Sometime, departmental heads will try their best to save themselves. In order to meet the downsizing target they will find as many people to get rid of in order to save themselves. It is common to see this happen in many companies. Just that, most will hide it as rehiring for replacements (which usually at a lower budget but with bigger tasks to assume than previous leaving staff). In tweeter case, decisions might be sub-optimal when Elon took over. Anyway, recession is around the corner, so tweeter can easily find the best when market is in a slump in coming 3 mths.
Seems more likely they are just trying to get some people back in to train whoever will be taking over their duties. Which is why cutting so many employees should be done carefully and with at least a little bit of planning. You are throwing so much institutional knowledge in the garbage by just cutting off half your workforce overnight.