Treehouse lays off 21%

This comment crosses into not-ok territory for HN. It's fine to argue, say, that there was reason to be skeptical. It's not fine to deny good faith on the part of others or be outright nasty ("I hope everyone quits".) Even if that's deserved, which I doubt, it pollutes the environment here.

HN comments should be charitable in the sense of preferring the strongest plausible interpretation of something. The blog post you're talking about is 4 years old. It doesn't seem plausible that this was a 4-year-long bait and switch. A much stronger interpretation is that circumstances changed.

Taking away Friday? Personally that sounds amazing. I once worked 10-hours four days a week. Having an extra weekday added incredible value and productivity to my life, and more than made up for the 10-hour days.

The chasm is entirely the same chasm defined in the book, they need to obtain profitability, either their plans are to cut expenses and have no growth, or to cross into profitability by starting to acquire early majority customers. Additionally the book is not nearly as timeless as you would think. Its telling that all the marquee examples from the first two prints are pretty much out of business right now, and a few of the examples from the third printing are either greatly declined or also out of business. Finally a company that provides a subscription based, online platform for ongoing consumption of education services is pretty much a textbook example of a SaaS.

The theory of trim down and assault a targeted market to cross into a larger market space is sound, but if you are trimming down your future like the book suggests ( i.e. fire most of your sales and R&D staff, but none of your marketing staff ) then in a modern software world you won't survive long once you reach the other side.