There doesn't appear to be any attempt to distance themselves. He basically said: "We hired too many people. The decision to hire them was ours. It was a mistake. We have to let them go. We are at least going to cover salaries/healthcare for a decent amount of time."
There is probably too much business jargon, but that's how people actually talk in many companies (certainly in Stripe there is overuse of jargon). It's not a deliberate attempt to do anything, it's just the language of the world they are in. The email is to the staff, not to you.
"Let them go" is itself a euphemism, in that if it is taken literally, it presumes "they" _would_ go if "let". The active party making an intentional choice describes their actions in a way that places agency with everyone else.
> The email is to the staff, not to you.
No, it's on the 'newsroom' section of their public website. Though it is _addressed_ to staff (or former staff) it is _for_ a dual audience.
I'm sure Stipe would be happy to have them stay, but, since Stripe will be unable to continue paying them for their time, I would guess they will mostly choose to go.
Yep, it is. Lot's of jargon. But it's the jargon used every day, by everyone up and down an org, in an attempt to be polite. It's not an attempt to use new language in a way as to absolve themselves of responsibility. Give them a break, they probably (rightly) have their egos and lives wrapped up in this business and feel kind of stupid right now. Just because they are successful it doesn't mean they are robots.
It's really not, they just knew it would be leaked and are getting ahead of it. They aren't fools.
This isn't about "jargon" being used to "be polite". "Jargon" is specialized terminology which may not be understood outside of a group or context. "We took an existing encoder-decoder transformer model from huggingface and slapped a token-level classifier head on it" is lot of jargon. By contrast, everyone understands what "let go" means.
The reason for choosing to say "let go" vs "terminated" isn't to "be polite". More broadly, in this and similar announcements, we see framing, of active vs passive parties, to spin responsibility, agency and involvement. The tone of the whole thing is "because of the broader economic environment, this business outcome was so inevitable and our hands were so forced we will barely acknowledge that it was a decision." And as a stark contrast, they describe all of the things they're giving "impacted" former employees in the active voice: "We'll pay", "We'll accelerate", "We'll cover", "We'll be supporting" etc.
I think they actually seem to be doing a pretty good job supporting the staff they terminated. I just think if they actually want to take responsibility for their actions, both bad and good, they should talk in a way that acknowledges when they're the principal actors.
Analyzing the semantics of a phrase and then stating it implies "person A is saying/doing X", when right there person A is explicitly saying/doing Not X, is nonsensical.
My favorite color is blue. I like coffee => "his favorite color is brown!".
You're quoting from a section of the text where they are explicit in their responsibility to disprove that they use distancing language in a different section of the text.
There is probably too much business jargon, but that's how people actually talk in many companies (certainly in Stripe there is overuse of jargon). It's not a deliberate attempt to do anything, it's just the language of the world they are in. The email is to the staff, not to you.