[reaperducer]

They aren't laying off people, it was a voluntary separation

It's just another layer of corporate double-speak.

The same way "fired" became "laid off."

Until the early 90's, "laid off" applied to factory and seasonal workers, who were expected to be recalled when production ramped up again.

[Spivak]

I don't really think it's doublespeak.

Laid off means an employer doesn't want/need your position anymore.

Fired means an employer doesn't want you anymore.

[cgriswald]

I don't think it's quite so black-and-white. Often there are multiple such positions and they are being reduced. So your position still exists and they don't want you (or rather, they would prefer to have X number of your coworkers rather than you). I don't think it's synonymous with being fired, but you can smell it from there.

[mohaine]

Every time I'm seen a layoff in tech it is always the lower performing employees first out the door. Round 1 is normally just letting people go who should have been fired years before.

Of course this is often when the good employees start doing interviews as well.

[jandrese]

The first round of cuts (of deadweight that avoided egregious screwups) work so well that managers get addicted and pretty soon they're cutting the actual workers and they kill the company.

[C1sc0cat]

No previous commentator is correct "redundancy" is different to "laid off"

Fired means they are dismissing you for cause.

[ctrl-j]

> The same way "fired" became "laid off."

Fired and laid-off are not synonyms. Fired and terminated are synonymous. However, laid off generally means the position is not continuing.

That being said, "voluntary separation" just means they are anticipating a large layoff and are attempting to reduce the overhead of determining who to let go.

[reaperducer]

Fired and laid-off are not synonyms

That's my point. But they're used interchangeably now by the PR departments of big companies so that getting rid of people doesn't seem so bad.

[pc86]

Fired means you were terminated, and can be for cause or for no reason. Laid off means the position was terminated and implicitly means your performance was not a factor. They don't mean the same thing and they're not used interchangeably.

[JackFr]

>> They aren't laying off people, it was a voluntary separation

> It's just another layer of corporate double-speak.

No, it's really not.

[axaxs]

Fired became 'let go'. Layoffs became 'reduction in force'. In my experience, I've never seen 'fired' and 'laid off', or their counterparts, used interchangeably.