Dead-Eye Efficiency

Good morning team.

You're not all here.

Some of you got the email. Some of you discovered your badge didn't beep. Some of you are still staring at an HR calendar invite with a subject line that explains nothing and already decides everything.

Let me begin by saying I take full responsibility.

That sentence has been focus-grouped. Polished. Templated. It means nothing and everything. I take full responsibility for decisions made by people beneath me on metrics I didn't invent to achieve outcomes I privately celebrated. I take full responsibility the way a weatherman takes responsibility for a hurricane.

Because here's the thing.

It's not personal.

It's efficiency.

And efficiency, my dear employees. I'm sorry. Former employees. Efficiency is sacred.

The Sacred Ritual

Let's be clear. This wasn't about the economy. It wasn't about performance. It wasn't even about automation.

It was about narrative.

No story works better than we are becoming leaner, nimbler, more focused and more efficient when you need to explain why someone's entire career evaporated between a cappuccino and their next sprint planning.

Efficiency works like a drug nobody admits they're addicted to. Administered at scale, it cures bloat, trims fat and conveniently amputates the inconveniently human. There is no team that cannot be made more efficient by removing its most competent member and distributing their workload like ashes over Teams Slack.

The spreadsheet understands this.

The spreadsheet does not blink.

The spreadsheet does not hesitate.

The spreadsheet has eyes.

It just keeps counting while people vanish.

The Chosen and the Discarded

Of course we're still hiring.

Just not you. Or your manager. Or the person who onboarded half the company during the pandemic while living in a Montana cabin with a satellite dish strapped to a pine tree.

No. We're hiring the other kind of people.

The ones who whisper prompts to AI tools like they're stroking a digital cat. The ones who renamed using ChatGPT into prompt engineering and pinned it to their LinkedIn like a campaign medal. The ones who don't write code anymore. They ask for a more efficient version of someone else's job.

We're not downsizing.

We're reallocating.

Not people. Capital.

Capital stays. People are fungible. Capital is protected. People get memos.

Here's Your New Workload

To the survivors, congratulations.

You're still in the game.

That means:

• Your team is now half its size.
• Your deliverables are unchanged.
• Your OKRs have been doubled updated.
• Your colleagues were told it wasn't performance-based but your continued employment absolutely is.

The good news? We've integrated new productivity tools.

Dashboards now track your commits, your ticket velocity, your response latency and your average meeting nod rate. It's never been easier to monitor performance. And by monitor we mean observe with quiet suspicion.

Fear is cheaper than loyalty.

It doesn't need bonuses.

It doesn't need vision.

It works overtime for free.

The Office Is Back and So Is Obedience

Let's talk about Return to Office.

Our favorite euphemism for corporate attrition.

We miss your energy. Your synergy. Your spontaneous hallway innovation. We miss being able to count how many bodies are present. Mostly we miss having a way to make people quit without paying severance.

So we're bringing back the commute.

Not for productivity.

Not for collaboration.

For discipline.

If you moved to Idaho we understand. The lake is lovely. But your badge doesn't scan in Boise. And you'll need to be in-office three days a week Tuesday through Thursday because even efficiency respects the fantasy of a long weekend.

Don't like it?

That's your right.

Resignation is voluntary.

Unemployment is optional.

That is the magic of our culture.

The Cleanest Alibi Ever Built

Ah yes, AI.

The future. The frontier. The billion-dollar justification for thousand-person cuts.

We say AI will augment your work. Enhance creativity. Support decisions. Meanwhile it's quietly learning your syntax, your habits and your shortcuts. It doesn't need to replace you yet.

It only needs to promise and you already know how this ends.

Promise creates inevitability.

Inevitability dissolves guilt.

AI doesn't get tired.

Doesn't take PTO.

Doesn't unionize.

Doesn't ask what happened to the coworker who vanished last week.

The spreadsheet loves that.

Profitability as Permission to Purge

Some of you will say this. But we were profitable.

Yes.

That's why we could afford to fire you.

We didn't make billions to feel generous. We made billions so payroll could become a rounding error. Every human cut is a signal flare to Wall Street that says we're serious now.

Investors don't want explanations.

They want alignment.

They want bloodless sacrifice.

We give them plasma.

Your labor was essential until it wasn't. Now it's a metric we reengineered. But hey. The snack wall is still stocked.

Survivors' Guilt Is the New Culture

You feel it already.

The Slack channel is quieter.

The meetings feel haunted.

Every calendar invite looks like a goodbye.

You stop asking questions. You stop naming absences. Silence begins to feel like safety.

We call this resilience.

You call it burnout.

Let's compromise. Call it culture.

We're In This Together (Internal Use Only)

Here's the truth. Since we are being transparent.

This was never about building the future with you.

It was about building a narrative of the future that justified discarding you.

We hired too many during chaos and called it growth. Then the market sobered up and we needed a scapegoat. Enter AI. Sleek. Abstract. Unaccountable. It doesn't sue. It doesn't cry. It doesn't need healthcare.

We said the machines were coming.

We just didn't say who they were coming for.

Romance in the Rubble

But something survives.

You remember the Slack jokes. The cursed Jira tickets. The launch that broke at midnight and the way you stayed up fixing it together. Shipping something imperfect and feeling briefly that it mattered. That you mattered.

That residue doesn't vanish.

You carry it to the next job. Or the unemployment line. Or a startup that hasn't learned this ritual yet.

Because for all our devotion to efficiency something human still slips through the cracks. An inside joke. A refusal to be impressed. A resignation letter written like a Shakespearean sonnet.

The machines don't notice.

Not yet.

Final Memo From Mount Olympus

So here we are.

We will continue to invest in AI.

We will continue to pursue efficiencies.

We will continue to hire where it matters.

We will continue to fire where it doesn't.

You are not part of the future.

But you were part of the journey.

Thank you for your service.

Please collect your dignity at the front desk.

It's in a recyclable envelope.

Labeled resource no longer needed.

Stamped streamlined.

And no.

We don't validate parking.

Goodbye.