If the marginal return per employee is still good then "lowering the bar" makes sense, not lowering the bar would be throwing money away - right?

And during the pandemic certainly some of the new talent showing up was good, things changed and people stuck in jobs they were actually "too good for" moved on.

I wouldn't assume it was "filling quotas" - it was filling positions and the positions existed for some reason, they were making a lot of money and there was probably more work to do!