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Comment by jimberlage | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, this doesn't strike me as a bad layoff announcement, with one caveat.

I’m writing to let you all know that after careful consideration, we've decided to reduce our global workforce by approximately 20% or 528 Dropboxers.

Should be replaced with

I’m writing to let you all know that after careful consideration, we've decided to reduce our global workforce by approximately 20% or 528 people.

You should never use your pet names for employees in a layoff announcement. It makes an otherwise serious announcement seem tone-deaf.

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The employee pet name shit is just really tired at this point. It's as bad as the job postings still looking for Rock Stars or Ninjas or whatever.

They're not Dropboxers, they're not associates, they are employees. Pretending otherwise is foolish on both sides.

Dropbox was where I first encountered the infantilization of the workplace, with animated emojis all over your biannual performance review. It was a shock, having come from a real company run by adults. Now everyone thinks this is normal, at least at companies that use Slack where 40% of the traffic is animated emojis.

Exactly how I felt working at Google with their “open concepts”. Thankfully I am back at the University of Washington in a cubicle now, away from the yuppy babies. God knows where people get these ridiculous ideas.

It's to remind them they are beloved "Dropboxers", and are part of the family... before terminating them.

I've never been a big fan of any such language, regardless of layoff context. Do enough people prefer it that it's actually a net win for business by way of improved morale or whatever? I wonder if it's been seriously studied.

Then again, I'm also of the mind that email addresses (or whatever other contact methods) ought to belong to functional areas/positions rather than to people (other than for person-specific topics such as time off, personal development, etc.) so turnover doesn't lead to questions of where to send questions/requests. I assume this is an unusually inhumane outlook!

From an organizational psychology perspective I'm sure it tests well that's why they do it

So beloved that they're willing to sacrifice them on the alter of stock price

I agree it's actually a well crafted layoff announcement. I wouldn't even faulting for using Dropboxers. If layoffs have to happen there are much worse ways of announcing and implementing them than this. Still very unpleasant if you're affected... (been there...)

Don't want to remind other workers that they share something with these workers. Solidarity can be contagious.

It is my observation that most unicorn execs become tone-deaf and out of touch very quickly. Something about human nature.

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