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Changes at YC

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Re: Changes at YC

#201

Post by jmyeet »

voz_ wrote: post #46

> Seventeen of our teammates are impacted today. Never allow corporations to speak in passive, weak, blameless terms. Use direct, honest, language, and force them to do the same. "Seventeen of our teammates are impacted today." - > "We laid off 17 employees today" "I was impacted by layoffs" -> "Google laid me off" etc

What you're talking about linguistically is the difference between passive voice ("I was laid off") vs active voice ("YC fired me"). It is a pervasive technique and a form of blame-shifting. Whenver you see a headline, ask yourself which voice is being used and why. It is a key part of media literacy.

Re: Changes at YC

#202

Post by fgimenez »

djyaz1200 wrote: post #17

I'd be very interested in the specifics of how and why late stage investing is so different that the success of YC in early stages doesn't translate.

My pithy observation - Early stage investors are fantastic at extrapolating from minimal data points. Late stage investors are fantastic at extrapolating from many noisy data points. They screw up because the methods for each of their extrapolation functions are entirely different, so much so that they manifest as cultural differences in investment firms.

Re: Changes at YC

#203

Post by SoftTalker »

bloodyplonker22 wrote: post #150
voz_ wrote: post #46

> Seventeen of our teammates are impacted today. Never allow corporations to speak in passive, weak, blameless terms. Use direct, honest, language, and force them to do the same. "Seventeen of our teammates are impacted today." - > "We laid off 17 employees today" "I was impacted by layoffs" -> "Google laid me off" etc

I knew an ex co-worker who grew up in another country whose manager, in a "sync up meeting", told him that he was "impacted" and he didn't need to continue work on his current sprint. He came out of the meeting with a smile, had no idea what this meant, and he showed up the next day.

Did he get to keep his red stapler?

Re: Changes at YC

#204

Post by whitemary »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #134
whitemary wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That’s true. They gave the platitudes as millions starved while Stalin exported food and established the gulags and lay waste to civil society. Yay! The religion bit is really off kilter, unless you think the impermanence of all things is merely a religious idea and not a fundamental aspect of all reality. After all impermanence didn’t apply in Soviet Russia? Oh yeah, it too passed. Guess not.

All modern societies implement brutal exercises in primitive accumulation. Capitalist nations just exported their brutality to the 3rd world. Was that noble of them? I'm not seeing your point. (See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_accumulation_of_ca...)

"Impermanence" is not a religious concept, but the vagaries in these platitudes are. Nobody in a capitalist society can rationalize layoffs. The best we can do is rationalize not thinking about them, which is the purpose actually served by the platitudes. Religion does the same.

An actually scientific perspective would be far more useful and actionable. There is a good book on this topic: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Engels_...

Re: Changes at YC

#205

Post by [deleted] »

lcw wrote: post #123
voz_ wrote: post #46

> Seventeen of our teammates are impacted today. Never allow corporations to speak in passive, weak, blameless terms. Use direct, honest, language, and force them to do the same. "Seventeen of our teammates are impacted today." - > "We laid off 17 employees today" "I was impacted by layoffs" -> "Google laid me off" etc

I think this is just a matter of opinion. When something severe happens it's natural to not use the most harsh term to describe the event. It doesn't seems like something malicious. When describing a death many people will say "they are no longer with us" instead of describing the circumstance of death. When talking about traumatic events we as a society have a natural propensity to not use triggering words. There is…

[deleted]

Re: Changes at YC

#206

Post by herval »

lcw wrote: post #123
voz_ wrote: post #46

> Seventeen of our teammates are impacted today. Never allow corporations to speak in passive, weak, blameless terms. Use direct, honest, language, and force them to do the same. "Seventeen of our teammates are impacted today." - > "We laid off 17 employees today" "I was impacted by layoffs" -> "Google laid me off" etc

I think this is just a matter of opinion. When something severe happens it's natural to not use the most harsh term to describe the event. It doesn't seems like something malicious. When describing a death many people will say "they are no longer with us" instead of describing the circumstance of death. When talking about traumatic events we as a society have a natural propensity to not use triggering words. There is…

When someone is accidental, blameless or unexpected, like someone suddenly dying, it's entirely natural to use something like "passed away". Not the case when someone is directly responsible - "X was murdered by Y" is quite common, I believe?

Re: Changes at YC

#207

Post by maximinus_thrax »

lcw wrote: post #123
voz_ wrote: post #46

> Seventeen of our teammates are impacted today. Never allow corporations to speak in passive, weak, blameless terms. Use direct, honest, language, and force them to do the same. "Seventeen of our teammates are impacted today." - > "We laid off 17 employees today" "I was impacted by layoffs" -> "Google laid me off" etc

I think this is just a matter of opinion. When something severe happens it's natural to not use the most harsh term to describe the event. It doesn't seems like something malicious. When describing a death many people will say "they are no longer with us" instead of describing the circumstance of death. When talking about traumatic events we as a society have a natural propensity to not use triggering words. There is…

Please don't compare death with layoffs. One if an inevitable but tragic part of life the other is an inevitable but tragic part of keeping the shareholders happy.

Re: Changes at YC

#208

Post by hk__2 »

zamnos wrote: post #170
xavdid wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some newspapers are really dreadful about this with regards to people killed/injured by cops. A well-known example from the NYT: > A reporter was hit by a pepper ball on live television by an officer who appeared to be aiming at her https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2020/new-york-times-twe...

There was one circulating where the newspaper headline stated that "A man with no active warrants was shot by police." Which is just about the most nefarious way to say "an innocent man was shot by police".

Isn’t it different? IANAL but having an active warrant issued for you doesn’t really have anything to do with you being guilty or innocent. It just means the police must conduct you to the juge, either because you’re a suspect or (in some countries) a witness.

Edit: I guess this is this story: https://www.actionnews5.com/story/35967817/officers-kill-man...

Re: Changes at YC

#209

Post by uptownfunk »

djyaz1200 wrote: post #17

I'd be very interested in the specifics of how and why late stage investing is so different that the success of YC in early stages doesn't translate.

More upside on the table if you get in early. It’s probably just not an efficient use of their time since the returns from gettin in early are so outsized.

Re: Changes at YC

#210

Post by tabbott »

martin_a wrote: post #107

Title should be "YC fires 17 people". Can someone change that?

I don't think that'd be accurate - YC is exiting the business of late-stage investing, and that's the main news. It sounds like they had 17 people who were working on that part of the company who they laid off as part of this transition, but given the major role that YC Continuity played, it's significant news that they're no longer doing that.
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