At a certain level, firing someone says more about the fire-er than the fire-ee, especially for executives and overpaid salespeople.

The appearance of a sudden desire to embrace, family, fishing, early retirement, etc is usually better for all parties.

While I'm sure this is being used as a "gentler" term for being fired (and I'm sure perception will catch up as it did for terms like "opportunity"), I can think of one case where this is different from being fired. I've seen it happen at a couple of companies where someone high-ranking suddenly "retired" or "resigned" and it was obvious that it was a face-saving way to get them out the door. I could see the word "resignated" being used for these face-saving faux-resignation/retirements.

The NRLB may yet.

Your comment reminded me of the phrase 炒鱿鱼, which means to fire someone. I googled it to find a good explanation. This page[0] says the meaning is from:

to fry a squid --> fried squids curl up --> to roll up the bedclothes and leave --> to be fired

And of course, it can be used passively with 被: 我被炒鱿鱼了

[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%82%92%E9%AD%B7%E9%AD%9A