I'm all for criticizing empty corpo talk, but that quote is actually pretty reasonable and not empty. They are just saying that they are simplifying their organizational chart so that they don't have teams with overlapping responsabilities.

It's just a polite way to say "we noticed that we had 2 teams doing the same thing so we merged them and dropped the resulting excess headcount".

> that quote is actually pretty reasonable and not empty

It does have an actual discernible message, which puts it above a lot of other corporate gobbledygook. But it's still corporate gobbledygook that requires careful deciphering to understand what it says.

I don't consider it reasonable at all. It's slightly meaningful word vomit.

There can be several reasons why they (and their employees) would want that though. Being very honest is not a positive in this case. Duplicate work and ambiguous ownership is fuzzy and unclear. They won't come out and say "we overhired and now we are shedding our deadweight" because no one wins with that more crude statement.

The least you can do for the laid off employees in this situation is try and not make it harder for them to find new jobs, so you keep the message vague.

It seems to me that "we overhired and need to fix that" is a message that would make things easier for those laid off. It's saying that the people are being laid off because of a business misjudgement by the company, not because those employees performed poorly.

>They won't come out and say "we overhired and now we are shedding our deadweight" because no one wins with that more crude statement.

to be frank, we should probably stop pretending they "overhired". That term implies that these MBAs were somehow blindsided by the imminent recession that analysts have talked about as far back as 2020 and that this wasn't an intentional strategy to maximize growth while labor was "cheap" (or at least, the money to hire labor).

This was all calculated and most companies still came out of this larger than when they entered the pandemic. It was all calculated and workers were nothing more than expendable pawns. Not much we can do about it without stronger labor laws, but that's a multi-decade battle.

They had 700 people doing redundant work? Good thing they waited until there was potential for a recession to actually decide to look into that. Excellent business leadership.

It seems reasonable that a business would accept more bloat in good times than bad. The risk profile changes when the forecast changes.

Which potential recession are we talking about? The one that was supposed to happen 3 months ago? or 6 months ago? Or 9 months ago? A year ago? 2 years ago? There’s so many potential recessions i’ve lost count!

To be fair, at all times there is the potential for a recession

reading it closely it exemplifies everything wrong with the current job market:

> adapting our organizational structures

"free money is gone so we need to downsize"

> to improve agility and accountability,

"we don't have money nor time to nurture juniors. they are gone"

> establishing unambiguous ownership

"We're dropping risky products and specializing towards the most profitable features, ".

> and driving improved efficiency and transparency through reduced layering".

"we're making the remaining workers work more to make up for the people we let go. And cutting out some key managers, producers, and middlemen that will slow things down in the process".

I honestly see is as corpo talk to justify all the usual things that happening as of late.

That doesn't even read that bad IMO. They are recognizing that they're organizationally bloated today and are laying people off to be more cost-effective. Pretty straight forward.

Your translation IS pretty straightforward. The original text is straightforward as any corp-speak can be (so, not at all).

Can’t imagine being an exec and getting paid to “write” this dribble

They're paid to be the hatchet man, not for writing this. When the shareholders tell them to swing the ax, that's their job.

I love how the "leveraging resource to add value using laser-focused synergistic..." business double-speak euphamisms can also be used to fire people, not just take up air during management meetings.

Kind of ironic of them to mention "improved transparency" while writing in the most possible opaque way. Just say it as it is.

While I understand there are some notably bad layoff communications, but I have realized its subjective and there is nothing that will satisfy everyone. Which makes these sub-threads pointless in some sense. Maybe it would be more helpful if the commentators on this sub-thread that are critical of it, can come up with what's acceptable to them instead?

I appreciate how many people have defended this statement as 'clear and straightforward' by providing a way clearer and very straightforward summary of it with 1/3 the word count...