[onlyrealcuzzo]

I think the practice is old, and /might/ have once made more sense.

If you offer a buyout to a bunch of people in a factory with no real alternative, you're selecting for the people who want to do nothing - which is probably the people who are doing (close to) nothing.

If you offer a buyout to a bunch of people with real alternatives, you're going to mostly buyout the people with the best alternatives (the most marketable employee / the most productive).

This is amplified by the fact that factory workers really have a minimum amount they must be productive. Whereas software engineers can LITERALLY do nothing. Further, factory workers have a pretty low limit on how productive they can be. The limit is much higher for software engineers.

It's an old practice that might have made sense, but definitely does not make sense in software.