This doesn’t mesh with my experience. I work at big tech co that went through massive rounds of layoffs. The criteria was a mixed bag. A lot of it was just entire products and associated teams being dismantled.

Also, one can make the argument the other way as well. Tools and infra have gotten good enough that the work doesn’t require the “dedicated nerds”. So let’s get rid of the highest paid engineers as that’s the most impactful to our bottom line. They coincidentally happen to be the nerds. We can always hire them back for less because what else are these nerds going to do in this market.

Not saying that’s the case but demonstrating that it’s pretty easy to string together silly notions we might have to explain reality.