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Comment by chadash | Hacker News Reader

"job losses" is BBC editorializing. They do not use that term in their letter: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-workfor...

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I sincerely suspect the BBC would only ever use "fired"/"firings" if the employees were being dismissed for conduct reasons, since that's the common usage in British English. I've been let go -- indeed, I've lost my job (it's the employees who suffer job losses, not the employer) -- but I've never been fired.

"Firing" is becoming a bit more common in Britain, but still sounds like an Americanism to my British ears.

I would use "sacking" for performance related termination, and "losing ones job" in all other cases. I suspect BBC would use the same.

"Made redundant" is another term for the latter.

Which, at least in American English, comes across like corporate jargon/weasel words. Lost their job is literally true and would probably take a bunch more words to describe the precise reasons.

Both things can be literally true. I've lost my job by being made redundant, twice. In Britain redundancy is a very specific thing, where your role no longer exists and you must be let go in a fair way according to employment law. It's quite the opposite of jargon or weasel words here: https://www.gov.uk/redundancy-your-rights

Synergized is the term I typically hear.

I think we may be hitting an issue in translation between English and American; in British English "fired" implies "for cause", while a "blameless" process of headcount reduction is known as "redundancy". "Job losses" is a perfectly reasonable neutral phrase here. Indeed, under UK law and job contracts you generally cannot just chuck someone out of their job without either notice or cause or, for large companies, a statutory redundancy process.

People like to make too much out of active/passive word choices. Granted it can get very propagandistic ("officer-involved shooting"), but if you try to make people say "unhoused" instead of "homeless" everyone just back-translates it in their head.

I think American English is the same colloquially. “I got fired” means I didn’t perform or did something wrong. “I got laid off” is our “I was made redundant”.

“Fired” is also a technical term for both cases, in academic/economist speak.

Fired means terminated for any reason to many Americans. And academics, economists, and lawyers avoid it in my experience.

> Indeed, under UK law and job contracts you generally cannot just chuck someone out of their job without either notice or cause or, for large companies, a statutory redundancy process.

This is only true when an employee has worked for a company for 2 or more years

> in British English "fired" implies "for cause", while a "blameless" process of headcount reduction is known as "redundancy"

OK. I was fired for no stated cause in a process that didn't involve headcount reduction, or the firing of anyone except me specifically. (The unstated cause seems to have been that I had been offered a perk by the manager who hired me that the new manager didn't want to honor after the original guy was promoted.)

How would you describe that, in British English?

"Breach of contract"? "Sacked" would probably work colloquially.

Indeed, Amazon use the euphemism, "making organizational changes".

And by applying these organizational changes, each person can become more load bearing and have so much more scope and impact. This is not a loss, it's a great win for everyone! /s

Makes it sound like they shuffled desks and gave everyone new team names. How fun!

(Not like, you know, some people getting divorced soon, some people biting a revolver soon)

It’s equivalent to “restructuring” which doesn’t directly mean reduction in force but it does mean that I directly.

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