Coming from defense, projects or contracts end all of the time but usually everyone is able to find other projects to work on. Why are they hiring for a bazillion positions while laying off these people?
You don’t know what kind of jobs got layed off. They could be very car specific and not useful for other product lines. I doubt they layed off 600 software engineers.
The project was rumored to have 5000 employees. It’s too much of a leap to assume that nobody working on it was moved to other work. And while any layoffs suck, 12% or so not finding a new place in the company seems remarkably good for a defunct project in a vertical like automotive.
Because they’re different skill sets? The people test driving the cars aren’t hardware engineers.
I have heard that some jobs were able to find a new home. The work that was needed for Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) in the car, was adapted within the Vision Pro. But not all expertise translates easily.