I am pretty sure they opened their excel sheet, ordered the employees by salary, and got rid of the highest paid 10% of each department. Or the lowest performing 10% based on a score in the excel.
Well, you put a lot of trust in the individuals in this case.
A disgruntled employee can just let the bad guys in on purpose, saying "Yes they belong here".
I'm in similar shoes as OP, want to do something else. I think I'm burned out, and don't have the way to fix it (e.g. taking a year long sabbatical)
I was looking into a lot of these things you mention here, problem is the "golden handcuff" from software engineering. I could only start doing anything new by taking a HUGE pay cut for many years, and I simply can't do that in my current life situation.
They are just numbers to them