Eh, it can take a lot of political willpower to actually get rid of a low performer. We had an infamous case where it took two years to finally kick some deadweight to the curb. Wanted multiple years of underperforming performance reviews, I guess. Despite what some may claim about market efficiency, this is a public, wildly profitable company, not government.
Unfortunately, I have never seen a layoff only remove weak people. Plenty of good gets thrown out with the bad every single time. The only signal I take from someone being laid off is that they were unlucky and probably not a total sycophant.
We had a case where it took 10 years to cut 3 FTE deadweights and it only happened because of the 2008 Crash and consequential tightening of money flow.
Think of it more as a "controlled burn wildfire," you want to clear land to let new foliage grow. Same with companies; you clear out some space and see what ideas flourish with the new crop
Or, more likely, leadership is sloppy and lazy. They make mistakes and color outside the lines, and they pay for it. The hope is that they don't hurt themselves too bad.
Luckily for leadership, opportunity cost is completely invisible. They can't travel to alternate realities so they can just pretend they made a good decision and go with that. This is what causes the fun phenomena of "failing upwards" we see in modern American corporate leadership.
Unfortunately, I have never seen a layoff only remove weak people. Plenty of good gets thrown out with the bad every single time. The only signal I take from someone being laid off is that they were unlucky and probably not a total sycophant.