I don’t know the details of the microsoft offer, but at another company we had a few of them, and the ‘fine print’ was: If too many people applied to participate, the company reserved the right to deny applicants If someone was deemed too critical, executives reserved the right to reject individual cases So offering to 60k does not mean they actually accept the risk of all 60k leaving. More interesting is the logic of a ‘buyout’. Now the superficial assumption is that it’s better for morale, but as you saw, it’s pretty much certain that morale will be hurt by an involuntary layoff action anyway after the buyout. But maybe you could argue the hit was softened by the buyout earlier… However, I think the actual goal is to disproportionately get the people in their 60s, the folks that given the right ‘nudge’ will just nope out into retirement. They would love to do that in layoffs, but historically that has hit age discrimination suits. Whenever we had a farewell celebration in a buyout, the people were mostly people at retirement age.