Jeepers. IDK what the job market for IT skilled people in Silicon valley is right now, but I have to believe that it's still very strong. It would seem in that environment telling the 1/2 of your original employees that remain that they have the choice of staying and having their lives be hell, or finding a new gig maybe wasn't such a good idea? Who knows if this guy has any clue about the real number of employees left but if we take him at his word, that would mean another 2700 people took Elon up on the severance offer!
Now granted we have all seen operations that have a lot of fat, but I haven't seen too many get down to 15% of their original staffing other than during the swirl down the drain.
The thing about being a dictatorial employer is that you have to have the leverage to make it work. Maybe he had that over factory workers at Tesla or SpaceX, seems doubtful to me he would have it over software engineers in anything like the same way.
This story just gets crazier.