That's what offering someone an ultimatum is. "You either change your behavior or you stop working here." The encoded threat is that if you do not comply we will simply remove you.
It's somewhat mealy mouthed. "We didn't fire him. We just reached the penultimate step before having to fire him."
Depending on the circumstances, it could be construed as constructive dismissal. Creating unfavorable ultimatums allows companies to 'lay off' people without having to pay severance.
Well if the employer is suddenly requiring previously remote workers to come back to the office, they are in a sense firing them. Or perhaps more accurately "laying them off" because it isn't an individualized thing.
If your boss has to come to you and explain to you that you can't actually work two full time jobs at once, then yes, you were fired very politely.
If you understood the morals and knew enough to offer your resignation when you accepted the other job, then no, you just took a new job very ethically.
In the same mealy mouthed way, sure. Typically only doing the moral thing once prompted removes you from being described as "doing the moral thing."
The place to make the choice is when you accepted the new job. That you had to be prompted indicates that you are not the type of person who recognizes obvious conflicts, or you are and you hope that might be able to avoid responsibility for them by lying through omission.
The point is, as a "defense," this is absurdly hollow. I'm not sure PG did him any favors by clarifying this point.
Basically it could be that he's not "lying" by speaking a half-truth, e.g. if he didn't resign then the writing was on the wall that he would have otherwise been fired.
Some people's memories aren't very reliable, people who develop lying as a habit, who weave webs of lies - "the lies we weave when we learn to deceive" - are especially not going to be reliable with their recall; and you can get signs of this based on how they respond or react to questions or engagement.
Lots of comments saying "it was still a firing", which makes no sense to me. Firing is not normally used to include situations where the outcome is totally under control of the person who is "fired".
And you say "Paul is clever like that", which just comes off as ridiculous shade to me. Paul may be clever, but he outlined some factual info that, if not true, would just be outright lying, which I don't think he would do. He fundamentally said the decision was always Altman's to make.
Also, I hate how this has become yet another case of using semantics disingenuously. Say what you will about the true meaning of "firing", but nearly everyone would interpret that as Altman got canned and YC didn't want him back. That's not what happened apparently. So all the people saying "it's still a firing" feels like the "I'm not touching you" game that 5-year-old siblings play.
Honestly, I am shocked Altman has made it as far as he has and lasted this long.
He comes across to me as very creepy and unsettling in interviews. I cannot imagine he is any better in person. How anybody can talk to someone like that for more than a minute is beyond me.
