The end result is the same, you can’t trust anything said from upper management when it comes to layoff numbers and timelines. Its a game and they are laughing at you right now trying to figure out what is happening and when and to how many and to which groups.
Either….
A. You get mixed messages because they are clueless and don’t know what they are doing, enter the Benny Hill music here.
or
B. You get mixed messages and obfuscation on purpose for deceptive reasons, they want uncertainty and confusion so as to drive people off without paying severance.
Also there’s the fear factor. Citi squeezes a lot of extra hours out of employees with implied fear. “Better put in those long hours to prove you are contributing, if not, you’re let go.”
There are consulting groups leveraged that teach classes on how to run people off via games. Schedule tons of meetings, pile on the work and shorten the deadlines so that you have to put in extra hours per day just to do the actual work.
They’ll be leveraging the remote work card soon as a metric. The bottom line is that you are a pawn, a commodity, something to be used and discarded at will. Quit trying to guess what’s going to happen and when. It may be more prudent to do actually look elsewhere and move on. Yes, I realize you’ll miss out on the severance, but is the stress and your worth it?