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Comment by bradleyjg | Hacker News Reader

Laid off is itself a less harsh version of fired.

They're not quite the same, those two terms have taken on different meanings. "Fired" has come to mean "for cause", and "laid off" has come to mean "not for cause".

My hunch is that the evolution was driven by executives, probably in the 70s and 80s, that didn’t want to say they were firing people in order to make more money.

In other words the same dynamic that now leads to ‘impacted’.

Some members of my family (back in the day) used to be laid off from positions seasonally, and were then rehired the next year.

I suspect that in its early versions, it referred more to the notion that "we won't have any more work until the spring, so we'll see you then."

I don't know its etymology or when it might have been coopted by employers who didn't intend to rehire, but I suspect its intent is to signal that there's no ill will between the employer and the employee, and that it WOULD rehire those impacted persons in the future.

I'm not as sure that it means anything so specific now.

Manufacturing can still work like this (and maybe other industries?). You're laid off every now and then, if work slows down, but with the expectation (possibly contractually—many of these have unions) that you'll be brought back when work picks back up. AFAIK they can collect unemployment during the lay-off, so it's better than being kept on with much-reduced hours.

It’s a very useful distinction; it likely would have evolved one way or another.

In the UK they have the term "redundancy" (as in "your position has been made redundant"). Can't see that term catching on in the US but it does cover the use of "laid off" to mean "the company chose to eliminate the position I worked in rather than choosing to get rid of me as a person", and thus may carry less stigma.

It’s the opposite: they started out distinct, but then, by the euphemism treadmill, became used interchangeably.

And if you go back even further it meant something even milder, like furloughed or terminated with the intent to rehire when expected business picks up.

And "laid off" means eligble for uneployment; "fired" often does not.

Ehhhh… fired for misconduct, sure. Fired because you can’t do the job? You probably qualify for unemployment.

Employers sure have a vested interest in making you believe otherwise, tho.

I still retain a similar model to patio11: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1532509304846135296?s=20

Regardless of how you want to word it, or how you perceive it to play out socially, it does not diminish the act.

It depends on the listener's relationship with the person in question.

If you're on the receiving end, then that model and the act done to you are irrelevant.

If someone is applying for a job and they tell you "I was fired from my last job" vs "I was laid off from my last job", that changes your perspective on them.

Having terms that distinguish whether or not it's "for cause" are a useful language feature.

For some, "laid off" has the same connotation as furlough.

A furloughed employee has the expectation that employment can resume with the company, while a laid off employee does not. This is important for tax and other legal considerations.

This very much depends on where you are. For example in the UK a lay off technically means being told to stay at home because there isn't enough work [1], although it's often used these days to mean "fired without cause", i.e. the American usage of lay off has become more common and it has simultaneously became common to use the term "furlough" to describe layoffs during the pandemic.

[1]https://www.gov.uk/lay-offs-short-timeworking

It had that connotation 50 years ago, but anyone who thinks it still does is just confused.

In the US, “laid off” has a pretty substantially different meaning than “fired”.

“Laid off” usually means that the company shut down a group of roles, and the individuals happened to be in those roles and so lost their jobs.

“Fired” usually means that the individual was intentionally let go because of behavior / competence / etc. of the individual, not the group.

Here we say maid redundant if someone is laid off like this.

Fired -> Let go -> Laid off -> Impacted

I'll be curious to see what comes next.

"Let go" is the worst, it implies "I let you go" -> "I allow you to leave" which is the ultimate humiliation when you are getting fired

I think of it more like the protagonist (or antagonist, one could argue) of a movie holding on to the hand of someone (employee) about to fall off of a cliff (the descent, ultimately, to poverty and homelessness) just to make the metaphor as vivid as possible.

Fired still semi-exists. Let go seems to show up for insufficient performance, e.g. semi-amicable “it’s not working out”. Fired shows up when somebody really screwed up, e.g. laws were broken or products failed.

Completed? (like in Never let me go[0])

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Never_Let_Me_Go_(novel)

Carousel!

One term I've heard from HR was "Released to the industry."

I always wondered if that was focus grouped or something. It was definitely the running joke for a while.

Fifteen years ago I remember my last employer saying in a division meeting that they had "reallocated a number of roles to the mobility pool". A round of confused "what's that then" from more or less all present forced them to be less euphemistic.

For Sun Microsystems executives in the 90's, it was:

"Promoted to Vice President of Looking for a New Job"

Can’t we all just agree on “shit canned”?

“Today we are announcing that 10% of our company is being shit canned”.

Terminated is to the left of fired.

Playing around at the online etymology dictionary, it appears dismiss is the oldest—early 15th century. Sack and fire are from the 19th century, and laid off in this sense isn’t until the 1960s. Terminate, as in dismiss from a job, is first attested in 1973.

Hard to get more vague than impacted, that could mean anything. I was impacted by reading this bland PR release.

Impacted still implies some causal connection, so the next level of doublespeak must avoid that, then. John was affine to the event.

"Fixed the error"

Selected for new and exciting opportunities!

Role is "disestablished"

Reassigned to an external role

Depends on the circumstances. I associate “fired” with a negative reason (e.g. performance, theft, harassment). “Laid-off” doesn’t carry the same connotation.

They give "layoff packages" but not "firing packages".

fired usually means, with cause. laid off is for when a lot of people are getting cut at the same time because upper management asked to do big cuts

Yes, and importantly if you are laid off you generally can get unemployment compensation. If you are fired for cause you often cannot.

There’s usually a significant difference for the individual where laid off means you get unemployment while fired (implies cause) does not.

Depends on the cause. In most situations that aren’t blatant misconduct you qualify for unemployment.

They're related, I suppose. But there's a real, meaningful difference between the two.

We hereby lay their employment with us to rest.

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