What else in the post is worth debating? YC made a decision about the value of one of their departments, and HackerNews generally accepts it as given that comp

What else in the post is worth debating? YC made a decision about the value of one of their departments, and HackerNews generally accepts it as given that companies can make these kinds of self-determinations. The reasons for the decision were given. As a result of that decision, 17 people no longer have jobs with YC. All that’s really left to debate is how YC phrases it. “17 teammates were impacted” is weasellier than the average layoff announcement so it gets the criticism. As an aside, there seems to be a general but informal understanding that fired means you did something wrong while laid off means you’re alright but the company no longer employs you. Other terms like “impacted” have to be matched to one of these two cases. Probably a lot of benefit for everyone from formalizing this distinction. The military uses “honorable discharge, other than honorable discharge, dishonorable discharge” https://www.zero8hundred.org/types-of-discharges https://www.zero8hundred.org/types-of-discharges for example.