"For example, it instructs that when someone quits or gets fired, the event will be referred to as 'graduation.'"
Well, they're certainly laying on the euphemisms here. I mean, maybe it's just me, but that reminds me an awful lot of 1984 esque newspeak and the Ministry of Love. It's all 'lets make the worst possible stuff sound like a good thing'.
I worked at HubSpot in engineering and I never once heard the term "graduation" in reference to a firing. Usually we just got an email saying, "HubSpot and John have decided to go separate ways" or something to that effect. If someone left by their own choice, usually they would send a "this is my last week" email and we would all go for beers on the last day. The term "graduation" was rarely used in either case. I only remember it being used in the context where an executive would say something like, "John did great work for us, he's now going to be a VP at a new startup, we want to think of this as a graduation."
> "HubSpot and John have decided to go separate ways"
That's not much better. It's very rarely mutual. Either John has been fired, or John has found another job - perhaps at a company where no one lights cleaning equipment on fire - and is quitting.
It was used quite a bit in Customer Success. It was used when I was told to leave a few days into my four-weeks' notice.
Eng was in another world, especially after the move where your team wound up in your own, separately keyed area of the building, complete with your own kitchen.
Using euphemisms, particularly with the goal of making bad events seem good, is indeed grating and lame.
I think the intention here is sound, though. There is so much negative baggage around "fired", "laid off", "quit", etc, when these are really not negative events at all. This is where an employee is liberated from a situation that isn't working (quite possibly at a company that isn't doing well, is poorly managed, or in a shrinking industry), and will generally end up working somewhere better, taking the opportunity to travel or start there own business, and grow.
Trying to remove these associations from the process is a worthwhile goal, but it would be rather more honest to just go for something neutral like "no longer with us" than trying to co-opt "graduation", which obviously means something completely different.
> There is so much negative baggage around "fired", "laid off", "quit", etc, when these are really not negative events at all. This is where an employee is liberated from a situation that isn't working (quite possibly at a company that isn't doing well, is poorly managed, or in a shrinking industry), and will generally end up working somewhere better, taking the opportunity to travel or start there own business, and grow.
Yeah, right. Try to tell this to a single mother of two trying to pay the mortgage.
For a lot of people (I'd say most people), being fired is not a pleasant experience.
True. Words are cheap. However, with sufficient severence and a removal of social stigma it might someday be less of a "your life is a failure" situation.
Being fired or laid off isn't a negative event? In what world? This perception blows my mind. Being "let go" can be devastating. Especially for long time employees.
It's also extremely negative for the company. It's as much a failure on the companies part as it is the employees (with exception of course. Misconduct being an obvious one).
That's the thing: I don't think that parting ways with a company is a bad thing anymore. So, if the event stops being bad, why use the word with old emotional baggage to describe it?
It's an interesting question as to whether something has changed to make being laid off not a bad thing any more - perhaps increased flexibility and liquidity in the labor market from, say, internet job ads, has made this much less of a problem than it used to be.
Keep in mind that "laid off" != "losing your primary source of income". A person's primary source of income is, let's say, working as a software developer. If you're laid off, you can still work as a software developer, you just need to spend a little time finding somewhere else to do that. In this way, it's quite different from losing your primary source of income due to, say, ill health.
Even if you don't find somewhere else to work, as get all the time that you were previously selling to your employer back to use as you see fit, so in accounting terms it's a wash, rather than a loss.
Great movie, novel and series. The terms in the movie are either rebirth, the promise of being reborn as a machine raised baby (a belief) or winning renewal when you touch the rainbow unharmed, extra time to your life. Rebirth is an eufemism for being obligatory zapped (or obligatory dying by a pleasurable gas in the novel), can you even win renewal in the deadly carrousel?
http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/22080/what-did-the-...
This isn't that bad. A company will never announce internally whether or not someone got fired or is just quitting (a well-run one, at least), with some exceptions (e.g. the executive level). Companies will just say something to the effect of: someone is moving on from the company. There's nothing wrong with using "graduating" in place of "moving on from the company", "leaving," "moving on to a different opportunity," etc.
I guess, though moving on sounds a bit more neutral than graduating. One sounds like 'they didn't quite fit in and hence they're parting ways' and one sounds like 'they're a bit too good for this place, so now they're off to Google/Apple/some other company with a good reputation'.
Neither is accurate. Everyone knows that saying someone is moving on does not imply "they didn't quite fit in." My point is, companies will try to be polite about announcing that people are leaving, so "graduating" is not that bad of a euphemism.
The flaw in your reasoning is assuming that companies have an obligation (or otherwise should) be completely transparent to employees (to present the complete reality). If you think they should, well, you just about disagree with 99.9% of companies ever (including successful ones).
Having a sibling several years younger and a mother who worked in education for a while, I noticed that the younger generation had graduation ceremonies for just about everything. Considering the startup culture skews younger, perhaps this is an outgrowth?
You're now giving out the image of a bunch of fired employees wearing capes and mortar boards, then throwing them into the air after receiving a pink slip.
Which is quite an amusing image.
But yeah, it could be tied to the average age at the company.
Well, they're certainly laying on the euphemisms here. I mean, maybe it's just me, but that reminds me an awful lot of 1984 esque newspeak and the Ministry of Love. It's all 'lets make the worst possible stuff sound like a good thing'.