Not sure this is a root cause, but it certainly must be on the minds of decision makers in tech companies (large and small).
For a change that doesn't even change tax obligations/revenue, just shifts portions of it in time.
I'm aware of why amortisation/depreciation exists in the accounting context; I haven't found a rationale for requiring it in taxes in general, or for this case in particular. Especially for things that were paid for with cash.
But that's not the whole thing - it sounds like there was massive over-hiring of devs and some madness of trying to stop other companies getting them.
What a wasteland. The thing is there is a whole raft of interesting jobs out there that don't involve actively making society worse, so hopefully some devs will move out of this scene and onto something more constructive.
1. Twitter works. The cuts are reasonable.
2. I worked with a number of people from (pre-Musk) Twitter. The self entitlement culture the majority of these pre-Musk Twitter people espoused was toxic.
Hmm....