Having worked as SRE on efficiency projects for BigCo, it is not at all uncommon to recover more than your lifetime salary in company savings with only a few months work or even less. The scale of things is so immense that even a slightly better handling of things can lead to outsize returns.
Laying off someone like that, rather than putting them on full-time efficiency work, is an obvious waste.
Having worked as SRE on efficiency projects for BigCo, it is not at all uncommon to recover more than your lifetime salary in company savings with only a few months work or even less. The scale of things is so immense that even a slightly better handling of things can lead to outsize returns.
Laying off someone like that, rather than putting them on full-time efficiency work, is an obvious waste.