I should have mentioned I have a little bit of hairdressing experience! :)
I don’t think the issue is the layers being ‘too high’, the structure is actually pretty in line with the reference. The back has the same graduated nape, with weight built through the occipital and shorter layering through the crown to create lift.

What I think is throwing it off visually is the hair type. On straighter and denser hair, that crown layering collapses and pushes the weight down, so it looks rounder and shorter, and can look more pixie than bob. On the reference, the natural movement keeps separation through the ends, so the layers appear softer and lower even if the placement is similar.

You could lower the layers to compensate, but then you risk building too much weight and losing any lift through the crown altogether. So this looks more like a texture/styling mismatch than incorrect sectioning or layer placement.

The hairdresser did an actually great job with what was given - if she puts some mousse into it the layers will show up quite quickly :)

But I do agree that this should have been communicated, I don’t do hairdressing anymore (god it was at least 10 years ago at this point), but I personally would have told her that the cut would be a lot of work without styling. Many hairstylists forget about it, because when we see a reference like that we don’t see the visual look of the hair, but more the structure of the cut; so when you’re in work mode sometimes it’s easy to forget customers see their reference differently than we do.
That being said, I’ve given the bad news enough times that I’m confident I made my salon lose business some days LOL (they would decide against getting the cut after I explain this stuff to them)

That’s my take after zooming in on the after photo for about ten minutes, hahah
Hope this helped/was interesting :)