Well, they're certainly laying on the euphemisms here. I mean, maybe it's just me, but that reminds me an awful lot of 1984 esque newspeak and the Ministry of Love. It's all 'lets make the worst possible stuff sound like a good thing'.
That's not much better. It's very rarely mutual. Either John has been fired, or John has found another job - perhaps at a company where no one lights cleaning equipment on fire - and is quitting.
Eng was in another world, especially after the move where your team wound up in your own, separately keyed area of the building, complete with your own kitchen.
I think the intention here is sound, though. There is so much negative baggage around "fired", "laid off", "quit", etc, when these are really not negative events at all. This is where an employee is liberated from a situation that isn't working (quite possibly at a company that isn't doing well, is poorly managed, or in a shrinking industry), and will generally end up working somewhere better, taking the opportunity to travel or start there own business, and grow.
Trying to remove these associations from the process is a worthwhile goal, but it would be rather more honest to just go for something neutral like "no longer with us" than trying to co-opt "graduation", which obviously means something completely different.
That's the thing: I don't think that parting ways with a company is a bad thing anymore. So, if the event stops being bad, why use the word with old emotional baggage to describe it?
Keep in mind that "laid off" != "losing your primary source of income". A person's primary source of income is, let's say, working as a software developer. If you're laid off, you can still work as a software developer, you just need to spend a little time finding somewhere else to do that. In this way, it's quite different from losing your primary source of income due to, say, ill health.
Even if you don't find somewhere else to work, as get all the time that you were previously selling to your employer back to use as you see fit, so in accounting terms it's a wash, rather than a loss.
Yeah, right. Try to tell this to a single mother of two trying to pay the mortgage.
For a lot of people (I'd say most people), being fired is not a pleasant experience.
It's also extremely negative for the company. It's as much a failure on the companies part as it is the employees (with exception of course. Misconduct being an obvious one).
TIL! I guess once I'm done with the Dune books, I'll have to go through this.
Which is quite an amusing image.
But yeah, it could be tied to the average age at the company.
It's hard to believe it wasn't intentional, but again, startup founders.