[throwaway_ocr]

The whole argument falls apart for me when it's acceptable to 404 when an api version isn't found, while it's not acceptable to 404 when an employee isn't found.

Why would we handle not finding an employee differently from not finding an API version?

If we're saying employees/100 should return 200 because it "could" exist, but doesn't at the moment, then why would we ever return anything other than 200? Any route "could" come to exist at a future point.

[jstrong]

I am ambivalent about 200 for employee not found, but that is clearly a different category of error compared to an api version not existing. for employee not found, the error is purely in data: there is no responsive data, but the request itself was made to an existing endpoint/url/route correctly. no api version existing is an improperly made request: whether or not there is data cannot be determined as the request itself was problematic, so we never even got there.