"We are changing the shape of Shopify significantly today to pay unshared attention to our mission."
What a way to lead, and what an absolutely grotesque euphemism (not to mention a barbaricly tortuous use of English). Why do companies write like this? It's just awful.
I'm only half-joking when I suggest that if they'd taken this text and asked GPT-4 to rewrite it in a compassionate tone they'd have got a better result. (I say this having used GPT-4 quite regularly in recent weeks, although not for these kinds of purposes. It's quite impressive, along many axes, and I'm confident would have made a decent fist of this piece.)
EDIT: All right, I have to give some credit here. I've now had chance to read the full release and, whilst I don't love the RPG-esque references, I understand that this is fundamentally a piece of internal comms sent to a group of people who are probably used to discussing things in those terms (Lord, preserve us - not my bag). That aside, I thought a lot of the rest of the release was decent and the severance terms seem good, so I have to give props for that. I've left my first impression unedited because, if nothing else, it's an honest reaction to some quite poorly composed introductory remarks and on that basis certainly not entirely unfair.