Layoffs are often a choice between letting a small percentage go or causing the entire company to go out of business.

Do you have some data to back that up? I'm not sure if a small percentage of employees are so expensive as to be the tipping point for a company to go out of business.

Employees are one of or the most expensive part of doing business for many. I guess you could google Gross vs Net margins in various companies or industries as an example (maybe here[1]). But layoffs aren't merely firing people, they are "firing people and not re-hiring for their positions or work." So it's often closing out on entire product strategies, such as the case here with YC.

[1]: https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile...

> Employees are one of or the most expensive part of doing business for many

Not debating that. I'm debating:

> Layoffs are often a choice between letting a small percentage go or causing the entire company to go out of business

Show me a company that MUST let go a SMALL PERCENTAGE of its workforce in order to not go out of business. Meaning a company which is hanging by a thread and that thread is (again) a small percentage of the workforce. Because if a small percentage of the workforce is expensive enough to provide you with the runway you need to continue doing business, that runway is short enough that the company will cease to exist anyway, so the point is moot.

Layoffs are a consequence of business decisions by a specific corporate entity.

If someone died in a mining accident and their employer sent their partner a letter saying “It appears they’re no longer with us”, that would not be well-received (to say the least). Euphemisms are only appropriate in the right circumstances.

I'm willing to accept this for a company that has verifiable issues that are not just accounting fuckeries (aka owners pulling cash out of the company by having a 2nd company that nominally owns the office building, patent licenses, overseas shell companies): consistent losses, lack of cash, you get the idea.

But for companies pulling in profits to the tune of millions if not billions of dollars in profit?! Their leadership should be terminated before even the lowest performing employee instead of getting paid bonuses for ruining the lives of thousands of people who made their bonuses possible by putting in the work.

If they had stated this exactly as you did it would have been a lot more honest and forthright