We have a QA team of 4 that supports x4 as many engineers. If they weren’t there - engineers would spend at least 1/4th of their time performing QA duties with

We have a QA team of 4 that supports x4 as many engineers. If they weren’t there - engineers would spend at least 1/4th of their time performing QA duties with likely worse results and at significantly higher cost to the company, since their compensation is higher. So it makes sense to do that only as a cost saving measure in hard times - you are picking losing which employees will be less detrimental in the long term, even if you expect that those that remain will be less productive.