Oh Christ no, I'm writing about Discord again.
I'm currently in the midst of listening to CEO of Discord Jason Citron's statements to congress in late January, regarding child safety on their, and other, tech platforms.
Now, I've made my thoughts on Discord's management fairly explicit in the past, which was why the CEO's opening statements surprised me- I was half expecting AI-generated sounding slop ala Mark Zuckerberg's marketing-ass opener.
But, Jason talks like a human. A nervous one, including tripping over his words, and saying one thing when he clearly means something else:
We do, uh, have- 15% of our company is focused on trust and safety, which- this is one of our top issues- that's more people than we have working on marketing, promoting the company, so we take these issues very seriously.
- Jason Citron, CEO of Discord, to US Congress, January 31st 2024
Presumably he meant 15% of the company's staff, otherwise "15% of the company is focused on safety" sounds... not great! Equivocating company funding splits or available resources with human staff wouldn't hold up to scrutiny- congress isn't the time to be vague.
I get what Jason meant, though; assuming, of course, he was taking into account the recent layoffs.
January 11th, a couple weeks before Jason's Big Day, Discord announced they were sacking 17% of their staff- 170 people in "various departments", according to The Verge. 170 people is 17% of 1000, so that leaves 830 people left.
Thus, assuming these numbers are accurate, that'd put around 125 people in charge of trust and safety at Discord. Neat!
Now, I'll get back to the congressional hearing eventually, but in fact-checking those numbers I had the misfortune of reading the memo Jason Citron circulated to Discord staff regarding layoffs, as obtained by The Verge. I've heard what Jason sounds like under stress, so let's read what he puts out with time to cook up a statement.
The Almost Memo
Hi @everyone,
I want to follow up on what we just covered at our all-company meeting and share some context.
Today we are making the unfortunate and difficult decision to reduce the size of Discord's workforce by 17%. This means we're saying goodbye to 170 of our talented colleagues.
Love that it's "I" when you're offering a kindness, "we" when it's a difficult decision, and turns "our" to create an inferred them of 170 people by the end of the paragraph.
This is a decision we did not take lightly, but it is one that we have conviction in to better serve our users, our business and our mission over the long term.
Okay, so when 'taking' this decision, it was necessary to sack 17% of staff- in this they have conviction. They are so convicted right now, lemme tell ya, they oughta call Jason a conviction-man!
Where we are and how we got here
Our company has changed and grown significantly over the past few years. We should all be really proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish together to serve the millions of people who turn to Discord every day to spend time with their friends.
Who is 'we?' By saying 'we should all be proud', it implies you're including the reading employees, but 17% of those readers aren't included in that. And the same 'we' making decisions for 'our' company certainly doesn't include laborers whose careers are more disposable than leaderships', who get no say in 'their' company's layoffs.
'We' cannot be both the laborer and the employer without acknowledging the clear power-divide, yet this memo treats those two disparate groups as interchangeable. That, somehow, those laid off stop being 'we' the very moment the decision-makers at Discord click 'Terminate'.
At the same time, we have to face some hard truths. We grew quickly and expanded our workforce even faster, increasing by 5x since 2020. As a result, we took on more projects and became less efficient in how we operated.
The layers of deniability being deployed here are both blatant and cross-contaminating. More projects being taken on are not a "result" of increasing your workforce by 5-fold, there's no predetermination here.
Having more employees does not result in taking on more work, the latter are decisions informed by the former which conclude eventually to 'becoming less efficient' only as a result of bad ideas. Those are managerial decisions.
In this framing, Jason has assigned blame not to the impossible asks of his employees, but rather on having more employees at all. He's blaming the employees for being inefficient while framing this as some inevitable consequence of their hiring. Who made the decision to hire that many new people? Who told them to do work doomed to fail?
'We' includes you, Jason, no matter how carefully you cherry-pick that framing.
Today, we are increasingly clear on the need to sharpen our focus and improve the way we work together to bring more agility to our organization.
Our agility-bringing focus must be sharpened, guys. We are much clearer on this than we used to be! How else will our organization become agile?! You may, reasonably, conclude the above paragraph to be meaningless fluff meant to soften the blow to fired employees.
However, the memo then describes that buzzword bubble as being what ultimately led to the layoffs?
This is what largely drove the decision to reduce the size of our workforce.
What is "this"?! 'Needing to improve' is buried so far in corporate metaphor that there's no actual policy proposed, yet Jason acts as though the logic speaks for itself. He's just deciding that to "improve" means layoffs.
While difficult, I am confident this will put us in the best position to continue building a strong and profitable business that delivers amazing products for our users and supports our mission for years to come.
And now it's I again, as soon as you're done writing about decisions you were party to. As if to step away and say 'well, the people have spoken: we must fire the people'.
Jason picks and chooses when 'he' is 'we' as is convenient for, I can only assume, some semblance of an ego fragile.
What happens next
I’m sure all of you are anxious to know what this means for each of you.
Yeah yeah, since your fucking job is safe, Jason. Christ alive and dead.
- By 10:30 a.m. PT, everyone will receive an email. In your email, you will learn whether or not your employment has been impacted by this reduction-in-force.
- Leadership will hold a meeting with departing team members at 11:00 a.m. PT to discuss next steps
- For all remaining employees, we will come back together this afternoon at 1:00 p.m. PT to talk about what’s next
This memo can safely be from Jason's perspective now, regardless if he wrote or generated it, once the bad news is broken. As that shield of 'we' would instead become a sorry attempt at solidarity.
'In your email you' will learn, not our e-mails. Since the 'we' that makes decisions was always safe.
How we're taking care of our colleagues
It is incredibly important to me that we support departing team members through this difficult time and provide them with a sizable runway as they transition into future employment.
👏In these 😔 trying times, consider 🤔: how sizable is your runway? ✈️ Your team members will be departing soon 💺, so measure this before you reach your ⏰ future employment. 💯
To that end, we are offering them:
- Five months of salary (plus an additional week for every full year at Discord)
- Five months of benefit continuation
- Three months of outplacement services
- Equity vesting of awards scheduled to vest on Feb. 1, 2024
- Continued access to Modern Health through the end of 2024, and more
All of that and more can be yours for the taking, but more importantly the leaving.
Don't mistake my brattiness as ignorance of any compassion; these are nice things to offer your staff. Before kicking their asses out the door.
Though that's a bit like saying "I hope the car that ran me over has insurance!"
I’ll end by sharing deep appreciation and gratitude for those leaving us.
'LET ME START BY SAYING HOW GLAD I AM YOU'RE ALL LEAVING,'
Guy's using 'leaving us' in the same way one insists they didn't break up with you, you broke up with them. You're leaving us!
Discord is better because of your contributions and the passion you brought to delivering for our users, our company, and each other. Thank you for everything.
Wait... what?
"...and the passion you brought to delivering for our users, our company, and each other."
To delivering... what? Just to delivering? The idea of presenting a product, no matter what it is? I mean... you aren't wrong; the modern tech sector is all about conceptual delivery rather than actual product, but isn't that telling on yourselves?
Either Jason('s chatbot) forgot a word here, or he really does mean "passion" for, uh, 'delivering for each other' whatever that means. Like... in the giving-birth sense or what? These words could work, but not in this order!
Reads almost like an AI struggling to understand nuance and tone.
It’s incredibly difficult to say goodbye to respected peers, many of whom have become friends. I’m hopeful that working on and with our product has reinforced that these bonds can be sustained and even strengthened beyond the “walls” of any one place.
Tone shift! Now Jason's writing like he's pulled a coup on his army and sent his former squadmates to political prison: 'You may not like it, peer- friend, but our bonds can be... strengthened beyond the, ah, 'walls' of this place, ahahah...'
Take care of yourselves and let’s look out for each other through this particularly challenging time.
Jason
Taking care of 'yourselves' and looking out for 'each other' creates a separation, of others who were hurt, but Jason can't help inserting himself in the struggle one last time. Cheeky little 'let's'.
You are the challenging time, Jason. They are looking out for each other because of you and your ilk in leadership, making terrible decisions in the hopes Discord would have been bought out by Google or Meta by this point.
But it hasn't been. And now you associate yourself with every part of the hell you're in but it's creation. Wake up, asshole: you're one of the devils in charge.