Anyone Else Seeing a Trend of 'Optional' Relocation?

This whole thing with Apple pushing employees to relocate to Austin or face the music... it's really grinding my gears. I've seen a few posts mentioning it, and it feels like a sneaky way to cut headcount without calling it a layoff. They offer you a choice: pack up your life and move, or get a severance package. Forcing people to uproot their families or their entire established lives just to keep a job they've been doing perfectly well seems incredibly disingenuous. Is this a new tactic companies are employing? It feels like a 'soft layoff' designed to avoid the optics of mass job cuts. Anyone else experiencing this or know someone who is? What's the sentiment like on the ground about these 'relocation ultimatums'?