companies (of which Google is one) have other reasons, such as protecting their FTEs from the soul-killing aspects of content moderation.