It is strange to me that a colleague who has always been the biggest advocate that everyone should look for something better and get out of here, suddenly has a completely different attitude.
I don’t know of such a case here, but I wonder what you think, is it possible that DXC secretly gives raises to specific employees?
I found the idea of "out of cycle" pay raises hilarious when I was there. Any time I would hear someone mention it, I would call out the fact that there is no such thing as an "in cycle" pay raise at DXC, so what does out of cycle truly mean? No one could ever answer that question. Every pay raise ever given at DXC was out of cycle.
There has always been a process for 'out of cycle' payrises, they're not easy to do and do require relatively high level approval.
Entirely possible your colleague has had one of these!
Paranoia can set in the absence of logic, probably your friend is interviewing madly and wants to keep head down... That is a logical explanation - you must have noticed that pattern in the past with previous colleagues...