Incentive to reduce employed developers?

$2000 USD (I'm presuming the value is static, as opposed being 2000 of the local currency or some kind of equivalent scaling based on the local costs) can be quite large depending on the location (as noted in https://lwn.net/Articles/993355/), and the original maths assumed Google-level salaries, so while I agree it doesn't seem likely to change much overall (given the targets seem to be profitable US-based companies), there is the small possibility of misaligned incentives.