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I agree. Even just writing "We thank the X affected people." would have been better. The "less than 20 people" interjection makes it sound like they're trying to minimise the importance of it and making a point of it being such a trifling little firing-round that they couldn't even be bothered checking the exact count.

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That statement is a case study in poor corporate communications. It would have been way more elegant if they said something along the lines of:

'We thank the 20 persons affected by this change for their contributions and we are committed to doing as much as we can to provide them with a respectful exit from our company.'

Not perfect, but at least this way it doesn't seem like like they're trying to minimize those who are affected. But, I'm a technical writer and my hobby is to make fun of the material folks in the communication and advertising departments churn out.

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