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Comment by EngManagerIsMe | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

> 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.

That's a good point. Even if the marketing/copywriters dream of their own "Great American novel" or are legitimately talented communicators, in reality it's a pay checks that 100% values safety and checking boxes over ability.

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

I'll start to believe that if Garry Tan publicly states it.

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.)

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."

The truck was in the bike lane, and they needed to use caution when going around?

EDIT: alright, go ahead and change your comment entirely

Impaled?

Imploded.

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

It's a tricky judgment call and not everybody will receive it the same. But I like learning little tidbits! Crucially, I don't think poster did a "pedantic correction" for the sake of unfairly dismissing the point ; they did it to educate and that always gets credit in my book :)

Because (a) some people might find it interesting; (b) some people might misunderstand what they were referring to; and (c) I like languages.

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."

Even "teammates" is unnecessarily euphemistic. "We laid off 17 members of our staff" works just fine.

I didn't edit that part as it felt like "teammates" was admitting a greater feeling of guilt, or something.

> 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’.

"they were impacted", the passive voice, has the actor eliminated. who impacted? yc. yc leadership made a decision which impacted 17 people. that's active voice.

> 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.

They didn't hide it. It was very explicit and obvious. Anyone who read the announcement understood without ambiguity.

> 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.

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