In all honestly its completely random now. They get some "initiative" and restructure getting rid of whole teams. Good and bad alike then hire on some purple unicorn basis and ultimately the lost teams work is just transferred to other teams. They still have you waste time with performance evaluation but that is mostly about explaining why raises are so low while earnings are so high.
No one is buying the ‘hur dur in the office is more productive’ bs anymore.
It totally is a silent layoff, but I think a large chunk of the older execs still actually believe the office is more productive. There's also a large chunk executives who have investments in commercial real estate companies who are trying to put off the complete collapse of that market so they can get more of their money out before it all goes to shit.
Don't lay offs make sense though if people are being more productive at home? The tech market is contracting so they won't be looking to take on new projects so much as cutting unnecessary overhead (and labor is usually the largest tech company expense), which they only have because the increase in productivity isn't being offset by new work (projects) coming in?