You can have cutesy names for employees and a culture with mission statements/purpose, etc. but when it comes down to it, if you're doing layoffs no collection of words is going to appease those that are let go and no collection of words is going to appease those left behind. "Teammates" is probably less cutesy than other companies but still evokes some sort of "we're all in this together" vs. straight up employees when in fact they aren't all in it together, at least not the execs.

There was an interview with Jay Leno I saw recently and he was talking about his NBC deal where he was going to be getting $30mil/year but they had to cut staff to do that so he decided to cut his own pay/raise to keep staff. That type of move by someone at the top is rare or never happens with CEOs. I think Nintendo might be the only case I can think of where I heard something like that happening. That type of move evokes an "all in it together" type of team vs. a clear delineation of CEO/executives and employees.

The melodrama is performative because they have to maintain the mask/facade that they are "teammates".