[OJFord]

Many of these headline grabbing layoffs are primarily back office roles.

And what you say simply isn't true anyway - I even studied EE, but all my professional experience is on the web, I would have a long ramp up to be productive on an embedded team. I probably shouldn't even be hired for a grad position on such a team, a fresh graduate would have better memory of domain-specific stuff.

What Occam's razor actually says is that in the face of multiple possible explanations, the simpler one is the more likely one. Your suggested explanation seems a more complicated conspiracy than simply not needing/being able to afford people to me.