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Comment by rightsizing | Hacker News Reader

Never heard of a right-sizing before. The linguistic hurdles of execs will never cease to amaze me!

This is extraordinarily common language to use in this scenario. Dates back to 1989 according to MW:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rightsize

What amazes me even more is how this doublespeak has any effect at all anymore. Are there still people who don't see through this? Or are the execs in such a bubble they believe it themselves?

I wonder to what extent it has simply become a term of art. In biology, a specimen that is killed in the course of an experiment is described as "sacrificed" and has been for over a hundred years.

We expect certain words in a layoff press release, and so the writers of those press releases use those words.

It's like saying 'the n word' which makes somebody say the real, far more unpleasant, word in their own head.

It's definitely not a new euphemism. Here's a HN comment from 2008 discussing it:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=403637

The Dilbert Principle book from 1998 or whatever has a joke about it.

To be fair, while I'm no "corporate simp", it is entirely possible that a company has hired too many people and needs to fire them to return to the "right size" for profitability to be sustained.

We needed to reduce headcount to maintain profitability. You can keep some marketing speak without being absolutely full of it.

> We needed to reduce headcount to maintain profitability.

Is Lambda School profitable? They’re still pretty new. And in an entrenched/moderately regulated space. I’d be surprised.

Then say margins, runway, etc - just say what's happening.

How do they know this new size is the "right size"?

"Rightsizing" is a weird one, because it's occasionally used for benign stuff like reducing the rate of hiring. Much like "enhanced interrogation techniques," the broader meaning provides shelter for what it's really used for most of the time.

It's a common business term, specifically referring to an optimal size rather than just downsizing to reduce cost and overhead.

It’s up there with Synergies and Optimizing.

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