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Comment by couchand | Hacker News Reader

The first step to building the right organization for our ambitions is to realign our workforce. With this in mind, we will begin to reduce the size of our overall workforce by up to 18,000 jobs in the next year. Of that total, our work toward synergies and strategic alignment on Nokia Devices and Services is expected to account for about 12,500 jobs, comprising both professional and factory workers.

This is why people don't trust executive-types. Satya, why can't you just say: "We're laying off 18,000 people total, and 12,500 people from Nokia."

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Because while that's the top-line for the 18,000 people affected (12,500 today), he'd desperately like that not to be the only thing the other 100,000 people who are staying hear. He wants the rest of the people to first hear: "We're changing for the better, and while these layoffs are a bad thing, it's necessary pain we have to go through to be better in the long run." That means wrapping the bad news with as much context and transparency as you can, every time you talk about it.

I agree with your overall sentiment that you can't just lay bald facts out there, devoid of context and expect great things to happen.

However,if I were famous enough to propose a Sokoloff's Law, it might say "If your goal is to increase transparency, you've failed once the phrase 'realign our workforce' or 'work toward synergies and strategic alignment' creeps into the draft."

"He wants the rest of the people to first hear: "We're changing for the better, and while these layoffs are a bad thing, it's necessary pain we have to go through to be better in the long run."

Right, but the question remains, why did he not just say exactly what you just said? Why use the business school/managementese style language? Why not use language that is human and expresses empathy?

He probably did say that. To a PR person, who paraphrased it.

When I worked for a Fortune 500 company, the department head in my department did not write his own anything. He had a staff writer (I applied for the position at one point). And I am reasonably sure that the staff writer also got his stuff edited or reviewed by someone to make sure it contained no typos, etc. before it went out as the Face of The Department.

So I would be kind of surprised if Satya actually wrote this at all. Someone else wrote it. He put his name on it and posted it. Being the face of the company is part of his job.

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