What choices were made by the thousands of employees who work for the startups who can no longer pay them?

ummm.. they chose their employer?

Normally I'd think that an unfair point. We can't generally expect workers to evaluate the financial soundness of their employers. But we are talking about startups here. Everybody going in knows that most startups fail. Hopefully everybody has an exit plan.

> We can't generally expect workers to evaluate the financial soundness of their employers.

Why not? It’s like fundamental…

Because it's a problem requiring graduate-level finance knowledge? Because it's so difficult that even the professionals find it challenging? Because the companies that go under were often working to hide that even from other sophisticated players?

I don't think it is that complicated. I am surprised at the high balances in SVB though from companies that should've known better.

If you think you can reliably tell the financial soundness of companies, don't post here about it. Go trade their stocks. You'll either make a mint or you'll have a very valuable lesson.

I thought we were talking about companies that you choose to work for?

If you can do this with a company before taking a job, then you can certainly do it with other companies.

That looks to be an unlikely scenario, but let's indulge it.

Can capitalism be pretty harsh on workers? Sure. 1-2 million people get laid off or let go every month, and it's been that way for a long time: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTSLDL

Does that suck? Speaking from experience, yes. Should the federal government subsidize startups and/or their funders to save a few thousand jobs? Absolutely not.

If we want to spend billions on a better social safety net, let's do it for everybody, not some unprofitable companies whose investors don't see them as worth saving.

Are those employees of companies whose business model is "driving artists out of business by large-scale copyright infringement and automated drawing based on it?", for example?

The text I quoted applies to a tiny number of people, few or even none of whom might actually be caught in SVB (as they may have managed to exit first!). But unless I'm misreading it's being used to justify that the harm was deserved by a vastly larger class.