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> Seventeen of our teammates are impacted today. Never allow corporations to speak in passive, weak, blameless terms. Use direct, honest, language, and force
by voz_ 4y ago
> Seventeen of our teammates are impacted today.
Never allow corporations to speak in passive, weak, blameless terms.
Use direct, honest, language, and force them to do the same.
"Seventeen of our teammates are impacted today." - > "We laid off 17 employees today"
"I was impacted by layoffs" -> "Google laid me off"
etc
- bovermyer 4y agoPassive voice afflicts many people's writing, not just corporations. Yes, it's a bad practice, but I don't feel it's egregious in this case.
- comte7092 4y agoThat is a reasonable argument if one assumes that this is an unconscious choice, however, passive voice has become the standard with these types of press releases. It is a conscious, intentional choice.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pastabol 4y agoPassive voice is a tool. It’s perfectly valid and grammatical. The problem is the abuse of it to misrepresent one’s agency or responsibility, but there’s nothing wrong with the sentence, “I was hit by a car on the way to work.” The issue with corporate passive is that business language is not only ugly but serves evil purposes. In person, it exists to slow down bad news so you can read and manipulate people (“string betting”) and, on paper, its raison d’etre is to project authority to which one has no actual right.
- fdomig 4y agoYou are absolutely right. This is the only correct wording.
- concordDance 4y agoDoes this accomplish anything other than increasing resentment?
- roflyear 4y agoIt's precise, and language should be precise: http://www.butte.edu/departments/cas/tipsheets/style_purpose_strategy/writing_clearly.html#:~:text=Precise%20language%3A%20A%20vocabulary%20of,makes%20your%20writing%20more%20understandable http://www.butte.edu/departments/cas/tipsheets/style_purpose....
- comte7092 4y agoBegs the question, what do you think companies gain by using such passive language?
- jeron 4y agowhen you first read it, did you feel better or worse for the employees when they wrote impacted vs "laid off"
- sverhagen 4y agoI went back to GitLab's announcement, because I thought it was better: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2023/02/09/gitlab-news/ https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2023/02/09/gitlab-news/ Turns out, it says: "reduce the size of our team by 7%", which also isn't as specific as the OP is suggesting. HOWEVER, they then go on to spend more than half of their post explaining how the impacted staff is supported, and YES, that did make me feel better.
- MattGaiser 4y agoYou have to stop and think about what it really means. "Impacted" just means something happened. You have to do the legwork to get to "called into a meeting and fired."
- aatd86 4y agoSometimes it's not for the company but for the person who was laid off. To mean that the person was laid off but it wasn't their fault. It's their position that was impacted. Somehow. Result the same but sentiment might be dulled a little. Not blaming the person but blaming external conditions that resulted in someone being made redundant.
- breakingrules 4y agoI actually believe he put out a 10/10 example of how this should be done. We all know what he meant, he was concise and then reminded you of the mission and that this is all about the mission.
- slantedview 4y agoMaybe you can grant him 9/10, but you always have to deduct some points for hiding behind euphemisms.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- i-use-nixos-btw 4y ago9 would be far too high IMHO. If you’re laying people off, say it straight and with a backbone. The language is passive, weak and makes it sound like a mere consequence of a slight breeze upon a dainty leaf causing it to gently fall from a tree. 17 people lost their jobs. Likely many of those have families to feed, houses to uphold and bills to pay. In this economy, the same will likely happen to many of us and a statement like the above would feel like a punch to the gut. The uppercut that follows is: > we want to acknowledge and express our appreciation for their substantial contributions. Saying you want to acknowledge and express something is not the same thing as acknowledging and expressing something. A statement would struggle to get more generic than this.
- breakingrules 4y agonah. im not a retarded pussy, so I don't have a problem with tone. I've never dyed my hair purple (im pretty sure that shit seeps into the brain).
- bradleyjg 4y agoLaid off is itself a less harsh version of fired.
- margalabargala 4y agoThey're not quite the same, those two terms have taken on different meanings. "Fired" has come to mean "for cause", and "laid off" has come to mean "not for cause".
- adfm 4y agoFor some, "laid off" has the same connotation as furlough.
- tomnipotent 4y agoA furloughed employee has the expectation that employment can resume with the company, while a laid off employee does not. This is important for tax and other legal considerations.
- r_hoods_ghost 4y agoThis very much depends on where you are. For example in the UK a lay off technically means being told to stay at home because there isn't enough work [1], although it's often used these days to mean "fired without cause", i.e. the American usage of lay off has become more common and it has simultaneously became common to use the term "furlough" to describe layoffs during the pandemic. [1]https://www.gov.uk/lay-offs-short-timeworking https://www.gov.uk/lay-offs-short-timeworking
- plorkyeran 4y agoIt had that connotation 50 years ago, but anyone who thinks it still does is just confused.
- bradleyjg 4y agoMy hunch is that the evolution was driven by executives, probably in the 70s and 80s, that didn’t want to say they were firing people in order to make more money. In other words the same dynamic that now leads to ‘impacted’.
- simonebrunozzi 4y agoWhen there's a PR person involved, truth goes away, double-speak comes in. Even in the case of YC, which in general is way better than most other organizations.
- beebmam 4y agoThere's nothing diplomatic about it. It enrages me far more than the truth.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- lazide 4y agoFor you, but often for others it doesn't. It depends on if someone wants to believe the truth, or believe something else. Most want to believe something else.
- grayhatter 4y agohackers don't though; as a rule, hackers value truth over comfortable lies.
- roflyear 4y agoThis isn't the place for hackers.
- Kerrick 4y agoMaybe they weren’t fired? The way the post was worded has me wondering if they’ll be retrained and have their roles changed to fit YC’s new needs.
- justinator 4y agoExactly the point - passive, weak, blameless terms makes it nebulous on what has happened. Just say you want you need to say - you're the captain of the ship.
- CydeWeys 4y agoOh c'mon, there's no way this is it. If they hadn't been laid off there wouldn't be an external announcement. You don't post something like this merely to announce that you're retraining some employees.
- MattGaiser 4y agoThey wouldn't announce it if that were the case. I am curious whether it would have been announced at all without all the heightened economic fear.
- naet 4y agoThey were 100% laid off. The wording is intentional and standard for the industry. You aren't "impacted" by changing roles or retraining, you're impacted by losing your job. "we want to acknowledge and express our appreciation for their substantial contributions" translates to "these people will no longer be contributing as they are laid off effective immediately".
- beebmam 4y agoIt is important to keep in mind that the companies are the ones doing the impacting. They don't have to lay people off, they're choosing to.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- loeg 4y ago"Exonerative tense," "mistakes were made," etc. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/past_exonerative https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/past_exonerative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistakes_were_made https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistakes_were_made https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/07/14/the-curious-grammar-of-police-shootings/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/07/14/...
- kylecazar 4y agoFavorite example has to be Luis Suarez in his apology for very clearly biting a World Cup opponent in front of the world some years ago: "The truth is that my colleague Giorgio Chiellini suffered the physical result of a bite"
- xavdid 4y agoSome newspapers are really dreadful about this with regards to people killed/injured by cops. A well-known example from the NYT: > A reporter was hit by a pepper ball on live television by an officer who appeared to be aiming at her https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2020/new-york-times-tweet-passive-voice/ https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2020/new-york-times-twe...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- zamnos 4y agoThere was one circulating where the newspaper headline stated that "A man with no active warrants was shot by police." Which is just about the most nefarious way to say "an innocent man was shot by police".
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- hk__2 4y agoIsn’t it different? IANAL but having an active warrant issued for you doesn’t really have anything to do with you being guilty or innocent. It just means the police must conduct you to the juge, either because you’re a suspect or (in some countries) a witness. Edit: I guess this is this story: https://www.actionnews5.com/story/35967817/officers-kill-man-with-no-active-warrants-at-wrong-house/ https://www.actionnews5.com/story/35967817/officers-kill-man...
- itronitron 4y agoThere isn't even a need for a public blog post about this change in business strategy. This reads fine as an internal email, but I've never worked at a company that publicly referenced their layoffs.
- lcw 4y agoI think this is just a matter of opinion. When something severe happens it's natural to not use the most harsh term to describe the event. It doesn't seems like something malicious. When describing a death many people will say "they are no longer with us" instead of describing the circumstance of death. When talking about traumatic events we as a society have a natural propensity to not use triggering words. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with that unless it's hiding information. As described above no one is hiding anything because we all understand what happened.
- Kwpolska 4y agoDeath is inevitable, unexpected, unplanned, usually caused by things beyond human control. Layoffs are a planned thing explicitly done by one human to another in order to increase corporate profits.
- 300bps 4y agoLayoffs are often a choice between letting a small percentage go or causing the entire company to go out of business.
- maximinus_thrax 4y agoDo you have some data to back that up? I'm not sure if a small percentage of employees are so expensive as to be the tipping point for a company to go out of business.
- cloverich 4y agoEmployees are one of or the most expensive part of doing business for many. I guess you could google Gross vs Net margins in various companies or industries as an example (maybe here[1]). But layoffs aren't merely firing people, they are "firing people and not re-hiring for their positions or work." So it's often closing out on entire product strategies, such as the case here with YC. [1]: https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/margin.html https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile...
- annexrichmond 4y agoNever mind "I was impacted by layoffs", I often see "my position was impacted by layoffs"
- zoklet-enjoyer 4y agoI was impacted by layoffs recently. As in, my department was good, but for how long? Should I start looking for another job?
- herval 4y agoTo be fair, that's usually accurate - unlike someone getting fired because of their own performance, layoffs are usually untargeted, and include people that were great at their jobs. And let's face it, getting fired is a huge stigma, so it's totally understandable that someone would phrase it like that, as the victim of the situation
- pclmulqdq 4y agoIt's hard to blame anyone for using the "soft" terms about their own situation, since firing tends to be a very sensitive topic. It's not hard to blame companies for using those same terms, since it comes off as "MBA-ish" and sleazy.
- _puk 4y agoIn many places, without at will employment, you can't lay an individual off, but actually have to make the position redundant.
- dllthomas 4y agoWhile those examples do use the passive voice, the passive is not the real problem. "These events impacted seventeen of our teammates" is the active voice, and it is no more forthright. "Mistakes were made by Bob, Sean, and Susan, who have been fired" is (if accurate) quite clear about assigning blame while using the passive. It's true that some people overuse the passive, and for those people noticing and considering whether to rephrase can produce better writing, but insisting on forgoing the passive entirely probably won't. If we want to prevent evasive writing, we should look for and call out evasive writing, whatever voice is used.
- SoftTalker 4y agoTo me it’s the phrase “these events” like it’s something beyond their control. Replacing that with “our decision” would be taking more ownership. Edit: re-reading TFA, they don’t attribute the layoffs to “these events” so I’ll amend this as being a response directly to the parent comment.
- dllthomas 4y agoRight, the active construction does grammatically require we put something there, where in the passive we get to omit it, which is why the passive is sometimes used for evasion. But if you're interested in whether someone is being evasive, just... look at whether they're actually assigning agency appropriately. Grammatical form doesn't answer that. See also https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/index.php?s=passive https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/index.php?s=passive for much related amusement.
- bloodyplonker22 4y agoI knew an ex co-worker who grew up in another country whose manager, in a "sync up meeting", told him that he was "impacted" and he didn't need to continue work on his current sprint. He came out of the meeting with a smile, had no idea what this meant, and he showed up the next day.
- smithmayowa 4y agoDamn that sucks dude probably thought he was being praised or something.
- SoftTalker 4y agoDid he get to keep his red stapler?
- raz32dust 4y agoWhy is it the corporation's fault though? We live in a society and governance structure which encourages corporations to consider revenue over everything else. Why would they act differently? What should Google do? Sorry I understand the human cost of layoffs. But it is a reflection of what this society values. If you want corporations to consider the human cost, you need to make it feature in their financials. Or the government should offer better protection to unemployed people.
- VerminOctopus1 4y agoYC is not special. It’s a business and they’ll use weasel words like the rest of them.
- jmyeet 4y agoWhat you're talking about linguistically is the difference between passive voice ("I was laid off") vs active voice ("YC fired me"). It is a pervasive technique and a form of blame-shifting. Whenver you see a headline, ask yourself which voice is being used and why. It is a key part of media literacy.
- xqcgrek2 4y agoPerhaps they meant seventeen of their teammates have impacted colons? It's an odd thing to share, yes, but these are trying times.
- ak_111 4y agoThis comment comes across as a silly nitpick given the sober content of the post, but I think it is completely fair given Paul Graham's many writings and tweets on the virtues of writing clearly and his hatred of what I call corporatese.
- marktani 4y agoNot sure how involved pg was with this post as its stated author Garry Tan
- ak_111 4y agoYou would imagine he read it at some point. You would also imagine his CEO would have internalised Paul Graham's most important piece of advice about communication (writing clearly).
- wheels 4y agoI have no inside information on this one, but YC has been around for 18 years, and pg left the president role 9 years ago. It's been about half of YC's life that he's been out of the day-to-day stuff. It's absolutely not obvious that he'd be reading each announcement that goes out (I'd be surprised at such).
- eyelidlessness 4y agoI don’t think it comes across as a silly nitpick, and I’ve read very little PG has written. It’s useful to identify how phrasing and framing of communication can be used to manipulate how that communication is received, regardless of who is communicating. And I think the same observation would have been made if this were a post about any other organization. It is laudable that this observation was very close to the top when I clicked to see the comments. I’d be surprised if this critique gets buried by HN moderation, and cautiously hopeful it won’t get buried by folks biased to defend YC &co. But the exact same language from any other source would be examined exactly the same way, and for very good reason.
- warent 4y agoThis immediately stood out to me as well! It didn't come across as tactful, just bizarre
- cardosof 4y agoI, too, prefer that companies spoke in direct, plain terms, without PR shenanigans. Does anyone know why do they do this, though? Is it to de-risk potential lawsuits or do they believe people prefer that way ("sounds professional")?
- madeofpalk 4y agoA combination of cargo culting/"sounds professional", and just wanting to make yourself/company look less bad.
- petercooper 4y agoAssuming legal signed off on the basic message, I'm guessing it's out of a sense of 'politeness' in a delicate situation. Consider how someone might publicly communicate a relationship breakdown with language like "we're parting ways" or "we have made the decision to end our marriage." Sometimes you get plain, direct language but people might infer acrimony from it.
- kokanee 4y agoMy sense is that in the particular case of layoffs, companies are hesitant to actually use the phrase "laid off" because it triggers a sense of implicit shame in those affected. There is definitely an unspoken assumption that folks who get laid off are underperformers, and the extent to which we talk about how untrue that is (see: LinkedIn) shows how pervasive the assumption is.
- a_bonobo 4y agoCowardice You fired someone? You're to blame. Someone was impacted? Sounds more like an act of nature. Nobody is to blame!
- labster 4y agoJust read it in a dental sense: seventeen of our molars were impacted today, and had to be extracted.
- emmelaich 4y ago> Never allow corporations to speak in passive, weak, blameless terms. And yet, when they don't they tend to be excoriated for being harsh and cruel. So whaddya do?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]