In the summer of 2025, an Epic Games layoff cut a worker who was a terminally ill father. According to the most-discussed account of the episode, his family lost his life insurance along with the job. The Reddit thread documenting it reached 36,687 upvotes on r/technology. The comments contain shock, anger, and a great deal of helplessness. What they do not contain is a settled vocabulary for the thing that happened. The closest the discussion gets is a recurring sense that something has been ta...