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Changes at YC

ycombinator.com

604 pointstodsacerdoti524 comments

Wow. First time I've seen a layoff post that starts with boasting success. Summary: "6% of the companies we invest in are worth a billion dollars. We're laying of 20% of our staff. We appreciate their efforts. No comment on how we're taking care of those laid off or remaining staff"

They can't even bring themselves to say the words 'laying off', 'redundancies' or even the milder 'letting go'. The staff are merely 'impacted' by this change in focus!

Execs just feel like they need to retreat to the safety of euphemisms in these kind of announcements, after first boasting about how well the company is doing, of course.

If I would guess, this kind of wording reflects a view which is quite common in Silicon Valley companies: an employee is an (human) asset for the company to utilize. Once the skill of the employee is no longer needed, they can be dispose of. If I may guess it further, this view might be shared across many high-paying industries.

Tech companies in China had similar mass layoffs in the past few years, which prompted many highly skilled tech workers to seek formal opportunities in state controlled companies/entities. Why state controlled companies you might ask, well, because those companies rarely perform this type of layoffs. Once you're one of their formal employees (not employee of contract), you're set safe for life. And even if some "difficult change" has to happen, those state companies will try to compensate the effected workers with other (often equal, sometimes better) opportunities.

I know Chinese state controlled companies are heavily criticized by western view points, but you have to admit, they treats their own people fine.

the U.S. government works the same way. According to one web site, there are over 4 million federal employees. When is the last time any have been laid off? What I find most disturbing is that you think this is somehow a good thing. A government takes money by force and then spends it to "take care of its own", meaning provide cushy jobs to people regardless of their productivity, output, or necessity? This is the very essence of the ever-growing and increasingly corrupt bureaucracy.

I'm reminded of a history of Nigeria I encountered recently: https://youtu.be/E2HJbi-AG54?t=603. The Nigerian government basically ran the economy. If you wanted a good job, you worked for the government. For most people, getting elected was key to living a cushy life, and once won, the office was used to spread favors and wealth to one's friends, family, and tribe, while losing office in a subsequent election meant going back to poverty because private jobs simply didn't exist. This, of course, was a recipe for widespread corruption.

From the video: "Control of the government has been desperately important not only to avoid being oppressed by rival tribes but also because the massive role of government in the economy has made politics the preeminent route to prosperity as well as power whether for individuals, tribes, or regions. As of 1964 governments at the federal, regional, and local levels employed more than half of the wage earners in the country. Government also allocated large sums to the various regions which is also to say to the various tribes. In 1961 for example the northern region containing more than half the population of Nigeria paid only nine percent of the personal income taxes while it received 45 of the money allocated to the various regions by the federal government. At the same time the western region paid 64 percent of all personal income taxes and received less than one-fourth of the funds allocated by the federal government to the various regions. In tribal terms though Yoruba were subsidizing the house of Fulani and other Northern groups."

Whatever you might think about the unfairness of being laid off, I promise you that a growing government bureaucracy is not the solution you think it is! The government is just as self-interested as any corporation, the difference being the government gets to use force to compel you to do what it wants, while at least a corporation has to ask for your business.

> an employee is an (human) asset for the company to utilize. Once the skill of the employee is no longer needed, they can be dispose of.

This is exactly accurate and there’s nothing amoral about that. The flip side is a job is just a way to make money and when it’s no longer wanted or needed, the employee is free to dispose of it

> If I would guess, this kind of wording reflects a view which is quite common in Silicon Valley companies

Remove the words "Silicon Valley" and I agree with you.

Changes happened somewhere as a result of something happening and, presumably, someone somewhere was impacted in some sense.

This is a good playbook. When we have to sell the house and move to a trailer, i will be using it. "There will be some exciting changes around here."

You could also use the cliché favoured by startups, 'Our incredible journey', normally used in a blogpost when they fold or get bought out.

Its called HR because you are a resource.

Well at least they didn't use the word 'inconvenienced'.

SUNSET the employees.

It seems like it is taboo to even discuss the collapse of the so-called "tech" industry. The people invested in it appear to police the dialogue online, which is not something I remember before the dot-com collapse. (Of course, in the early 00's we did not have the same level of manipulation through data collection, tracking, re-ordering of results, comment voting systems, etc.). The attempts of the "tech" believers to "argue" with simple questions or the presentation of facts is hilarious.

Too many years of "zero" interest rates has resulted in some warped thinking.

How is this surprising?

The tech industry culture around the Bay Area has been extremely hostile towards debate and diversity of opinion for the last two decades.

I am hoping the SBV failure serves as a hallmark, a final exclamation point for the startup world.

Cuz now it's gone, and all that's left is Big Corporate. Basically NYC but with that California faux niceness. I'll give the New Yorkers this: they'll tell you to eat shit and die on the street to your face, but they don't fake it; they respect others enough to stab you in the front, not in the back.

It’s not just the cheap money, it’s across the board woke language policing. While we should all strive to be more inclusive, it shouldn’t be at the expense of honest and clear communication.

This has nothing to do with "wokeness" or inclusivity, this is known as past exonerative.

It's a way of distancing yourself from the blame. "Mistakes were made" instead of "we made mistakes". Or "a suspect was killed in an officer-involved shooting" instead of "a policeman killed the suspect". "Teammates were impacted" instead of "we laid people off".

It's like saying "shit happens, who knows who's to blame" when we all know who's to blame.

Just a random example, but Delta airline now calls turbulence “rough air” as if that’s more reassuring… I’d rather be spoken to like an adult.

However, calling it a “collapse” is taking it to the other extreme. We’re not going back to the cave age.

It is disingenuous, at best, to equate collapse to "going back to the cave age". If your house's roof collapses you do not end up in a cave. You either pay a small fortune to have it fixed or, if you lack the wealth to do so, sell it at a loss to someone who can.

Tech/IT is too valuable to be ditched altogether, so we are not going back even to the 80s or 90s. But collapse is appropriate for the kind of lean times ahead: companies getting bought on the cheap, investments evaporating, projects shelved, jobs (or even careers) lost.

> Wow. First time I've seen a layoff post that starts with boasting success.

Something similar with IBM recently: "IBM posts biggest annual sales increase in more than a decade, announces 3,900 layoffs" [1]

[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/ibm-posts-biggest-annual-s...

Why do they need "taking care" of? Are they fragile school kids? Desparate single mothers who can't make ends meet?

What is with this "save our babies!" attitude towards people who are

- Well off

- Highly skilled

The idea that you can just throw away an employee is bizzarre to most of the developed world. You have a responsibility to them (usually a legal one); the employee-employer relationship is an unbalanced one in many ways, and relies on that for fairness. If you want people you can get rid of at the drop of a hat you should be hiring contractors and paying the associated premium.

It should not be bizarre. Everybody should adapt and act accordingly, save money and keep your axe sharp. No job is forever, no employer is your friend or family.

Because the risk is supposed to lie in the hands of the investors, the founders, and the people who make the decisions. When the risks taken by the people at the top succeed, they profit, when they fail, they tend to push that onto their employees through layoffs and withholding raises. Then they will turn back around saying that they deserve their lavish lifestyles because they are the ones taking the risks. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

From what I know from an old friend of my dad, helping coworkers who lost their jobs to land somewhere else is a well rooted custom in US.

Said friend told me numerous stories about how he gave positive references or call his friends in other companies for positions for coworkers who were laid off, during his tenure in IBM.

Helping people who lost their jobs because of reasons which they can't control is being a good person, for once, too.

It always astonishes me seeing how ingrained this individualistic capitalistic mindset is on so many. People have been brainwashed.

These are people. This could be you, or your friend, espouse, mother, sister... And just because you can bounce back, it doesn't mean this is okay.

Even if they have money saved and can use that to find a (hopefully) better next job, that's not easy or guaranteed.

It seems that this "criticism" is more like jealousy than anything else. If they were not earning a bit more than others then we can feel bad for them. Otherwise let's pretend it's fine and yell "screw them".

Meanwhile the rich fucks are still getting richer even with the "risk" they take. Not sure how that can even count as risk, given these VCs are all multi-millionaires that can afford to fail multiple times over in the first place.

But it's somehow easier to hate the person that makes a few more bucks than you, than it is to hate the money hoarders that control the lives of so many of us.

Seems to be a weird American tech thing. In the real world, people lose their jobs, do their notice period (if any) and take steps towards securing a new one.

For whatever reason, American tech workers appear to think they should get 5-10x the median income or more, also get stock in the company, also have flexible work/life hours and also be "looked after" (what does this mean? More money?) after they're fired.

They're clearly in a bubble.

Finally some sense-talking. The growing culture of paternalism in the employer-employee relationship is toxic to the foundations of our societal wealth.

Personal responsibility and equal opportunity are how we got to iPhones, toothpaste in every corner store, and a store on every corner.

It is not boasting, it is part of the explanation that YC is good at early stage investing.

They did not say how their late-stage investing turned out, but supposedly not as well, and that's why they won't do it anymore.

Early stage investing is the right mix of low cost and high yield. Most of the their startups are failures and duds but it doesn't matter because they don't cost that much and there are enough that do work out. Later stage investments are still quite risky but now you are losing millions when they fail. So you are more dependent on the handful that don't. Also, late stage investment in Silicon Valley means dumping money in real estate, very expensive executives, engineers, etc. Who then take the money and job hop to the next startup as soon as things start failing.

Now that interest rates are going up, the financial risks have increased and the follow up rounds are drying up a bit (less IPOs, series B, C, etc.). Meaning the cost is higher and exits are becoming a bit more rare and less lucrative. And also, there is less chance of offloading not quite profitable late stage investments to more conservative investors. A lot of these unicorns still fail. They just fail a bit later after early investors cash in. Somebody pays for that. Usually not the early investors.

> it is part of the explanation that YC is good at early stage investing.

no, they are good at giving money to people

investing implies ROI

If they're so successful, how are they then not moving people into new roles in the company's front end investment group?

They have "graduated"... :-/

It’s not even a great boast. Their success is due to the Federal Reserve. Oh, sweet summer child.

Are you suggesting that YC's success is because of the long-term US monetary policy climate?

That's a very incorrect suggestion. It reminds one of how people like to pretend that Elon's money is because his family had an emerald mine. Do you think that a significant percentage of wealth inheritors go on to immigrate across the world and invent electric cars and reusable rockets? Same thing with YC and the investment climate.

In case you are wondering, that is about 20% of the staff.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/13/y-combinator-cuts-nearly-2...

I wonder what the revenue per employee of YC is. 85 employees, with 1/6 companies unicorns (though some of that is paper valuations, but still huge returns).

> "When they do, a shocking percentage of them will go on to make a startup worth a billion dollars (on average 6 out of 100 startups in recent batches)."

That's 6/100 (6%). 1/6 is 16%.

I think that’s 6 out of 100 instead of 1/6

I can think of a few reasons why YC would make this decision without admitting so publicly:

1) Too much negative signaling risk when they don't make follow-on investments

2) Negative returns given the recent downturn

3) The increasing business need to make non-founder-friendly changes in late stage companies (e.g. replacing CEO)

4) Anu/Ali deciding to leave first to start their own fund

I wonder if any of these reasons is a predominant driver.

Oh, come on. This is three days after their favorite bank got shut down. We all know what the proximate cause is.

I think it's clear that the venture world (at least the top of it) had turned itself into an industry on its own. They didn't make money on startup exits anymore, they made it on services. They'd fund startups, get those startups into later rounds by milking less sophisicated VCs[1], push them at their favorite bank, collect fees at each stage, and then take the profits and roll them up into more startus.

Now that the favorite bank is dead, this gravy train is over immediately. And the smart VCs at the top of the heap are the ones to exit the wagon first.

Honestly, the industry has had a toxic feel for a while. But the last 72 hours have made it clear that there was just no soul left.

[1] Yes, this sounds like a pyramid scheme to me too.

That works in internet logic but it's not true. At least, it's not what I've been told inside YC and I don't believe anyone was lying. What it's actually related to is Garry taking over YC and deciding to refocus YC on its original roots. (I specifically asked about that today during an all-hands btw.)

At a minimum, it takes longer than 3 days to make a big change like this. I realize that's not a persuasive argument though, since there is endless supply of explanations one can come up with (what if they knew about SVB beforehand!)

With all respect, those interpretations differ only in spin. "Let's refocus on our roots" and "Oh shit, the gravy train dried up so we can't run our late stage cyclic money printer anymore; at least we still dominate the seed landscape" describe the same actions.

And as for assuming good faith that this was a fait accompli already in progress... I'm sorry, but I can't get past "We're doing this on the first business day following the biggest upset to our industry in a decade and a half. But that's just a coincidence!"

they knew about SVB beforehand.

If you’re going to hint at elaborate kick-back schemes, at least spend the effort to think through how that would work and spell it out.

It doesn't need to be that elaborate. Funding a startup and strongly suggesting they bank at SVB and then YC invests in SVB, telling other VC's to invest in SVB is all the kick back you need. Stock goes up you sell off some or leverage that for loans to invest in more startups. Stock goes down, your loan leverage/assets are down and can't invest any more. I don't know if that's the case here, just saying this example isn't very complicated.

Also its not a coincidence that investors in SVB aren't getting money back from FDIC, only depositors, YC was an investor (and prob a depositor), they lost money and now have to lay people off. I would imagine other VC firms might be in the same scenario.

Later on, will this period of time be thought of as dot com bust 2.0?

> They didn't make money on startup exits anymore

You do realize YC's equity returns from Airbnb & Doordash probably cover their entire history of funding startups?

The discussion is about late-stage investing, though. Obviously yes, the occasional unicorn funds a lot of slop and failed choices in series B rounds. But if that were true, then they wouldn't be laying off a paltry 17 people because of a minor market downturn, would they?

Again, the timing of this makes it abundantly clear that something YC was doing in the years before SVBs failure is instantly impossible now that it's dead.

Out of curiosity, what services do YC provide for additional fees?

strange this is downvoted. Serious denial among the wannabes here. Everyone in the know, knows this is true.

The YC Continuity team did amazing work helping me and many other later stage founders. I’m sad to read this news.

YC is best known for their early stage investing. But Ali, Anu and the team created some excellent programs for later stage companies as well. Shogun benefited from the Series A program, Scaling from A to B program, and the YC Growth program. I wonder what’s happening with all of those initiatives.

Through these programs and the direct support and mentorship from the Continuity team, we learned a ton and significantly scaled our startup.

Wishing all of the affected team all the best.

Thanks Finbarr. The group partners and MD's and I know these are important and valuable programs, and there is a lot more we need to be doing for alumni and the experience after companies do YC.

I don't have more to share now, but know that I really value you and this note.

> 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

"Exonerative tense," "mistakes were made," etc.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/past_exonerative

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistakes_were_made

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/07/14/...

Favorite example has to be Luis Suarez in his apology for very clearly biting a World Cup opponent in front of the world some years ago:

"The truth is that my colleague Giorgio Chiellini suffered the physical result of a bite"

Submitted for inclusion: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/an-interactive-guide-to-...

I've never heard this as an actual term, thank you for sharing.

Calling it "exonerative" is like turning passive voice up to 11.

According to some people.

This comment comes across as a silly nitpick given the sober content of the post, but I think it is completely fair given Paul Graham's many writings and tweets on the virtues of writing clearly and his hatred of what I call corporatese.

I don’t think it comes across as a silly nitpick, and I’ve read very little PG has written. It’s useful to identify how phrasing and framing of communication can be used to manipulate how that communication is received, regardless of who is communicating. And I think the same observation would have been made if this were a post about any other organization.

It is laudable that this observation was very close to the top when I clicked to see the comments. I’d be surprised if this critique gets buried by HN moderation, and cautiously hopeful it won’t get buried by folks biased to defend YC &co.

But the exact same language from any other source would be examined exactly the same way, and for very good reason.

Not sure how involved pg was with this post as its stated author Garry Tan

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 nothing intrinsically wrong with that unless it's hiding information. As described above no one is hiding anything because we all understand what happened.

Death is inevitable, unexpected, unplanned, usually caused by things beyond human control. Layoffs are a planned thing explicitly done by one human to another in order to increase corporate profits.

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?

Perhaps you could argue over the use of "impacted", but the use of passive voice is pretty objective. "We impacted 17 roles today" or perhaps "I impacted 17 roles today" is, well, it's still pretty bad, but at least it takes some responsibility.

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.

>"It doesn't seems like something malicious."

No it seems like weaselicious to me.

“They are no longer with us” is widely understood and very unlikely to be ambiguous. If you said “they were impacted” I would lodge the same complaint.

> When describing a death many people will say "they are no longer with us"

Fussell describes (in Class) this kind of talking-around situations as a "low" marker (in a class-signaling sense). The "high" version is to just plainly state "X died" or "X is dead". Similar for describing things like pregnancy.

Not sure what significance this has for corporate communication, and I'm also not sure how true it is (though all the things he described that I do know about were remarkably accurate) but, well, there's that I guess. Regardless, I'm not sure that kind of avoidant language is natural (though possibly it is, and it has to be trained out to get the more-direct "high" version—but I suspect either preference is mainly a socialization thing).

"John is no longer with us" is a completely reasonable thing to say, unless it's coming from the person who shot John.

When there's a PR person involved, truth goes away, double-speak comes in. Even in the case of YC, which in general is way better than most other organizations.

There's nothing diplomatic about it. It enrages me far more than the truth.

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?

Damn that sucks dude probably thought he was being praised or something.

Does this accomplish anything other than increasing resentment?

Begs the question, what do you think companies gain by using such passive language?

Yes. It makes one admit to a mistake. Intellectual honesty. “We failed” instead of “we are a victim of circumstances”.

Edit: however, a pr release with language other than what’s written on the linked page can be a liability.

It's precise, and language should be precise: http://www.butte.edu/departments/cas/tipsheets/style_purpose....

You are absolutely right. This is the only correct wording.

Never mind "I was impacted by layoffs", I often see "my position was impacted by layoffs"

To be fair, that's usually accurate - unlike someone getting fired because of their own performance, layoffs are usually untargeted, and include people that were great at their jobs.

And let's face it, getting fired is a huge stigma, so it's totally understandable that someone would phrase it like that, as the victim of the situation

In many places, without at will employment, you can't lay an individual off, but actually have to make the position redundant.

I was impacted by layoffs recently. As in, my department was good, but for how long? Should I start looking for another job?

Passive voice afflicts many people's writing, not just corporations. Yes, it's a bad practice, but I don't feel it's egregious in this case.

That is a reasonable argument if one assumes that this is an unconscious choice, however, passive voice has become the standard with these types of press releases. It is a conscious, intentional choice.

Passive voice is a tool. It’s perfectly valid and grammatical. The problem is the abuse of it to misrepresent one’s agency or responsibility, but there’s nothing wrong with the sentence, “I was hit by a car on the way to work.”

The issue with corporate passive is that business language is not only ugly but serves evil purposes. In person, it exists to slow down bad news so you can read and manipulate people (“string betting”) and, on paper, its raison d’etre is to project authority to which one has no actual right.

> Never allow corporations to speak in passive, weak, blameless terms.

And yet, when they don't they tend to be excoriated for being harsh and cruel.

So whaddya do?

Just read it in a dental sense: seventeen of our molars were impacted today, and had to be extracted.

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.

Laid off is itself a less harsh version of fired.

They're not quite the same, those two terms have taken on different meanings. "Fired" has come to mean "for cause", and "laid off" has come to mean "not for cause".

In the US, “laid off” has a pretty substantially different meaning than “fired”.

“Laid off” usually means that the company shut down a group of roles, and the individuals happened to be in those roles and so lost their jobs.

“Fired” usually means that the individual was intentionally let go because of behavior / competence / etc. of the individual, not the group.

Fired -> Let go -> Laid off -> Impacted

I'll be curious to see what comes next.

Depends on the circumstances. I associate “fired” with a negative reason (e.g. performance, theft, harassment). “Laid-off” doesn’t carry the same connotation.

fired usually means, with cause. laid off is for when a lot of people are getting cut at the same time because upper management asked to do big cuts

There’s usually a significant difference for the individual where laid off means you get unemployment while fired (implies cause) does not.

They're related, I suppose. But there's a real, meaningful difference between the two.

We hereby lay their employment with us to rest.

I, too, prefer that companies spoke in direct, plain terms, without PR shenanigans.

Does anyone know why do they do this, though? Is it to de-risk potential lawsuits or do they believe people prefer that way ("sounds professional")?

Assuming legal signed off on the basic message, I'm guessing it's out of a sense of 'politeness' in a delicate situation. Consider how someone might publicly communicate a relationship breakdown with language like "we're parting ways" or "we have made the decision to end our marriage." Sometimes you get plain, direct language but people might infer acrimony from it.

Cowardice

You fired someone? You're to blame. Someone was impacted? Sounds more like an act of nature. Nobody is to blame!

My sense is that in the particular case of layoffs, companies are hesitant to actually use the phrase "laid off" because it triggers a sense of implicit shame in those affected. There is definitely an unspoken assumption that folks who get laid off are underperformers, and the extent to which we talk about how untrue that is (see: LinkedIn) shows how pervasive the assumption is.

A combination of cargo culting/"sounds professional", and just wanting to make yourself/company look less bad.

Maybe they weren’t fired? The way the post was worded has me wondering if they’ll be retrained and have their roles changed to fit YC’s new needs.

Exactly the point - passive, weak, blameless terms makes it nebulous on what has happened. Just say you want you need to say - you're the captain of the ship.

Oh c'mon, there's no way this is it. If they hadn't been laid off there wouldn't be an external announcement. You don't post something like this merely to announce that you're retraining some employees.

They were 100% laid off. The wording is intentional and standard for the industry.

You aren't "impacted" by changing roles or retraining, you're impacted by losing your job.

"we want to acknowledge and express our appreciation for their substantial contributions" translates to "these people will no longer be contributing as they are laid off effective immediately".

They wouldn't announce it if that were the case. I am curious whether it would have been announced at all without all the heightened economic fear.

Perhaps they meant seventeen of their teammates have impacted colons? It's an odd thing to share, yes, but these are trying times.

This immediately stood out to me as well! It didn't come across as tactful, just bizarre

There isn't even a need for a public blog post about this change in business strategy. This reads fine as an internal email, but I've never worked at a company that publicly referenced their layoffs.

YC is not special. It’s a business and they’ll use weasel words like the rest of them.

I actually believe he put out a 10/10 example of how this should be done. We all know what he meant, he was concise and then reminded you of the mission and that this is all about the mission.

Maybe you can grant him 9/10, but you always have to deduct some points for hiding behind euphemisms.

While those examples do use the passive voice, the passive is not the real problem. "These events impacted seventeen of our teammates" is the active voice, and it is no more forthright. "Mistakes were made by Bob, Sean, and Susan, who have been fired" is (if accurate) quite clear about assigning blame while using the passive. It's true that some people overuse the passive, and for those people noticing and considering whether to rephrase can produce better writing, but insisting on forgoing the passive entirely probably won't. If we want to prevent evasive writing, we should look for and call out evasive writing, whatever voice is used.

To me it’s the phrase “these events” like it’s something beyond their control. Replacing that with “our decision” would be taking more ownership.

Edit: re-reading TFA, they don’t attribute the layoffs to “these events” so I’ll amend this as being a response directly to the parent comment.

Why is it the corporation's fault though? We live in a society and governance structure which encourages corporations to consider revenue over everything else. Why would they act differently? What should Google do? Sorry I understand the human cost of layoffs. But it is a reflection of what this society values. If you want corporations to consider the human cost, you need to make it feature in their financials. Or the government should offer better protection to unemployed people.

> Unfortunately, this means we will no longer need some of the roles on the late stage investing team. Seventeen of our teammates are impacted today.

I hate this passive voice. It implies there was nothing that could be done, that this was just a force of nature. That it wasn't an active choice by YC, but rather just some eventuality.

Most of us understand the necessity of hard decisions. Own the outcomes. It's ok to say, "We fired 17 people, because their roles were no longer needed by us".

If you think that looks too bad, then don't do the thing -- find other opportunities for the people in the company.

I find the euphemistic use of “impacted” to be more irritating than the passive voice.

“Seventeen of our teammates were laid off today” still suffers from the passive voice, but is much more up-front.

(Plus, presumably many other teammates will be impacted to one degree or another by the departure of these 17.)

I like both the passive voice and the euphemism.

When I'm looking for my next thing to do, I don't really want a blog post out there that says you fired me.

I get that ambiguous, passive language may allow the CEO or whatever to view themselves in their own choice of lighting, and there's a desire to see them much more uncomfortable because of just how unfortunate the reality of losing your job is for the people on the other side.

But it also allows "those impacted" to tell their perspective.

I cringed at the word choice, too. Teeth get impacted. Workers get laid off or fired, not "impacted".

From my experience these things are an after thought, the people writing this stuff are disconnected from the people making the actual decisions and I guess the typical audience that reads it. The people who do the marketing, HR, or "run socials" tend to be from the demographic that over values safe corporate speak. CEOs occasionally write these but usually it's some pre-written stuff that gets signed off on.

We all review these like a ton of thought went into some blog post, and maybe it should, but often it's just a lower end employee who is asked to translate things into an announcement when they played zero role in the hiring/firing part.

Considering how much these posts always bother people [1] maybe higher ups should care more about the blog posts too.

[1] At least a few in every HN thread, whether most people actually care/read it might be different.

On ycombinator they tend to use the author "Y Combinator" if it's just a general announcement coming from the company that is likely written by HR or marketing. Garry Tan, CEO, wrote this particular announcement. i.e author https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/author/garry versus https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/author/yc

> The people who do the marketing, HR, or "run socials" tend to be from the demographic that over values safe corporate speak

I don't think their behavior comes from demographics, but from the incentive structure in these positions.

Press releases are more often defensive than offensive, so the staff who write these face far more risk than reward. This incentivizes them to avert risk and play safe.

I think it's time to admit that there's no way they could write announcements like this that will please absolutely everybody. It just can't be done.

On the other hand, that doesn't mean companies will stop doing layoffs either, sometimes it will certainly happen.

I'm at least happy when I see an announcement that spares us the theatrics and just says what it needs to say.

> If you think that looks too bad, then don't do the thing -- find other opportunities for the people in the company.

The needs of a business change. Sometimes roles are eliminated and other times roles are added. This is normal and healthy process of every business. Can we get away from infantizing the individuals affected like they're some children whose family disowned them? It's unfortunate and you can certainly empathize with those that no longer have a role in the firm, but it's a business, not a family.

I think they are owning the outcomes. Saying "we fired 17 people" would be more disrespectful and not accurate. If I was let go due to a strategic business decision or through the natural course of the industry I wouldn't want my former employer suggesting they fired me.

"As a result of this, we eliminated the roles of 17 people." is also fine, shows more ownership, and is therefore better (IMO) than "Seventeen of our teammates are impacted today."

The way they phrased it is entirely standard in the industry, so it isn't exactly a mark of shame to conform with that (IMO poor) standard. (At least they avoided using an MLK quote.)

Not to mention that the title of the post ("Changes at YC") is a euphemism for "Layoffs at YC".

> I hate this passive voice.

To be pedantically clear, the first sentence here is not passive! Both clauses there have an explicit subject (‘this’ and ‘we’ respectively) and neither verb (‘means’ and ‘need’) is passivised. I like Geoffrey K. Pullum’s article on what is and isn’t passive: http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/passive_loathing.html

(Not that this means the announcement isn’t problematic, mind you. It still feels like it’s trying to avoid focussing on something. And yes, the second sentence does this by means of the passive voice. I just get annoyed when people misidentify it, as they seem to do regularly.)

The parent cited a sentence in the passive voice; why not just leave it be? Why 'pedantically' correct things that aren't wrong?

Impacted, while passive, seems like a fairly good metaphor for being fired because it calls to mind being hit and possibly crushed to death, as in

"The bicyclists were impacted by the truck."

A lot of the tradition of passive voice comes from lawyers because you can’t always say somebody was fired or transferred or laid off. There can be different standards of local employment law for different employees. Passive voice can be the least risky of defamation or expressing favoritism to those who didn’t get cut.

That said, it’s abhorrent to see YC cling to tradition here, especially in light of the industry-wide layoffs as well as just how insanely rich YC is versus the headcount at question here. This is absolutely a place to question tradition and seek progress.

And also yeah maybe even own the consequences.

I don’t want to pick on your post specifically, but I find this legislating and nitpicking over the exact wording of layoff announcements — that follows every single one of them — to be pretty pointless

>> we will no longer need some of the roles on the late stage investing team

> I hate this passive voice.

It's active voice, no? How is it different than we fired, except that firing sounds more tied employee performance, no longer needed more seems like employer fault.

"Seventeen of our teammates are impacted today." vs something like "We decided to fire 17 teammates due to this."

> It's active voice, no?

Yes, it is — at least in the first sentence.

> How is it different than we fired, except that firing sounds more tied employee performance, no longer needed more seems like employer fault.

I think this is GP’s issue with the phrasing here. Passive or not, it sounds like it’s deflecting focus away from something — as they said, ‘It implies there was nothing that could be done, that this was just a force of nature’.

> If you think that looks too bad, then don't do the thing

lol what?

No serisouly: lol what?

"Don't do the right thing if it looks bad" is a loser strategy.

You shouldn't do X if you don't have the balls to admit that X is what you're doing. Either fire someone or don't, but don't fire someone and try to pretend it's not a firing.

> Most of us understand the necessity of hard decisions.

Do we? Because you suggested that they could have not fired them.

Agreed. How about:

"We fcked up. Sorry. We really did. We're looking to identify the source of the decision. We'll be placing the person, or group of people, responsible on a performance plan (that will include the leadership team if appropriate). If they make continued similar mistakes, they'll be fired, or their compensation will be impacted. In the mean time, we'll be working hard to help the 17 poor souls who were sacrificed on the alter of this mistake".

Did they fuck up though? I understand that layoffs suck, especially for those who are layed off. But I don’t think a failed business is necessarily a fuck up. Should companies not try anything new out of fear of having to lay people off if it doesn’t work out?

To be clear, lay offs can be caused by fuck ups, but not all are.

Sorry to everyone who lost their jobs. It can feel like the end of the world and your worth. But I’ve seen throughout my career people land somewhere better. Someone once wise told me the most important saying in the world is “this too shall pass,” which applies to all things, good and bad.

Also wanted to add: never forget that “the law of averages” is our friend when this happens. It ensures that there is always a good chance to lend somewhere if one keeps trying (submitting applications and giving interviews).

“Everything that arises passes away.”

no one died here sheesh

Like clouds in the sky.

Does this also mean YC is killing off their YC Continuity Programs:

>> Series A Program: Help founders achieve the best possible outcome when raising a Series A via year-round workshops, fundraising guides and 1:1 support.

>> Post-A Program: Batches for YC startups immediately after their Series A to share best practices for growth: managing a board, building a team, key metrics for a Series B and more.

>> YC Growth Program: Graduate school for startups. We bring together cohorts of CEOs of rapidly growing YC companies to focus on the challenges of company building: the changing role of a CEO at scale, setting strategies and success metrics for the organization, hiring and managing great leaders, and more.

Source:

- https://web.archive.org/web/20220812233728/https://www.ycomb...

_____

EDIT: Related comment from Garry on the topic:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35143443

Yes https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35142261

Not seeing anything related to the programs I referenced, am I missing something?

Probably, or at least scaled back?

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.

Id guess that YC has a much greater competitive moat in the former. It's much "easier" to do late stage investing - a few big transactions instead of many many small ones, and everyone's working with the same information.

Very few places have the infrastructure to deal with large volumes of start-ups + a lead flow of small companies trying to join YC, so there's no acquisition costs. Add to that, YC's experience with small start-ups compounds - they can probably predict start-up success way better than competitors at this point. That's almost certainly not true for late stage investing.

A bunch of possibly clever, technically adept people hang out here even if they work for a bank or something equally dull. Some small percentage of them have a latest idea and also decide to explore pursuing it. Where to go?

Everyone here knows YC is one place. What else have you got? Anyone got a list? How do you find out about the people involved, like on a scale of x to y how shonky are they? etc.

I would guess taking over the slashdot space with some incremental improvement to that formula has created one hell of a pipeline that competitors struggle to match. Hence paying @dang full time here and whatever other costs there are associated.

I would think having seed stage investments would offer additional late stage moat. My first thought was that the current down round later stage environment is squeezing a ton of common equity founders/execs. Its tough to be both founder friendly and investing at later stage prices that leave many startup execs low in equity/motivation.

There's virtually no similarity between the two. They are completely different games.

Early stage investing – low cost, high risk of failure, high multiple return, you'll need to make a lot of bets so can cast a wide net, longer term (could be up to a decade or more before you see returns), no established business, so you are betting entirely on the founders.

Late stage investing – high cost, low risk of failure, low multiple return, you can only make a small number of bets so have to be more selective, shorter term, company already has a well-established business, and your decision will primarily be based on how well it is doing.

Not privy to special information w.r.t. this change, but I can think of a few:

1. Breaking focus / competing on multiple fronts. Lots of firms specialize in A-stage or later. By investing in seed and later rather than just seed, the later stage firms see you as a "competitor" for, rather than a "supplier" of, early stage startups. You have that many more competitive relationships rather than cooperative ones.

2. LP fundraising. LPs have to make choices as to who to fund, especially in this economy. Later stage vetting, returns, etc are different than early stage. May not be worth the heavy lift of competing for LPs.

3. Specialization. Once you get into later stages, you get firms that specialize by industry vertical. Not just business (marketplace, fintech, hardware) but even within software (SaaS, dev tools, consumer, enterprise, etc). Might make it harder to make deals. You now have a multi-front problem where each potential counter-bidder for the deal lead has hyper specialization to the startup, whereas YC is a generalist by nature.

4. Competition for deal terms. Most of the time, the deal lead sets the terms. If you can't aggressively bid to lead deals, they may not get the best economy for each of the deals since the lead may have other priorities. This may produce less optimal returns vs just putting more money into seed.

5. Partner / investor preference. VCs compete for partners / investors. If partners in the late stage at YC are limited to only YC companies vs the whole late-stage market (or have other limitations), it may not work for them vs going to a firm with less terms.

Ultimately as a generalist investor, pre-seed/seed/A-and-later are very different markets. With interest rates this high and everyone being more picky, it becomes harder to outperform unless you can operate in that market independently. I suspect YC looked at a model for their returns and came to this conclusion.

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.

I am not VC but I think this is kinda apparent from the get go.

In early stage you are betting on and nurturing a small team with a full-of-hope business plan. They need relatively small bits of help that can go a along way. So both "who you are chosing among" and "how you are helping them" is very specific.

With bigger companies, the team and the business plan is more proven and they need help navigating size and scaling their offering - a very different set of people you are chosing from and what they need from you.

I am sure there's a lot of additional nuance.

If it is, bad look for YC: obviously they did not think it was apparent, and they should be the experts.

> is so different that the success of YC in early stages doesn't translate

that's not a claim made in the article. It just said the late state was different enough to be a distraction from their core mission of being an early stage investor. A company with just an idea and 2 founders and nothing more is obviously very different from a company with many employees, a revenue stream and a long list of customers. It should be obvious how different that is.

All of Y Combinator startups try follow the same playbook: successfull exit, or successful IPO. YCombinator benefits from both.

Since most YCombinator startups never see any profit, late stage investment becomes a risky proposition since even "top YCombinator startups" lose billions of dollars a year, for years, with no path to profitability or recouping investments.

> how and why late stage investing is so different

It requires due diligence and knowing how to invest instead of throwing darts and celebrating the occasional bullseye as proof of your acumen.

Well, for one, I imagine the "network" provided by YC is less valuable to late stage companies than it is to early stage, so YC probably found they were not able to bring as much value.

Second, the amount of capital needed to invest in later stages is much higher, and with companies delaying IPO, they would be tying up capital for much longer than they probably expected originally.

I have no insight into YC, this is just my guess as to how it is different.

They have the absolute advantage in early stage, from marketing to skills and focus. Surely everyone thinks YC first. Not true in late stage.

Focus. Much easier to have the entire company focused on one thing.

Specialisation of labour. Become experts, make sure nobody catches you.

When you start diluting your goal you trade off focus and specialisation, potentially reducing your advantages.

Now I’m wondering how to apply that to myself. The answer seems obvious but I like being a generalist.

It costs a lot more to invest in a late stage startup than an early stage one.

In the current economic climate they probably can't afford (or just don't want to risk) to invest large sums, while on the contrary can "take advantage" of early stage startups which will struggle more to get funding.

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.

Prices were higher, and upside was lower.

Shame on YC :(. The blog post doesn't even mention that YC even tried to utilized the 16 employees on other roles. YC is sitting on top so much money and profits, why did they decide to lay off people?

There are good times and bad times. If my company is not with me during bad times, I wouldn't want to work with them.

YC's reputation took a big hit in my head.

That's a really bad take. YC has a responsibility to the startups they fund to maintain the best team for the kind of work they're focused on. It's also not necessarily the best thing for employees to "be utilized on other roles" within their current company when their roles cease to exist due to business changes. Often the best roles for those individuals is at other companies or in founding their own companies. In truth, most people I've known who have stayed at the same job for a decade were worse off for it, not better.

I'm not advocating for reshuffling your workforce for very short-term needs, but if the longer-term goals change, the team often has to as well.

I imagine the people laid off are highly skilled investment bankers. I think YC laid them off because early stage seed funds do not require the same level of sophistication as late-stage investment.

I believe the employees laid off would be perfectly capable to assist in early-stage seed rounds as well. That way YC could have vetted more projects and invested more.

Imagine that the people laid off were tasked to find and seed environment friendly startups etc. Deep work requires a stable paycheck and job safety. If YC really wanted to make things better, they'd know better.

With these lay-offs, I won't be surprised if all the remaining employees would be yes-sayers lacking any individual incentive.

> YC is sitting on top so much money and profits

This is true of every big tech company doing layoffs. They can all easily afford to keep everyone. They choose not because capitalism has no room for humanity.

I wish there were some publicly available numbers to analyze here, but it seems likely that YC's late stage funds have lost a lot of money (on paper) doing late-stage investments at sky-high valuations over the years leading up to 2022 that are now down significantly as a result of the current startup downturn.

Folks who are thinking about these YC changes as a layoff are missing the point -- YC is exiting what had been a major part of their business (especially if measured by total dollars invested).

And from the outside it seems likely that the reason for the layoff is probably less that YC is in troubled financial straights and needs to cut costs on its operations, but because their late-stage investing business was losing money and YC has decided to give up on it and no longer has work for specialists in that work.

and yet Anu Hariharan and Ali Rowghani seem to be leaving to start a new fund. no failures in VC, just pre-success :)

187 comments almost entirely focused on language usage, and at best two to three words.

Fascinating.

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 for example.

I find it hilarious that a company with such a big success rate cannot afford to keep 17 people on its payroll.

The fact that YC exit "Late stage" largely due to macroeconomic headwind that they didn't admit it.

Instead, they said "core", "distraction".

Nope. The real reason is Late Stage is more expensive to deploy investment while the printer machine is off so no more easy money/easy startup.

Sticks and bones may break my bones, but words can divert me into hours and hours of endless hairsplitting and bickering until I die of being bored with myself and doctors gather and marvel at the inexplicable fact that I am still complaining in the absence of a discernible pulse

Clarity and technical honesty are very important in technical work; especially so in a startup: you want people to focus on solving technical issues, not translating corporatese to human.

Plus, if a group tries to hide behind the wording for an inconvenient message what else would it sweep under the rug? YC is usually way better than this, which may be the reason there is so much attention to the wording which reads like the standard PR spin. My 2c.

Probably because there’s not much new in the layoff story that hasn’t been covered in tens of thousands of comments on previous layoffs. But this is the first time a lot of people have had an outlet to discuss the frustrating linguistic phenomena that have been on display this cycle.

not only that but it's the exact same top-comment subthread that appears at the top of literally every story involving corporate comms. I wonder if it's the same people every time or if there's a constant influx of new commenters who feel strongly about corpspeak.

Yours too

This thread has to be best description of nerds i've seen

Man, total amateur hour. A layoff post without talking about how it's the hardest thing the CEO has ever done, or saying the responsibility lies with me? No mention of how deep he cares about those departing? And delivered on a Monday? Why didn't they use ChatGPT to compose this like everyone else?

Yes, the proper style is:

Leading venture capital innovator, YCombinator, is delighted to announce that over 80 percent of our team remain unimpacted by recent employment-related issues, while other team members will be exploring exciting new opportunities going forward

Makes me question their hiring.

If they were good, surely these people could be absorbed in other areas of YC?

I doubt the late stage investing team will suffer that much. They'll probably move to similar high paying roles shortly.

Shortly? Which company would hire late stage investors right now?

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.

I don't know of a title edit that would satisfy everyone, and pretty much any of the standard edits we'd make would generate accusations that we were censoring or whatever to protect YC, so in this case I think we probably need to go by the default.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

"fire" != "laid off"

At the very least, we can agree that "Changes at YC" is burying the lede?

I agree. You're fired when you sexually harass or suck eggs. Being laid off doesn't have the stigma for the employee.

"laid off" is a subset of "fired" "to fire" just means "to dismiss from a job" which includes lay-offs.

Would YC be willing to share more about the effectiveness of the Continuity Fund? A post mortem would be welcomed and valuable imho.

Changes? They are layoffs. This PR language is irritating.

Man, YC cared so much about protecting jobs two days ago when they were begging for a bailout. What happened?

PG and crew have been very proud of the way they've been able to scale YC. This seems to be one of the first times where YC has failed to scale?

I’m not sure why YC is an example of something that has scaled well. There’s so many companies now in each batch with 95%+ never amounting to much success. It’s not clear how the scale is helping anyone.

I will say that large % of the batches turn out to still be good companies later, sometimes much later. The journey of being a founder sets people up to do a lot more: YC alums are often great C-level executives at other fast growing startups, and/or just because their first startup doesn't work doesn't mean they don't go on to create great companies later.

The key thing about networks is Metcalfe's law: the power of a network is the square of its nodes. This is also what makes the Internet more and more valuable over time.

Those things together mean scale increases value for founders, and what we've learned is those effects are most potent early.

Did YC used to have a better record when they were smaller?

There have been plenty of scaling problems (my batch, S12, has been publicly referred to a few times as "the batch that broke YC" for example).

Scaling is an iterative process :)

Or perhaps writing pro rata checks doesn't require that many people?

The change that the title hints at:

> we’re going to decrease the amount of late stage investing we do

Which allows letting go of 17 employees involved with that, which is 20% of employees. EOF (and that was already more info than the article contained)

can those employees not be staffed to other projects? surely the skillsets are reusable. Something is very fishy about this and the timing.

No no, clearly it is just a coincidence that lay-offs are happening everywhere at the same time. YC must have made a fully independent assessment and decided based on spreadsheets and algorithms that this is the correct business strategy by using past data and developing predictive metrics. Just looking which business unit to cut loose based on cost reductions cannot have been a part of this process.

I’m surprised that even an innovative, creative organization like YC wasn’t able to create other positions for these folks. I guess that just shows how hard business is even for people who are good at it.

When I saw the March "Who is hiring?" I couldn't help but think "truly, who is?".

My friend is on the lookout for a new role and his experience so far is that it's mostly CV hoarders who approach him on LinkedIn. One case we all but confirmed because I used to work for the company which was supposedly hiring, but I asked a person from there and nope, not very actively, no.

Creating a position for employees that aren't needed is generally not a business priority.

Besides, it's likely that this is primarily a cost-cutting measure given similar industry trends at the moment.

Many Japanese companies have worked hard over the last several decades to find new positions for people who would have been laid off. The result: they dominate a lot of international industries in manufacturing and certain kinds of high tech

Eg, I'm buying a Japanese car this week because I don't like the reliability of most North American brands

> Toyota continues tradition of a ‘No-Layoff’ policy for its full-time workers

https://ilssi.org/toyota-continues-tradition-of-a-no-layoff-...

> Creating a position for employees that aren't needed is generally not a business priority.

Sure, I guess I was using too much of a shorthand in my comment. What I meant was, I’m surprised a company with such a high talent density didn’t generate enough new business quickly enough to be able to anticipate near future needs for these folks so that it would make sense to keep them.

I would think YC would have a lot of opportunities to deploy capital, and so a lot of opportunities to gain value from a variety of employee types.

If I knew more about the internals of YC I might be able to make more specific suggestions.

By the way, any company out there, I’d be willing to brainstorm (for free) about how you can repurpose and keep your people, or find other creative solutions. I’ll check for replies to this comment later today and tomorrow, and maybe I’ll edit it to add a throwaway or alternate email shortly.

Email: jmorrow977 at gmail. I’ll check tonight and daily for the next couple days or week.

> Creating a position for employees that aren't needed is generally not a business priority.

You are describing the status quo quite correctly.

That is probably consistent with the textbook form of capitalism.

However, it does not HAVE to be this way. If you have smart, well-educated, experienced staff in roles that are no longer needed, how about thinking hard about how you might deploy them in new beneficial ways? The result could be increased loyalty and a new line of business, a social (yet still profitable) venture. Does anyone have examples?

Think of it this way:

- Hiring is really hard, even tho there are probably plenty of people who want to work at YC

- If you fire people you know are good employees (maybe they were all shit employees?) you're making that harder

- If you're making like 10-20M or more per-employee (seems to be the case for YC) why do you care about having 20 people who you're paying for a bit.

So where is the bailout for these impacted people? Wasn't it just recently that YC posted a plea to bailout so that people wouldn't be fired? And then they don't do one themselves?

You mean like a fund where corps like YC pay into on the regular and then people who are laid off get back some of their salary for a portion of time? It would be like insurance but for being unemployed, just like we have insurance for your bank failing.

> Wasn't it just recently that YC posted a plea to bailout so that people wouldn't be fired?

No, that never happened where did you see that?

> So where is the bailout for these impacted people?

Unemployment exists and I'd bet a lot they got severance pay.

> No, that never happened where did you see that?

He's referring to this: https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/urgent-sign-the-petition-no...

I'm not necessarily pro-bailout but there's a clear distinction between job losses due to money trapped in a failed institution versus job losses due to a business deciding to eliminate those jobs.

In an already difficult economic climate, it's heartbreaking to hear that these individuals will be impacted by this change in strategy. I hope that YC will do their best to support these team members during this transition.

Weak wording the same as every other company

> Unfortunately, this means we will no longer need some of the roles

> Seventeen of our teammates are impacted

Is "impacted" the euphemism of the 2020's? In the past I've seen "affected", but maybe that's passé now. So hard to keep up with all the progress in our language ...

I mean, aren’t founders always touting that they want to have an impact in the world? ;)

Wonder if this is related to the current down turn in risk assets and the venture capital blow up

I find it almost impossible to not see them as related. Take a look at [0]. Long-term this could be a good decision, I believe early-stage investing really is different to late-stage investment, but of course the moment to make this decision makes it evident there are other factors at play that influence this.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35114009

Changes of this sort cannot happen in a very short amount of time. The timing was coincidental.

The timing does make that almost impossible! But if you want the actual connected edge in the directed graph I believe it's https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32637686.

It's not, this is about making YC awesome for early stage founders right at the beginning.

YC does early stage well. Spreading out focus and capital over other stages takes energy away from this.

Other firms already have a good grasp of late stage and it'd be a battle for YC to improve over this.

Maybe YC can return to late stage later when the environment changes.

It's not—my understanding is that it's been in the works for quite a bit longer than that.

I don't think the timing is random considering the climate. I have a feeling these seventeen will land softly compared to 99.9% of those caught up in recent layoffs.

"current down turn in risk assets" is almost as wonderful a phrase as "17 team members were impacted". The fact is that SIVB shares are now worth $0, and that many VCs and LPs were surely holding those can't be a total coincidence with today's "changes".

Y combinator website hugged to death by hacker news. Lmao.

> Unfortunately, this means we will no longer need some of the roles on the late stage investing team. Seventeen of our teammates are impacted today.

Then give them an enema and everything will return to normal.

Oh, that’s not what “impacted” means in this sense? Maybe they are implying that the team will have their free lunch perk taken away.

No? Maybe own the fact that they are being laid off and actually say it.

I am wondering if "impacted" is used because really lots of different things have happened to these 17 team mates. Or if "impacted" = "fired", and "team mates" = "ex-employees".

That is the point of writing it that way. So you have to do the mental work yourself of translating "impacted" to "fired."

This wasn't the announcement I expected.

I asked ChatGPT to write this for me, but even that heartless code didn't have the heart to do this for me: "I'm sorry, but as an AI language model, I cannot generate content that is insensitive or lacking empathy towards individuals affected by layoffs. Layoffs can have a significant impact on people's lives and livelihoods, and it is important to communicate such news with sensitivity and compassion. As an AI, my aim is to promote positive and ethical communication practices. Therefore, I cannot fulfill this request."

That's great (from my sofa's PoV)! If your mission is to fund youngsters and we know the story about that bank from the Silicon valley so this is the best way to save some resources.

LOL (easy) money is running out. (If it wasn't and they were refocussing, they'd redeploy the roadkill onto early stage.) This is comically bad lying.

There are a lot of threads here arguing whether employees should expect help taking next steps after a layoff.

Obviously, employees are only due what their employment contract (and labor laws) say they are due.

But that is beside the point. Helping post-layoff employees build trust, loyalty, commitment in both directions.

Knowledge workers are not fungible cogs. Their morale and goodwill result in better performance. And a more attractive workplace for prospective hires.

It's good that the government is bailling out SVB, we wouldn't want the next pet food drone delivery service startup to fail to launch.

Just so that it is clear: How does YC define "late stage"?

I ask because the opening line is: "YC is known primarily as a place where very early founders create something from nothing"

Does this mean that, going forward, startups that start with something need not apply? For example, a product and, say, one or many customers? Some revenue?

Or does YC want to focus on the "something from nothing" category?

Late stage means series B+ usually

I believe it is the right move. You can make better impact funding a large number of startups with small amounts and guidance than focusing on few late stage startups. Even though 6% make it big in their first attempt the rest 96% do benefit from YC's role in their subsequent attempts. So the impact is huge when it comes to early stage funding.

Here's a question: Whose capital does YC invest? Only partner capital? Do they have outside investors?

> YC is known primarily as a place where very early founders create something from nothing by simply applying online and joining the world’s best founder community.

Uhh... no. It is known for hosting HN, and having a weird, uninteresting side thing on the main domain people enter by mistake.

This is interesting, specifically relative to what their definition of "growth stage" is. Does this mean a young company with five employees and some traction, or a large company that is close to PMF but needs cash to burn after being in-action for 1-2 years?

Understandable when there's a new CEO that some things will get cut. Bad time to be in growth vc.

Not unexpected from vc circles, frankly, with rumors that larger LPs weren't impressed by Tan and interest was lukewarm.

> Seventeen of our teammates are impacted today.

guys maybe they were impacted in a good way tho?

Maybe your question is a joke but I assume "impacted" means laid off in this context.

Kind of like when people say someone "passed away" to mean they died

Can we please just use "fired", "let go" or even "we separated with"? Impacted is just soft wording taken to a comedic level.

Whoosh.

no, they meant the way when a car impacts a wall, or when stool gets impacted in a colon

What does this mean for the MFN SAFE terms that YC founders receive in the standard deal?

Does that change if YC doesn’t plan to make as many late stage investments?

Can YC post some info on their fund that they're winding down? Would be nice to put that out in the public.

Any YC team members care to comment?

Don't worry guys, the people haven't been laid off they are just "impacted" by the new changes.

Why not just create Z-Combinator for these folks? Seems like it might have been a better choice.

I'm assuming all the recent late-stage unicorn downrounds finally caught up with their fund.

It's much easier to spray and pray than to dive deep into business fundamentals.

Ha, if even YC is doing layoffs you know the valley is in deep shit.

No Foresight Or Training Ability: The Announcement

So, the CEO doesn't take responsibility here?

"People were our greatest asset"

But make no mistake. Though they're the ones leaving, it is I who must remain and bear the heavy burden of their failure.

How much $ does YC make per employee?

just mere days after SVB crashes and burns, wonder how much pg had tied up there.

The American corporate structure is such a ridiculous mess. Corporations should be equally controlled by capital and labor, such that both interested parties have equal say in corporate decisions. Yes, this might mean that the owners take significant net worth losses while more people stay employed - boo hoo hoo. Hasn't it become clear that societies run by financial oligarchs with no constraints always end in tears?

America continues to slide towards a Third World cesspool of wealthy enclaves surrounded by miles of festering slums. I guess private security is a growth sector, in this increasingly dystopian endgame.

Why is American corporate structure a mess? What are existing real-world examples of alternatives that outperform American corporations, and along which metric? Why should corporations be equally controlled by capital and labor? Some American cities indeed have slums, but what leads you to believe it's a consequence of American corporate structure (rather than a million other possible reasons)?

Without fully entertaining the hyperbole, American society and government are fully captivated by the wrong metrics: GDP growth is an extremely narrow measure for economic well-being. Unemployment rate is biased by not counting people who want to work but gave up because they can’t find a job. Average salary is far less meaningful than median salary due to huge skews in income distribution.

I like it. Double down on what people love about YC—getting more people to become entrepreneurs.

The later stages there's plenty of YC companies out there that can help (WeFunder, Mercury, Brex, Clerky, Stripe, LSTE, etc).

The timing and optics on this are just awful.

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