This is exactly what everyone thought it was: A stealth layoff to get the most costly employees to bail without having to fire them/give them severance.
Now they can be replaced with cheap H-1B workers, especially when the DOJ changes that rule to make it so that companies no longer have to prove they cannot find a US worker for the same job before they hire a foreign H-1B worker.
This was all to cut costs and fuck over the most senior (read: costly) workers.