If I were a young softwre developer again, I would have jumped at this chance. If you can impress a billionaire that you are special, you might leapfrog years or decades of advancement the traditional way. Surviving the Twitter purge and staying employed while others get fired for incompetence would also look great on a resume’.
Now I’m older and have a family and commitments and don’t need to climb the career ladder, so I wouldn’t do it. But young developers bailing on an opportunity to impress the richest man in the world with their skills are making a huge mistake.
Of course if you don’t believe you actually have great skills, it’s better to take a layoff and severance than to be fired for cause a little later. So there’s probably a significant quality filter involved in who took a layoff and who didn’t.