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Recently, there I encountered two questions about problems found in prominent news stories (rather than a problem that the OP personally faces):

Could producing a grave bug that made headlines make you unemployable?

What would the "correct" way be to fire 900 people at once?

The help center states that "You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face" and that you should avoid asking "open-ended, hypothetical questions".

Should we understand this to mean that people are only allowed to ask about questions that they personally face? Are these questions intrinsically hypothetical (and therefore off-topic), since the person who's actually posting the question doesn't have the problem? Or are there some circumstances under which they're acceptable?

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Should we understand this to mean that people are only allowed to ask about questions that they personally face?

No, I wouldn't frame it that way.

Are these questions intrinsically hypothetical (and therefore off-topic), since the person who's actually posting the question doesn't have the problem?

I don't think they are hypothetical. They are 100% real, as it's something that is happening to someone (not the OP perhaps, but still real).

Or are there some circumstances under which they're acceptable?

I think that such questions should be taken as any other question, and its quality and clarity expected should be good, as with any other question.

Sometimes OP may not be willing to say they are the ones that are experiencing this, and thus say that "this happened to a friend". If indeed this is happening to a friend, and the post lacks clarity or details, then one should request clarification and improvements as one would do with any other question.

For example, I once asked a question that didn't happen to me (happened to my SO at that time, who also doesn't have a SE account). However, I wrote the post with all details and clarity needed to obtain help. Such question was very well received (100+ votes) and got very helpful answers.

In the end, it didn't matter it wasn't myself the one going through that. The question was good, was realistic, and judging by the 100+ votes and several great answers, I am sure it helped other people navigate through the workplace.

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I don't have a problem with it.

I would argue that the purpose of content here is not help a single person, but potentially others with a similar problem.

Therefore, I don't even have a problem with a purely hypothetical question, provided there is some degree of possibility that the question may be useful to somebody else in the future.

A logical extension of a hypothetical question is a question about the 3rd party.

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    OTOH, no one who actually has that problem is asking the question. Why bother to answer a question before there's proof that someone is actually looking for an answer to the question? Someone who engages in the kind of behavior that the actual person who did the 900-person layoff engaged in probably doesn't read Workplace.se, so the question was a waste of everyone's time (including the OP's).
    – EJoshuaS - Stand with Ukraine
    Dec 20, 2021 at 6:38
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    @EJoshuaS-ReinstateMonica Why would it be a waste of time? Does a question exactly have to match your personal experience to be useful? We should not be giving concrete answers, but instead factors to consider when engaging in a course of action. Maybe a person doesn't have to lay off 500, but maybe they have to layoff 5. Maybe some of the answers are very useful because the core idea behind them does not need a magic number of 500 to be relivent.
    – Gregory Currie
    Dec 20, 2021 at 6:40
  • True - it seems like it would make sense for someone who's actually facing the problem to ask the question, though, because then we can be sure that we're addressing a situation that people are actually searching for answers for (vs. something that we're hoping that someone who actually has that problem will eventually stumble on).
    – EJoshuaS - Stand with Ukraine
    Dec 20, 2021 at 6:44
  • @EJoshuaS-ReinstateMonica I think the average person who may be inclined to answer is smart enough to be able to determine what the really fanciful questions are, and decide if they want to answer. In any case, I'm not here to tell people what to do. If somebody does what I suggest without thinking, I would find that incredibly disappointing. My hope is that my answers influence in some meaningful way not just the OP, but also the other people answering.
    – Gregory Currie
    Dec 20, 2021 at 6:51

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