My knowledge of corporate culture might be outdated, but I believe the former LinkedIn employees get to live.

I think this varies company-to-company haha ;)

They are terminated though.

Apparently "decimate" is having a moment on HackerNews lately. It came up over the weekend as well [1], with the same disagreement between people on what it actually means.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23878605

There shouldn't be a debate at all since both sides are technically correct. Here's the definition from Google:

> dec·i·mate /ˈdesəˌmāt/ verb 1. kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage or part of. "the project would decimate the fragile wetland wilderness" 2. HISTORICAL kill one in every ten of (a group of soldiers or others) as a punishment for the whole group.

There are many words and phrases that have changed in meaning over time through popular (mis)use.

I believe the shift in meaning came about because decimation was an incredibly brutal punishment -- it was the most severe sanction that a general could impose.

What is often overlooked is not just that it was "one in ten" executed, but that they were executed by being clubbed to death by the other nine men who were not chosen to die.

So "decimation" spread from the literal procedure to "worst outcome imaginable". Much as "literal" no longer means literal.

> Much as "literal" no longer means literal.

To be clear, "literally" still means the original definition, but now there is an additional colloquial definition which can be used as the opposite of the original meaning[1].

[1] https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/literally

I've heard the term Diezmo to describe the second definition, there's a fiction book about that.

Diezmo (Spanish) and Dizmo (Portuguese) also mean "tithe", an obligatory offering of a tenth of income to churches or religious or charitable organizations. (Growing up in South America in a religious family, I heard both these words a lot.)

Decimate in the classical sense would be to reduce by 90%, not 10%.

> Every tenth man in a group was executed by members of his cohort

That is a 10% reduction. Killing nine out of ten would be a 90% reduction but 'in the classical sense' it would also mean that the lucky guy would have to kill the 9 remaining people.

Why did you put 'in the traditional sense' in quotes, as if you were quoting the parent poster, who clearly wrote "in the classical sense"?

My mistake, I wrote it from memory instead of copying or looking at the parent post. Edited and fixed.

>Decimation (Latin: decimatio; decem = "ten") was a form of Roman military discipline in which every tenth man in a group was executed by members of his cohort. [...] The word decimation is derived from Latin meaning "removal of a tenth".[

Reducing a military force by 90% might not exactly improve its effectiveness...

Reduce by 10% or reduce to 90% of it's previous value