I get it, it's just kind of a meme at this point after a couple years of these boilerplate RIF announcements. Cmd-F for "difficult decision" + whatever the demonym is and you're basically guaranteed hits.

> non-Automattic employees

non-Automatticians. Yes, they literally used this term in TFA.

> drawing very basic shapes, usually circles, and erasing parts that don't make sense

There's a hilarious Spongebob bit [0] where Squidward is teaching an art class, and he starts off in that exact manner of trying to draw a perfect circle, only to have Spongebob subvert the entire idea. The whole episode is artistic gold IMO.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTlpFEvmxdM

Animals Made from 13 Circles (2016)

The author of TFA has a couple neat posts about squircles that might be of interest, too:

0: https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2018/02/13/squircle-curvature...

1: https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2019/04/02/history-of-the-ter...