Don't underestimate the effect of Elon nuking the Twitter employee base when he acquired the company. All the predictions were that Twitter would die. It hasn't. That sent a powerful message to the other leaders of tech companies: "You can do just as much with far fewer people" / "Most of your employees aren't doing needle moving work". Shortly thereafter, Zuck announced layoffs at Meta. These new attitudes towards headcount have cascaded down from the top-tier tech companies down through the ecosystem of companies.