A company-wide all-hands meeting concluded Friday afternoon with the announcement of a follow-up all-hands meeting scheduled for next Friday afternoon, during which the leadership team intends to revisit “the same items in greater depth” because Friday’s session, despite running ninety-three minutes, “didn’t quite get to the substance.”

The original meeting had been called to address concerns raised at the previous all-hands, which itself had been called to address concerns raised at the all-hands before that. Employees attempting to trace the chain of meetings backward reached, according to one observer, “a point somewhere in early 2024 where the recordings stop, and we have to assume the company existed.”

The agenda for Friday’s gathering included a strategy update, a culture update, a financial update, a tooling update, and a section titled simply “Q&A,” during which executives answered three of the forty-seven submitted questions, all three of which had been pre-submitted by the executives themselves to ensure “we hit the right notes.”

Leadership opened with a slide reading “Where We Are,” followed by a slide reading “Where We’re Going,” followed by a slide reading “How We’ll Get There,” followed by a slide that was the same as the first slide. The Chief Operating Officer described this structure as “a deliberate framework,” adding that “we don’t want to surprise anyone.”

Employees in the chat reportedly attempted to engage with the substance. One asked whether the headcount freeze announced last quarter was still in effect. The presenter said that was “a great question to take offline.” Another asked what “offline” meant in this context. The presenter said that was “a great question to take to your manager.”

The financial update consisted primarily of a single chart, oriented in such a way that no axis was legible. A vice president walked through the chart for eleven minutes, describing it as “directionally encouraging.” When asked which direction, the vice president said that depended on “how we choose to measure progress” and that “the team is aligned on the methodology.”

The culture portion featured testimonials from three employees who had been hand-selected to describe what made the company “special.” All three used the phrase “psychological safety,” after which a chat participant pointed out that the company’s anonymous feedback channel had been disabled the previous week. Leadership noted the comment and said it would be addressed “in the appropriate forum,” widely understood to mean “never.”

As the meeting approached its scheduled end, the Chief Executive said the leadership team had heard the feedback that all-hands meetings were “sometimes a lot,” and announced that going forward, they would be holding a shorter all-hands every Friday, supplemented by a longer all-hands every month, supplemented by quarterly off-sites, supplemented by annual planning summits. “We want to make sure,” the CEO said, “that nobody feels under-informed.”

The closing slide thanked everyone for their time and their commitment, and invited employees to “carry the energy of this conversation back into the work.” Employees, returning to inboxes that had filled during the ninety minutes they had spent watching a chart, reportedly carried the energy directly into a state of horizontal repose at their desks, where the conversation continued in their absence, on a recording, scheduled to be reviewed at the next all-hands.