Heard through the grapevine people in HR have said that they expected more attrition after the 5 day RTO was announced. So from this you could infer that a major goal, if not THE goal of this was to reduce headcount. Also this means that layoffs are coming since not enough people left.
The next piece of this is that the execs have admitted that the company is becoming too reliant on contractors, and want to balance out the hiring with more full time employees. What is not mentioned is that they want to flip contractors to FTEs. Offshore hubs are being built to facilitate this along with abusing work visas.
There has also been a major push for AI recently. Which helps reduce headcount even further. Models are now reaching the point where anyone can automate tasks or have someone vibe-code a solution that is "good enough".
The end goal of this is that they want cheap offshore labor to handle AI to push out stuff that is passable. So many current FTEs are going to be displaced. This is also the end goal of an overwhelming majority of other large companies. This is not systematically sustainable. And the working class is being set up for a world of hurt.