The word "small" in the HN headline ("Microsoft blames outage on small staff [...]"). I am not native English, but the image in my head was of the staffers being physically small. A bit curious how a native speaker reads it?
As a native speaker I find the phrase "small staff" to be quite awkward and I would avoid writing it.
I'll also note that it's totally standard for the theregister.com to have headlines that incorporate puns or colloquial language. In this case the original headlines has "slim staff" which is also awkward but has a different mental image :-)
To this native speaker, the intended meaning was immediately obvious, but I agree, it is awkwardly phrased. Something like "inadequate staffing levels" would be much better.
It's on brand for "the register" whose editorial staff never miss a chance for a good pun or double entendre so the awkward phrasing is likely intentional.
This is a good lesson in clear writing, by the way. Take some documentation you've written and try to misunderstand it. Think about synonyms or think about the words in a different context and see how far you can run away from the original meaning.
For example - "original meaning" here is kind of strange. What if the original documentation is wrong or ambiguous? Then we don't want the original meaning, we want the intended meaning. But I'll leave it in here as an example.
