5 ms·

Begs the question, what do you think companies gain by using such passive language?

• jeron 4y ago
  when you first read it, did you feel better or worse for the employees when they wrote impacted vs "laid off"
  • sverhagen 4y ago
    I 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 ago
  You 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 ago
  Sometimes 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.
• rodgerd 4y ago
  Distancing. It lets people who make these decisions portray themselves as the helpless victims of the way things are, rather than people who have made choices that have led to this. "The market says that we need to downsize" sounds a lot better than "an investment analyst says I go, or you go".
• pastabol 4y ago
  A number of reasons already discussed, but in person it has the “benefit” of slowing down (drawing out) bad news. It’s like string betting in poker, but it’s also a way of showing dominion over time (by burying the lede and making someone anxious.)