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Is it? Standard doctrine for layoffs is that they need to be a surprise. If you say you're going to fire the least productive 25% of your staff, nobody's going to feel secure that, in your judgement, they aren't personally on the chopping block, so 100% of your staff is going to start looking for other jobs, just to be safe. The most productive ones are going to be the most likely to get better offers, and by the time you're ready to downsize you may discover that it's too late; for every one of the good people who left you need to retain two incompetents to try to do their job.
Is there some 4D chess here? Ideologues are more likely to quit in this case, and letting them self-select is actually more accurate than a newcomer's judgement? Getting lots of people to quit rather than firing them reduces unemployment insurance cost increases?? I'm stretching here.
I'm not sure I've ever seen them actually be a surprise, though. Every time I see layoffs at a company, it is preceded by tons of lying about "no we aren't going to do layoffs, we bought the company for its employees after all". I've never seen those lies actually fool anyone though, and nobody is the least bit surprised when layoffs start happening.
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It could be the case that people who are confident they are producing a lot of value and so wouldn't be let go also won't proactively quit.
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