Speaking as a shareholder here, a 2 trillion dollar valuation warrants extraordinary justification. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. As the AI models get better and better at compressing the world's information, people will be going directly to their model of choice
The layoffs and dividend are related -- the company's death rattle has been shaking a while now. Management is desperate to retain the confidence of the investor class.
It makes me ill writing this, but I believe it is due to the big consulting firms recruiting from elite academic institutions. Our primitive brains ascribe incredible value to institutions of any sort. Not that the universities are bad themselves of course, but that there is a belief in the general public that those graduates are smarter or better.