Sorry if this is too an obvious question.
I am a very low profile employee very much far from any workplace politics. Just a do-whatever-assigned-to-me person. So please understand my ignorance.
I've heard my coworkers leaving the company for the past months, but I was not close. Someone says it was a RIF. Others say it was voluntary. Some cases are called voluntary RIF. All rumors. Never talked to the people left directly other than saying good bye.
Yesterday, one of my close coworker (let's say A) who is also a people manager left the company. Their boss (say, B) scheduled a confidential meeting with A's direct reports and the new manager (say, C) for a brief update nothing more than A is leaving and C will take over with minimal changes to projects and deliverables. Nobody says it is a RIF. A's access has been revoked today. The Teams org chart is kinda orphan. I can find A and A's team members are still under A. But if I search for each of them, they are manager-less.
I personally talked to A over the phone and A says just taking a career break and that's it.