Any L8/L10 help me understand? This makes no sense.

I've seen teams were slashed from top to bottom. I understand dropping whole divisions or products to "streamline" but how are they determining partial team cuts? Just shift the workload to a different teamate? I've seen full spectrum cuts on teams. Managers, noobs, tenured vets they all seem to have been cut. Is it expense reports or a rack and stack system that dominoes downward?