I am going to be contrarian here, because this advice is misleadingly "obvious," and almost everyone is going to reflexively agree with it, because who wants to

I am going to be contrarian here, because this advice is misleadingly "obvious," and almost everyone is going to reflexively agree with it, because who wants to be the asshole making uncomfortable "jokes" about people's livelihood? But. Counter signaling is a powerful tool in the social toolbox, and it works exactly when uncertainty and discomfort may be present. The problem isn't the counter-signaling, it's the poor social models and actual lack of trust and common knowledge between the people. I think this advice is practical because any given manager is going to create a mediocre-at-best environment, but in my perfect world there would be enough trust and common knowledge about exactly where everyone stands that a joke like this would be a nonissue. That means in my perfect world managers would be better at creating that. The reason I am saying this is that if you go away from this thread with the idea "joking about serious things is bad," then your job is done when you simply don't do the bad thing. But if the lesson is actually "you don't have the skill necessary to create the safety and clarity on your team to make a joke like this and have it be fine" then you have affordance to maybe be better at creating safety and clarity--at least you have a trailhead to start looking.