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Comment by brotoss | Hacker News Reader

Referring to "main quests" and "side quests" in a mass layoff notice is extremely cringeworthy

The letter seems to have two audiences. Investors and employees. It’s easy to criticize this stuff but i have yet to see HN provide any valid feedback in these threads outside of criticizing past decisions of the CEO.

Here’s valid feedback: don’t use ridiculous language (team change), treat us like adults. We know what this is. Don’t turn a message about layoffs into a marketing puff piece about Shopify’s mission to save kittens and make rainbows. Own up to literally any amount of accountability, and be real as for the reasons this is happening (we hired these people knowing the risk we may need to lay them off - we were wrong and now you suffer as a consequence)

Honest question. What good does that do? It’s a company they aren’t here to make you feel better.

They are treating you like an adult by giving you a nice severance package. I don’t understand the need for people to have companies admit they were wrong.

It's not so bad, given the company culture. I'm one of the people impacted and it never occurred to me that anything was off by that statement.

Explained here, it's part of their company vocabulary.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/04/how-shopify-bungled-its-la...

"haha! You're employment here was just a game to us!"

Yeah, not as bad as the CEO laying off 900 people via zoom, and then plying for sympathies at how hard this decision is for him to do.

our entire economy is out of whack in so many areas.

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