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Comment by thepasswordis | Hacker News Reader

I get why she's upset, but what is the point of arguing with these people? They're just the messengers.

She's not arguing to change the outcome, she's arguing to call out the hypocrisy/bullshit. In some sense it's pointless, yes; in some other sense, you deserve an argument if you don't deal straightly with the person you're laying off.

She's asking for an explanation that they can't give her, and also trying to use some bizarre appeal to emotion by mentioning "trauma" and how much this will upset her life.

> She's asking for an explanation that they can't give her

True - and instead of admitting that, they hemhaw about how her performance was bad.

Agree the appeal to emotion isn't really helping, but on balance it's Cloudflare that looks bad here.

It was her performance, but she didn’t agree

They literally reply that it was a higher level thing that had to do with her team. So a layoff. The initial text seemed like filler.

Well, a layoff has a different impact than being fired.

They talk about the performance of her and her peers.

In any case, it’s not even a conversation. It’s a notice

Arguing (also known as: pushing back) is how you communicate that what happened was wrong. It won't impact the decision; they're just the messengers; but it might impact how the messengers feel about what happened, which might create change. The messengers are also human.

to make the typical emotionally-dead but overly emotive HR people squirm

Going viral on TikTok is far more likely to effect change here than playing along with the process.

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