[HN Gopher] Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce ___________________________________________________________________ Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce Author : infrawhispers Score : 669 points Date : 2022-11-03 13:37 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (stripe.com) (TXT) w3m dump (stripe.com) | poorman wrote: | Any Java engineers that want to work on a blockchain, I'm | hiring... https://swirldslabs.com/careers/ | kache_ wrote: | Yikes.. hang in there stripe bros | | Looks like we're going to see this eat through most software | companies. Headcount planning is hard. | dabeeeenster wrote: | Grew tx volume 3x since the pandemic, but using the macro | environment as an excuse to shave the bottom 14%. Just come out | and say it. | abeppu wrote: | I know this isn't new or unique to Stripe, but the language used | in these announcements to distance leadership from their choices | is always so slimy. "We're not 'firing' or 'terminating' anyone; | some people are just 'impacted' by our announcement that we have | to 'say goodbye'." It makes repeated mentions of those who are | "leaving" (the subject is the former employee) and avoids active | verbs where the founders are the subjects. Not "we're | terminating", "we're laying off", etc. Even the first statement | taking responsibility covers the "decisions leading up to [this | step]", rather than the step/mass layoff itself. | phoe18 wrote: | This reminds me of George Carlin's Euphemisms bit: | https://youtu.be/vuEQixrBKCc | radu_floricica wrote: | No offence, but they're not putting anybody in the electric | chair. They're letting people go with pay until almost March - | if you can't find a new job in 4 months, it's on you, and maybe | they weren't wrong to give you up. | | A dynamic job market includes hiring and firings. At most they | have to apologize for some disruption, and they more than made | up for that with the severance packages. | | And about the language - "fire" has a connotation of it being | your fault. Being terminated or let go suggests a business | decision first, and your performance second. They used the | right word. | jgoodhcg wrote: | 4 months is relatively generous but... | | > if you can't find a new job in 4 months, it's on you, | | This statement feels _wrong_. We are all subject to macro | trends that we don't have control over. They impact our | lives. Even the well off tech people but especially people in | other industries. | verst wrote: | Good luck finding a job in this economy now. It's tough for | everyone, even the most skilled. Many companies have | outright hiring freezes. I just read that Amazon now has a | hiring freeze for all corporate jobs, previously this only | impacted retail, stores etc | themagician wrote: | People are hiring everywhere, and for like 1/3rd of the | jobs you can work from home. It may get nasty in the next | few months, but not today. | | For most people in the job market today the unemployment | rate is literally the lowest it's been in their entire | lifetime. | relaxing wrote: | What economy are you in? I still see plenty of job | postings on the East coast. | | Anyway, if you were looking for a break from Stripe's | culture you're not gonna be happy at AMZN. | verst wrote: | I work on cloud computing services (PaaS / BaaS) and | infrastructure. All the big employers in this space have | hiring freezes. | | I used to get 20 recruiting emails from Amazon a month. | Now they have a complete corporate hiring freeze. The | saying here in Seattle goes that if you can't find a job | you could always try one of the many Amazon roles because | they were always hiring. Not so anymore. | | EDIT: if parent comment is referring to Amazon job | postings, the all up corporate hiring freeze was just | announced this morning! | system2 wrote: | You are talking about a niche. There is more jobs than | employees can fill. Companies are begging to find | qualified employees. | verst wrote: | Sure, but what about the psychological impact / feelings | of people when reading all the news of hiring freezes? | | For example engineers that were laid off at Stripe in | Seattle ordinarily have a good chance of getting a job at | Amazon, but now Amazon isn't hiring. That combination | certainly causes folks to feel uneasy. | | Additionally, cities like Seattle are expensive and not | all companies pay equally well. If you bought a house on | a single income but suddenly cannot find a new job paying | enough to pay your bills, then that's a problem too. | Previously there were lots of jobs of similar pay to go | around. In the current economy that is no longer the | case. Suddenly you will need to make some tough choices. | Yes we can argue that nobody should have put themselves | into such a position in the first place, but buying a | house is incredibly difficult in markets like Seattle and | San Francisco, and so I don't blame people who are now in | this predicament. | system2 wrote: | > _but now Amazon isn 't hiring_ | | Amazon is not the only company. There are literally | millions of companies out there. They can stop being so | delicate and suck it up and work somewhere else than | FAANG. | | > _If you bought a house on a single income but suddenly | cannot find a new job paying enough to pay your bills_ | | Have you seen the tv show called x-files? Trust No One. | Don't make big financial decisions by depending on | someone else. Save enough to save yourself from that kind | of trouble and find a job. It doesn't need to be Amazon. | Suck it up and survive. | | I blame people who cry after making $200k+ and not | saving. I blame them for making weird financial decisions | and thinking their social status depends on their job | titles at certain companies. Life is fast and | everchanging. You must trust no one and be self | sufficient. | mr90210 wrote: | I second that. | mtkd wrote: | My email has gone from big recruitment finders-fee offers | in spring to a drip of single 'seasoned candidate | available' contacts in summer to '3 hand picked senior | CVs enclosed' this week | | It's possibly going to be hard yards for many people over | next few months -- but lots of successful companies were | born in such periods | | I hope it works out for OP and everyone else impacted -- | maybe one will build the next Stripe | Andrew_nenakhov wrote: | A good strategy is to lower your compensation | expectations significantly. You might get paid 40% or 50% | of previous pay, but you still have solid ground under | your feet and for once you might get an interesting | project you always wanted to do, using some tech you | never had time to try. Add it's not slavery, you can | change jobs again when market improves. | dangus wrote: | Steering a bit into /r/antiwork territory, I agree. We are | forced to work. We did not choose to work. The choice is to | work or live under a bridge/get woken up by cops and thrown | in jail. When employers take away our ability to work, they | are directly assaulting our ability to survive. | | Wild animals don't have this problem. If you're a deer you | literally run around all day eating plants and fucking. | Sure, the animal kingdom has a whole host of other | concerns, but my point is that we've replaced all those | with _a system_ and we don 't have any choice but to live | within the boundaries of that system. | | It's not legal to live a deer's lifestyle as a human. | | In our system's status quo, companies are allowed and | encouraged to speculatively over-hire. There is no | consequence for doing so. They figure that having a few too | many employees is an easily correctable problem, so it's | safer to just hire aggressively and hope it pans out. If | not, oh well, the business isn't the one paying the price. | | I think it would be a good idea for businesses to be | required to pay average pay out severances to laid off | employees, and that requirement should extend beyond this | "generous" 4 months. I also think about hourly employees | where severance is a foreign concept. | | Maybe then they'd run their businesses more conservatively | instead of making moonshot gambles with human lives. Maybe | it's not the best policy for "the economy" or "innovation" | or "competitive business" but we have more than enough | resources to provide for the humans of this world, we just | choose not to allocate them fairly. | true_religion wrote: | I think what they mean is that morally, people need to take | care of themselves. After four months, a past employer | shouldn't still be on the hook for taking care of a person. | | The past employer has _new_ employees and that money needs | to go to them. | IanPBann wrote: | If they're cutting staff at that quantity it's almost | certainly to save money, and the money saved from laying | off employees shouldn't be going towards funding new | hires. | tedunangst wrote: | Is Stripe not also subject to macro trends? | Taylor_OD wrote: | Right. A SWE I-IV might be easily able to step into another | job, even another job with a similar comp level. But lots | of folks, even tech folks, cant do it as quickly. | | Director of QA? Might be tough and you'll likely turn down | 10 manager of QA roles that want you to do hands on work | along the way. | | UX Research? You have a specific skill set that might be | very useful at a large company but a lot of companies will | want you to do more or handle more than you did previously. | | Thats two examples but there are countless others. Plus a | lot of folks go to Stripe as their first FANG+_job. They | might not be able to step into another FANG+ role and could | have to take a massive pay cut in their next roll. | mengibar10 wrote: | If a well position and well oiled company is in fear of | losing business and firing people how come you expect to find | jobs let alone stable jobs. | | You give your 4-5 years to a company and the company dumps | you at the first sight of hardship. | | I think Stripe made a bad choice when firing people. They | should have decreased salaries, percentage wise more at the | management level and try to keep their workers. I wouldn't | want to work such company ever. | SoftTalker wrote: | > You give your 4-5 years to a company and the company | dumps you at the first sight of hardship. | | You got paid every month for those 4-5 years right? That's | the settlement of what the company owes you for the time | you gave them. | | I've had this point of view for a long time. Every payday, | you and your employer are even. If you feel that you are | giving your employer more than they are giving you, you | need to negotiate a raise, or start looking elsewhere for a | better deal. | system2 wrote: | People tend to get emotionally attached to their | workplaces and changing it is difficult sometimes. We | know business is business. If companies act this way, | they should also expect zero employee loyalty. | taormina wrote: | What you mean to say is "this is why there is zero | employee loyalty". Employee loyalty is a concept from an | era where it was commonplace, but it always had to be | earned. So, here we are. | jollyllama wrote: | Hypothetically speaking, assume you are to be laid off. | Would you rather be laid off now with pay until March, or | laid off in March with no notice and no further pay? | They're being pretty generous here, relatively speaking. | [deleted] | rbera wrote: | I won't pretend I know what the ideal solution is, but | lowering salaries across the board doesn't seem like a | great choice. If someone is a high performing employee and | then sees a cut to their paycheck, that's an incentive for | them to leave, and that's also extra bad for the company | because of course better performing employees will be more | capable of finding another job. With layoffs, companies | remove their "worst" employees instead, which theoretically | improves productivity, assuming of course the rest of the | company doesn't think they'll get laid off too. | mengibar10 wrote: | Last statement is actually the gist of what I wanted to | mean. The moment you make a mass layoff that sends a | message to all employees. | | Please be mindful of measly 3% decrease in your salary, | you wouldn't even see the difference. | | The more open the management is to their employees the | more they become loyal. It's all about honestly sharing | burden. | | You can always layoff not performing employees, a company | has all the right to do so. We are talking about a mass | layoff. | sharkster711 wrote: | Reducing salaries opens a whole new can of worms with | legal and immigration involved. Basically, if you hire | someone on a visa, it is going to be a hassle to reduce | their salaries - and the knock on effects could include | restarting the immigration process. It might end up | costing more than the dollars saved, and employees will | likely leave anyway. | jwithington wrote: | this reply escalated quickly | abeppu wrote: | > they're not putting anybody in the electric chair. | | I think you're reacting to hyperbole that is simply not | present in the post to which you've responded. I have not | compared this situation to any sort of life and death | situation. I agree that Stripe's treatment of the people | they've laid off is better than some other companies. I have | merely commented on the language used in this and similar | announcements. | | > Being terminated or let go suggests a business decision | first, and your performance second. They used the right word. | | ... except they never say in the active voice, "We're laying | off ..." or "We're terminating ...". They repeatedly choose | phrasing that make the former employees the subject. And "let | go" is itself a euphemism invented for this purpose. | "_they're_ going; we just let them" | skybrian wrote: | "Firing" would just be the wrong word, since it normally | implies that the employee wasn't doing something right. It's a | layoff. They're not saying anyone (other than them) did | anything wrong. | ummonk wrote: | Exactly | Quai wrote: | During the first larger round of layoffs that happened in the | "original" Opera Software, the Head of HR stood in front of the | employees and managed to say something like "We are not | 'downsizing', we are just 'right-sizing'". | orangepurple wrote: | They are simply recycling their biomass | aeturnum wrote: | The reason they aren't 'firing' or 'terminating' anyone is that | they are seeking to avoid the appearance (rightly or wrongly) | that the people being impacted are at fault. The company is | changing direction and that new direction needs fewer people - | one should not imagine that those who were impacted were bad at | what they were doing (or even that they would be bad at working | on the new direction). Instead, we are meant to understand that | they made their best effort at how many people they needed and | who at the company would best fill those slots. The fact that | one person kept a job and another lost theirs has more to do | with local realities as Stripe, a particular company, than the | marketability or skills of the people impacted. | ilrwbwrkhv wrote: | Yup wimpy language is the reason why we don't have flying cars | and much more interesting companies still. | danielmarkbruce wrote: | There doesn't appear to be any attempt to distance themselves. | He basically said: "We hired too many people. The decision to | hire them was ours. It was a mistake. We have to let them go. | We are at least going to cover salaries/healthcare for a decent | amount of time." | | There is probably too much business jargon, but that's how | people actually talk in many companies (certainly in Stripe | there is overuse of jargon). It's not a deliberate attempt to | do anything, it's just the language of the world they are in. | The email is to the staff, not to you. | abeppu wrote: | "Let them go" is itself a euphemism, in that if it is taken | literally, it presumes "they" _would_ go if "let". The active | party making an intentional choice describes their actions in | a way that places agency with everyone else. | | > The email is to the staff, not to you. | | No, it's on the 'newsroom' section of their public website. | Though it is _addressed_ to staff (or former staff) it is | _for_ a dual audience. | argiopetech wrote: | I'm sure Stipe would be happy to have them stay, but, since | Stripe will be unable to continue paying them for their | time, I would guess they will mostly choose to go. | danielmarkbruce wrote: | Yep, it is. Lot's of jargon. But it's the jargon used every | day, by everyone up and down an org, in an attempt to be | polite. It's not an attempt to use new language in a way as | to absolve themselves of responsibility. Give them a break, | they probably (rightly) have their egos and lives wrapped | up in this business and feel kind of stupid right now. Just | because they are successful it doesn't mean they are | robots. | | It's really not, they just knew it would be leaked and are | getting ahead of it. They aren't fools. | abeppu wrote: | This isn't about "jargon" being used to "be polite". | "Jargon" is specialized terminology which may not be | understood outside of a group or context. "We took an | existing encoder-decoder transformer model from | huggingface and slapped a token-level classifier head on | it" is lot of jargon. By contrast, everyone understands | what "let go" means. | | The reason for choosing to say "let go" vs "terminated" | isn't to "be polite". More broadly, in this and similar | announcements, we see framing, of active vs passive | parties, to spin responsibility, agency and involvement. | The tone of the whole thing is "because of the broader | economic environment, this business outcome was so | inevitable and our hands were so forced we will barely | acknowledge that it was a decision." And as a stark | contrast, they describe all of the things they're giving | "impacted" former employees in the active voice: "We'll | pay", "We'll accelerate", "We'll cover", "We'll be | supporting" etc. | | I think they actually seem to be doing a pretty good job | supporting the staff they terminated. I just think if | they actually want to take responsibility for their | actions, both bad and good, they should talk in a way | that acknowledges when they're the principal actors. | | https://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2017/06/01/using- | the-bu... | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jargon#Specifics | danielmarkbruce wrote: | This is a cynical take. If you assume for a minute they | are half decent guys, it reads differently - they accept | responsibility and give some context. | hikingsimulator wrote: | It echoes the shift from "Personnel" to "Human Resources " to | "Talent Acquisitions." | midhhhthrow wrote: | Being fired has a different meaning from being laid off. Fired | implies performance. Lay off implies company restructure. | anonym29 wrote: | I would like to offer some tips for those faced with the | potential of layoffs that I have compiled. I understand much of | these come too late for those already affected, but for those | worried about the prospect, these can help to ease the pain if it | does happen: | | * Check if your company pays out unused PTO, sick days, etc as | cash. If they do, do not use any of the applicable type(s) unless | you are going to lose it. | | * Have a LinkedIn, fill out all the fields, add 500+ random | people in your field. Once you have done all this, you get ranked | way higher in the algo for recruiters who are searching (you will | be granted a visible "All-Star" status, so you will know when | you've reached this). After that, go add every recruiter in your | field/industry you can find (ideally 500+). Internal recruiters | are better than external recruiters / headhunters, but don't | neglect the headhunters, especially the "rockstar" ones from more | prestigious staffing firms. Finally, add a bunch (500+) of people | in your field (who you should now have mutuals with, via the | recruiters). Always respond politely to all recruiters even if | you're happily employed. Try to be friendly with them, not | strictly professional. Build up a rolodex of recruiters. You now | have a list of people you can ask for work if you do get laid | off. Recruiter-sourced candidates have MUCH better odds of being | hired than cold applicants, provided you're not a known name in | your industry. If you do this, you'll be able to schedule 40+ | interviews in about 3 days, which take place over the following | week or two, if you really want to pack them together. | | * Don't neglect contract work completely. Many companies have a | surprisingly large hiring pipeline of contract -> FTE, provided | you do a good job. | | * How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie. | | * Corporate Confidential by Cynthia Shapiro, if you're in an | enterprise / corporate environment. | fermentation wrote: | Is it really just as simple as adding random SWEs and | recruiters? | TideAd wrote: | You say 40+ interviews. Is this something you've done? I did 10 | last time I was on the market that was about my limit. 40 | sounds like it would take inhuman stamina. | bluesroo wrote: | If you're not employed and you want the best comp you can | get, you should treat it as a full time job. My last job hunt | was probably ~40-50 hours a week for a month between | wrangling recruiters, hiring managers, and the interviews | themselves... But I was absolutely haggard by the end of it | and made sure that the hiring managers knew early that I'd | need a few weeks between when I accept my offer and when I | could begin. | | I had direct contact with 31 companies. Of those, 16 made it | past the recruiter+tech screens. We're about 2 weeks into the | job hunt and at that point I needed to start pruning. I had | frank conversations with the hiring managers and recruiters | about comp, work/life balance, and how tight scheduling would | need to be for the following interviews. This narrowed it | down to ~8 companies. I also told them all they'd need to | wait for ~2 weeks so that I could finish up all of my on- | sites before I'd accept or reject their offers. | | I scheduled on-sites over the following 2 weeks. Because all | of the hiring managers and recruiters knew I was in 8 on- | sites, they all tried to give me quick and good first offers | hoping that I'd take it and drop my following interviews. A | few tried to pressure me into a 2 day decision window | (surprise, these offers were the lowest by far). | | Of the 8, I received 6 offers. I failed the Google on-site | and I turned down another company because of work/life stuff | that came up during the interview. As offers came in I could | decline ones that were clearly too low. The very last company | that I interviewed with had the best offer, so I was pretty | happy that I stuck it out... But the only time I was more | exhausted was when we had a newborn in the house. | | Depending on how you count "interview", these was easily in | excess of 40. Each on-site was 3-6 interviews back to back. | neivin wrote: | Doing even 10 on-site interviews is incredibly draining, | especially if you're actually contributing at your full time | job. | | I interviewed around 2 years ago at about 10 places as well. | 10 days of interviewing for 6-7 hours was so mentally | exhausting that I just took a week of vacation after all the | interviews were done. | | I had my 10 interviews in a span of 3 consecutive weeks. | jeffbee wrote: | Most important bullet point whenever you are leaving a company: | | * Never sign anything! | | Unless there is a substantial check attached, you have no | reason to sign any agreement with the employer you are leaving. | Politely refuse, and if they insist, ask for compensation. | dehrmann wrote: | > unused PTO | | This is required in California. | kodah wrote: | We shouldn't assume everyone lives in California. They're | giving general advice. | anonym29 wrote: | Good to know! But it's not required in every state in the US, | let alone around the world, that's why I suggest people | should check. | bluesroo wrote: | Which is also why a vast majority of software companies have | "unlimited" PTO. It allows them to have no PTO on the books. | dangerwill wrote: | "Build up a rolodex of recruiters." - Given the sheer amount of | LinkedIn spam I get from all over the world and for all kinds | of roles, I doubt that most recruiters see any individual SWE | on LinkedIn as anything other than a cell in a spreadsheet, no | matter how friendly you are to them over email. | MichaelZuo wrote: | Stripe did seem to be somewhat overstaffed after the huge hiring | spree in the last 2 years. | | Though the bottom 14% is a pretty big amount to cut, almost | certainly some decent performers in that group. | ulfw wrote: | It's impossible to cut 14% and making sure those are only | bottom performers. You'd have to reorg the whole company if | that were the case because some 8 person teams might have 1 | bottom performer (and thus become 7), others might have 2 or 3 | and thus become (5 or 6 people. They'd then want to add more | people to be a big enough team again etc etc, so those would | have to come from other teams that then get merged) | onlyrealcuzzo wrote: | Why didn't Stripe SPAC or IPO during the boom? | | I imagine they could've went for 10-20x their current value | like most IPOs during that time... | | IIUC - Stripe actually has good financials. | | As a comparison - Twitter had ~7500 employees. Stripe had | ~8000. | | So I wouldn't be surprised if they have room to cut ~14%. | Though, I'm interested why now. | | Are they planning to IPO soon or something? It just doesn't | seem like a good time for that... | rvz wrote: | Very good question. As I said before, the time to IPO was in | 2019 [0] and Stripe should have hastened and IPO'ed then and | now it had it's valuation slashed [1] and instead had to | postpone and wait, just like the rest of the other startups | who were too late. [2] | | So, not really a surprise that this happened to Stripe. | | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20993919 | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32566652 | | [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31062227 | paganel wrote: | > after the huge hiring spree in the last 2 years. | | Would be useful to see some charts of all those "hiring sprees" | that happened during the last 2 years at the big US tech | companies, and how the curves on those charts would compare to | "normalized" charts had the pandemic/hiring sprees not existed | (i.e. if the headcount in 2020-2021 would have increased | following the same hiring trends of 2019, 2018 etc). | khuey wrote: | Collison's email says this layoff returns Stripe to it's | February (presumably 2022) headcount. | peruvian wrote: | Seems like everyone was in a hiring spree in 2020 and 2021. | danielvaughn wrote: | This is my take on it. Everyone went crazy on hiring. Nothing | is crashing, it's just the market returning to normal. Well, | except for Meta. They're having a bad time lol. | treis wrote: | Even that is mostly self inflicted | spaceman_2020 wrote: | You should see the financials from some Indian unicorns | that raised hundreds of millions in 2020-22. $5-6M in | revenue, $50M in expenses. No money anywhere. | | VCs were way too exuberant and founders were more than | happy to mop up the capital. | danielvaughn wrote: | And here I was, working with a startup that had | difficulty landing $500K. It was my first foray into | being a founder, but I learned that I do _not_ understand | the investing landscape at all. | theGnuMe wrote: | Matt Levine of Bloomberg has a quote about Adam Neumann | that is just... amazing. It's about selling in a sellers | market and basically about how he sold We Work shares to | Softbank (and taking money out of it). | | I see stocks as fundamentally two things. A statistical | thing (something that tracks the underlying fundamentals | of a business, and a probability (a belief in that | company). Yes, this alludes to classical frequentist | statistics vs Bayesian statistics interpretations. | goodpoint wrote: | > somewhat overstaffed | | somewhat? It has 8 THOUSAND employees to run a payment | processor. | danpalmer wrote: | > Though the bottom 14% is a pretty big amount to cut, almost | certainly some decent performers in that group. | | I don't think you can only cut "poor performers" in any sort of | bulk layoffs. You can avoid it in aggregate, but there will be | enough mistakes, enough teams that need to cut a number but | don't have enough poor performers, or even enough high | performers who are just on teams that are deemed no longer | necessary. | hnbad wrote: | I've seen a company's culture effectively be killed overnight | because one "low performer" was cut off. Not every impact an | employee has is directly represented in their own bottom | line. | | The company in question was able to stomach this because it | would go on to undergo significant structural changes anway | but it basically had to start building a new company culture | from scratch and doing it top-down is much harder than | building on something you've developed organically via your | early hires. | | EDIT: Since I'm rate-limited right now, I'll elaborate here: | it was a company with a number of employees in the low 2 | digits at the time and the employee in question had been | involved (indirectly via another venture in the same office | space and later directly) since before the company even got | off the ground. They were in a non-technical role at a tech | company but on good terms with most employees and genuinely | cheerful about company branding and everyone being "the | company" rather than just working on cool tech that happened | to be sold by that company. Basically they acted as social | glue, both between other employees but also between those | employees and the company. Some other (higher performing) | employees left after them but I doubt most could point at | what it was that pushed them to quit even though this | employee's departure was likely a major contributing factor. | I could go into more detail but I want to preserve the | anonymity of everyone involved, especially those no longer | working at the company. | stackbutterflow wrote: | Could you expand on that? I'm curious to know how one | employee can single-handedly carry the company's culture. | ceejayoz wrote: | I've seen individuals who are the primary connection | between two important departments; say IT and sales, | speaking both languages enough to translate. On paper, | not much work done; in reality, critical for smooth | operation. | bink wrote: | "I have people skills!" | | I get what you're saying and have worked with people like | that. But I see that as a different management problem | that also needs to be solved. | ceejayoz wrote: | The management problem is not seeing the value these | sorts of people generate for the organization, yes. | MichaelZuo wrote: | The dynamics of a low 2 digit employee company is very | different from the dynamics of a company with many | thousands. | | In the latter case it's simply impossible for a single | person, not in middle-management or exec level, to be in a | critical 'social glue' position. | | Dunbar's number, etc., | MichaelZuo wrote: | High performers on redundant teams would almost certainly be | transferred, assuming there isn't some odd middle management | infighting going on. | danpalmer wrote: | I'd hope so, but it's a lot harder to identify the high | performers, figure out where to transfer them to, cut low | performers from the teams they're moving to, etc. | Unfortunately much easier to just cut teams as the company | cuts scope. | ghaff wrote: | Yep. You have someone who the mythical company "they" | think is awesome but their team was disbanded, there's no | ideal and obvious role for them, transfers are mostly on | hold anyway, etc. At some point a bunch of people are | sorry they couldn't find a way to keep the person but | they can't really do anything. And parking them somewhere | they aren't really a good fit isn't ideal anyway. | ghaff wrote: | It's very easy to have people who are widely regarded as | high performers. But transfers are often limited when | layoffs are happening and, in practice, execs often don't | want to transfer headcount to other teams even if it's | probably the right thing to do from an overall company | perspective. | xfitm3 wrote: | Identifying high performers can be subjective, just look | at Google's promotion practices. Productive engineers | also tend to get paid more, making them an attractive | target when reducing payroll spend. | shagie wrote: | Transferring a high performer often implies laying off | another person in the target team. | | The time to do that would have been in a reorg (Stripe's | philosophy for that is at | https://stripe.com/guides/atlas/organizations-and- | hypergrowt... ) prior to layoffs. | | During a layoff, if you want to transfer to a different | team, apply for a job on that team if they've still got | some open headcount. | okaram wrote: | That's a pretty big assumption :) | | There's always management infighting, especially in lean | times. | MichaelZuo wrote: | When the infighting gets serious enough to be obvious to | an outside observer is my threshold. | | If it's just some folks getting miffed because someone | from another department stepped on their toes or made | some unkind comments about their team, then that | shouldn't be too serious. | | I'm assuming it's mostly the latter at Stripe... | [deleted] | dabeeeenster wrote: | Grew tx volume 3x since the pandemic, but using the macro | environment as an excuse to shave the bottom 14%. Just come out | and say it. | yohannparis wrote: | That's literally what the letter is saying. | austenallred wrote: | Unless they were planning on growing transaction volume more | dabeeeenster wrote: | I'm British, so I appreciate that there's a difference in | approach across the pond, but I still think this is a shitty | thing to do. They are still growing (and setting records it | would seem). | | Just hold on to the staff and swallow the small dent in opex. | austenallred wrote: | Pretty simple. | | You plan on x growth happening, so you hire assuming x will | happen. | | Say x/2 happens. You now overhired. Even if x is still | pretty good. | csomar wrote: | Corporations have fiduciary duty to the their investors, | not their employees. | he_is_legend wrote: | Is that legally speaking? Ethically speaking? Or | financially speaking? | | And which one is really more important to humanity? | friedman23 wrote: | People own companies. Just like people own tvs, | computers, phones. Do you ever go to someone and say | "hey, are you using your phone in the way that's best for | humanity?" | wewtyflakes wrote: | Stripe is a pre-IPO company with their employees holding | equity. | mamonster wrote: | Not how it works from a financial analysis point of view. | When interest rates rise money further down the line is | rapidly devalued and cash flows in the near future are | reprioritized. And firing people today and taking small | layoff costs is much more accretive to the bottom line than | growth down the line. | | Also: Seems like the whole of VC is now on the FCF/Opex | control train. | CarbonCycles wrote: | That was one of the better letters written by execs....also a | generous package. | | I feel bad for the folks who have been impacted. | codazoda wrote: | > If you are among those impacted, you will receive a | notification email within the next 15 minutes. | | That seems very cold. | Nifty3929 wrote: | Layoffs are not an indication of failure. Not on those who get | laid off, those that remain, or senior leadership. | | The universe is a dynamic, changing place. People [should] move | in and out of jobs and industries in response to those changes in | the world. This is a good thing, and much better than blindly | doing the same thing forever, in the face of changes. | | I don't know the specifics of Stripe's business at all, but they | may have been correct to hire a lot early in the pandemic, and | then correct again to lay off many people now. | mooreds wrote: | > Layoffs are not an indication of failure. Not on those who | get laid off, those that remain, or senior leadership. | | I appreciate the sentiment, but think it is hard to believe | when you are in it. | | As someone who got laid off, it sure doesn't feel that way. I | felt like a failure, and was angry. It took me about a year to | get over it. | | I've also been part of the "go forward" group (to use the | parlance of our times) and that is difficult in a different | way. I missed coworkers and worried about the long term | stability of the company. | | I've never been in a position to have to lay folks off, but | have been in positions where reports departed. That's tough | too. | | Hard all around. | Nifty3929 wrote: | Agreed! Sorry you had to go through that, both ways. It's | super tough for those being laid off. | mooreds wrote: | Thanks. I ended up writing about my experience, which | helped. | | https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2020/05/04/how-to-go- | thro... | pcthrowaway wrote: | On the other hand, I've survived several layoffs in my tenure | in the industry, and for at least one of those was pissed off | that I wasn't one of the laid off (would have gladly taken a | paid vacation when I was burnt out on the job anyway) | mooreds wrote: | Hahah, a while ago I was having dinner with some friends. | One was at a company where there were layoffs happening and | there was lots of speculation on the right way to get on | the severance list. | mywittyname wrote: | It's hard to see colleagues who are good folks be laid off. | It makes leadership seem out of touch. | | I've seen three "mentors" get laid off in my career, and it | really reinforced in me this idea that leadership doesn't | necessarily care about your technical abilities. Sometimes | the best people get cut. | malfist wrote: | Yikes, that's a huge cut. Hopefully this is part of defaulting | alive and they won't have to make another cut like that. Layoffs | are painful for everyone involved. | | I've been laid off twice, and it's always painful, hurtful and | damaging to my mental health. Take care of yourself the best you | can, there is a fair amount of research now that says layoffs can | have lingering mental health affects for years to come. [1] | | Some resources that might be helpful: flexjobs.com is a good | curated job board for remote work. teamblind.com is a | professional social networking site for engineers, it's generally | super toxic, but the community comes together for layoffs and a | lot of people will offer referrals. | | [1]: https://www.wbur.org/news/2013/06/14/recession-layoff-scars | coayer wrote: | Godspeed to any other college seniors looking for new grad roles! | What a nightmare of a time to graduate. | [deleted] | lefstathiou wrote: | I believe hyperscaling is a factor here. I don't see how a | company can successfully multiply their head count and integrate | thousands of employees a year (unless you're already at massive | scale like Amazon). | | When it falters, you're stuck with swarms of confused employees | who havent been trained / integrated / given meaningful work and | who may not even be in the office due to WFH which is difficult | to recover from [I am curious what % were WFH in the layoffs]. At | that point, whether you're growing or not, it's tempting to just | get them off your payroll and start anew, only more slowly this | time. | Taylor_OD wrote: | Let go of the most of the recruiting team and low performers. | Prepping for an IPO? | anonymouse008 wrote: | > We were much too optimistic about the internet economy's near- | term growth in 2022 and 2023 and underestimated both the | likelihood and impact of a broader slowdown. | | This is one of the most interesting statements ever written. If | you ran a 'Idea Fourier' on this signal, so many things fall out: | cheap interest rates pushes crazy valuations and estimations, | believing the low interest fantasy was a requirement to getting | their funding in the first place, now how easy is it to just say | 'oops, no take back-sies' | | Interesting time to be alive. | philod wrote: | I run revenue planning for a large-ish public SaaS company. We | knew all of these factors were a risk this year but they were | immediately shot down when brought up or part of models. "Focus | on what we can control" "Usage and growth is so high there are | no signs of slowdown". Whenever we used data to show that macro | factors might be artificially driving up usage and demand it | was dismissed. Politics plays a large role here as senior | leaders want to take credit for all the growth. What's funny is | now when it's all trending down of course macro is the factor | and rarely anyone's fault. | krm01 wrote: | And a refreshingly honest statement. Too often these layoffs | are put on external factors. Having someone admit the actual | mistake is due to human optimism (greed maybe) just +1'd my | respect for Stripe. | luxcem wrote: | Can you explain the "Idea Fourier"? | reikonomusha wrote: | It's a somewhat humorous misappropriation of a mathematical | term being applied conceptually. | | Roughly speaking, a Fourier transform takes as input a signal | (like audio) and produces a spectrogram (the signal's | component frequencies). | | So "Idea Fourier" is a roundabout way of saying "take the | component ideas from a statement". But really, GP just | suggested making inferences or deductions, which has nothing | to do with Fourier transforms. | benjaminwootton wrote: | "On Tuesday we set a new record for total daily transaction | volume processed." | | How does a company breaking records 36 hours ago conclude they | need to lay off 14% of the workforce? Even with economic storm | clouds on the horizon that seems very jumpy. | mengibar10 wrote: | Speak volumes for the character of the people who are managing | the company. Lay off people who helped you get where you are | the moment you feel you won't need them in the future. | | What avenues have they exhausted before laying off workers? | | For example my company during COVID chose to make a temporary | 3% reduction to salaries rather than laying off the people. | That was that year's minimum salary increase. Basically they | took what they gave that year. | | Many companies are very disloyal to their workers, vice versa. | onion2k wrote: | If you think you're going to suffer pain in the future, using | your current success to reduce the impact of it seems quite | sensible. | newbie2020 wrote: | They look at _trends_ as opposed to where they are now. And | perhaps each transaction currently loses them money, so the | more transactions they have, the more money they lose. There | are lots of factors that go into this than just one metric | im-a-baby wrote: | Because tech companies underwent an unprecedented hiring spree | the last two years. Tech companies were so flush with cash due | to the stock market (which also seeped into private valuations) | that they basically green lit any headcount request that | sounded remotely plausible. This allowed middle managers to | grow their fiefdoms so they could add a little line on their | resume: "Managed team of X at Stripe." Such spending is totally | wasteful and unnecessary. | randomdata wrote: | Overstaffed in the support department. They realized that they | could have just one person watching Hacker News for people | having problems. | rexreed wrote: | This is my concern - and it's sad but true. I really cringe | worrying about having too many financial eggs in the Stripe | basket. But Paypal is no alternative and traditional CC | processors are awful. How does one hedge their bets with | Stripe? I worry one day we'll hit some transaction "trigger" | and then all our money will get locked up in Stripe with no | customer support recourse. | marcinzm wrote: | They hired 150% more people (yes the company grew to 2.5x since | 2020) expecting metrics to grow 150% but metrics only are on | track for growing 100%. | pixl97 wrote: | Heh, the average forum poster, I believe, drives their car at | 100MPH and turns 3 feet before a large hole in the road. :D | | As much as people complain about businesses only looking at | the next quarter, they do typically have a longer horizon | than that. When you have the US fed raising interest rates | every meeting and outright saying "unemployment is going to | increase" then you should expect pretty much every business | to take note of this and adjust appropriately. | ajaimk wrote: | They set a new record of x% YoY. They hired expecting that | records to be 114% of x%. | hnbad wrote: | "Breaking records" is just how normal people think about | "growth". If they weren't constantly breaking records, we would | already call them failing or dying because it means they're | stagnating. To be considered successful they need to not only | grow but the rate at which they grow needs to increase over | time or at least not decline. | jesuscript wrote: | They are doing what any company does whether the slow down in | the economy impacts them or not. They _lie_ and say it impacts | them and use it to do a purge. | | I worked at companies that were in no way impacted by the 2008 | financial crisis (in fact, business was booming). Leadership | managed to use it as an excuse to do a hiring freeze and plead | with existing employees that they are the lucky ones and they | need to work harder during "this difficult time". Facebook and | Google just turned to that page recently in the "ruthless | business playbook: version 1 (it never needed to be updated | since the dawn of time)". | | It's kind of psych 101 stuff. Never underestimate the true | nature of business: Amorality. | | There is some genuine bullshit going on now days because we | have record low unemployment and open job positions. If they | say it's all in the service and labor sectors, well, that just | means you gave more people an opportunity to earn money. Those | people will then go online and spend it, so how the fuck would | Stripe get less business? Unless Stripe is genuinely retarded, | in which case I wouldn't blame the 14% layed off, I'd look to | replace leadership. But you see, Stripe isn't retarded. | | Be ready for your company that's in some booming industry to | use the recession and inflation as an excuse. | skeeter2020 wrote: | >> because we have record unemployment | | I inferred that you meant record ^low^ unemployment? | jesuscript wrote: | Yes, fixed. | willcipriano wrote: | I have a term for this, that I think I may have coined. The | pauper CEO. You'll find him during economic downturns or at | the end of successful projects, turning out his pockets and | shaking his head. He was rich when he wanted to hire you, | fabulously wealthy during the time you put the long hours in | and will be located in the poor house when it comes time for | you to collect your share of the rewards. | codyb wrote: | How much this brings to mind those old black and white | newspaper cartoons with the big fat cat in a suit riding on | the backs of the poor pulling out his pockets to show how | empty they are. | mengibar10 wrote: | Speak volumes for the character of the people who are | managing the company. Lay off people who helped you get where | you are the moment you feel you won't need them in the | future. | | What avenues have they exhausted before laying off workers? | | For example my company during COVID chose to make a temporary | 3% reduction to salaries rather than laying off the people. | That was that year's minimum salary increase. Basically they | took what they gave that year. | | Many companies are very disloyal to their workers, vice | versa. | tech_tuna wrote: | Exactamundo. This is why I always say there is one and only | one company that ever matters. | | You Inc. | pastor_bob wrote: | 100% | | Look at all the openings they have: | https://stripe.com/jobs/search | thomasjudge wrote: | Just like companies are using the cover of "inflation" to | jack up prices (and profits) regardless of if they have cost | increases or not | heliodor wrote: | Who doesn't have cost increases? | suzzer99 wrote: | A buddy of mine works for a company that makes industrial | lighting. He said they raised prices 3x last year and | their costs didn't go up at all. | williamcotton wrote: | What about their competitors? Can't they undersell them | and capture most of their customers and still have great | margins? | suzzer99 wrote: | No idea. Might be some soft collusion going on. I can't | imagine the industry has a ton of players. | | Or they just took the opportunity when customers are | expecting price hikes anyway. | orra wrote: | I'll rephrase what the other user said: businesses are | not typical consumers. And CPI measures typical consumer | price inflation. | | Hence, it's disingenuous for businesses to put up prices | by CPI. In fact, businesses putting up prices is often a | driver of CPI. | | Businesses face their own changes in prices, yes, but not | by CPI. | whimsicalism wrote: | Businesses price at willingness to pay. | zeroonetwothree wrote: | They also have the PPI, which measures costs to | businesses. It's roughly equal to CPI: | https://www.bls.gov/ppi/ | orra wrote: | Using PPI is probably more honest than CPI. But the other | problem remains, that a 'typical' measure doesn't reflect | each individual business. | ffggvv wrote: | they dont need some excuse, they can do it whenever they want | for whatever reason they want. they dont hire the people in | the first place if they dont think they need to | jtaft wrote: | Many find the r word offensive. Can you please be kinder and | express yourself differently? | | https://www.verywellfamily.com/what-is-the-r-word-3105651 | | Your post brings up interesting view points, thanks for | sharing. | jesuscript wrote: | I can't please everybody, but I knew it could touch a | nerve. Most of it was written out of frustration because | these tech layoffs can be any of our brethren, so I reached | for a vicious word. | | Like, fuck these people, Stripe is not losing money. | mynameisvlad wrote: | pb7 wrote: | He's fine. Perhaps you shouldn't police people's language | whether it takes 5 seconds or not. | rgifford wrote: | This always cracks me up. Handicap, disabled, retard, and | on and on. The origins of the latest epithet in vogue are | harmless. But as soon as a term gets co-opted as an | insult, we all agree to ditch it. And why? From what I | can tell it's just to placate, to pretend Darwin doesn't | exist. Reminds me of my two favorite quotes from The | Office: | | "There is one person in charge of every office in | America, and that person is Charles Darwin..." | | "You don't call retarded people retards. It's bad taste. | You call your friends retards when they are acting | retarded." | | Is it worse to have some condition of your birth used as | a casual insult -- a reminder of your misfortune? Or is | it worse to be constantly patronized, often behind your | back by throngs offended on your behalf? | | The answer depends on your culture and outlook on life I | suppose. | diydsp wrote: | > the latest epithet in vogue | | These don't happen because they're fun fashion choices. | They happen because people are becoming aware. The | dynamics may resemble whimsy, but it's more than | aesthetics underlying. | rgifford wrote: | Can we abstractly use the terms "bald," "stupid," "fat," | "anemic," or "impotent" abstractly and negatively? | | All describe generally disfavored conditions folks don't | have much control over. Referencing that disfavor | abstractly doesn't bring it into being. Ignoring it | doesn't make it go away. | | This isn't about awareness in my opinion. We're | pretending status doesn't exist. We're assuming folks | with some condition will be offended and won't be able to | handle those emotions with their own agency, so we're | patronizing them by carefully policing language. That is, | in my opinion, as ableist as it gets. | jasonshaev wrote: | "The origins of the latest epithet in vogue are | harmless." The origin of the word is irrelevant. Words | mean things and can be harmful, regardless of the origin | of the word. The meaning and context of words can change | over time, regardless of the origin of the word. | | Bringing Charles Darwin into the conversation does not | help your point. | | "Is it worse to have some condition of your birth used as | a casual insult -- a reminder of your misfortune? Or is | it worse to be constantly patronized, often behind your | back by throngs offended on your behalf?" | | This is a false trade-off. The whole conversation started | because someone used a harmful word, knowing full well it | was harmful. If they refrained from using the offensive | word they knew was offensive neither condition would have | happened (casual insult or patronization). | rgifford wrote: | Are the terms "bald," "stupid," "fat," "anemic," or | "impotent" harmful when used abstractly and negatively? | | Come now. At the root of all of this is an ableist, | patronizing assumption: People with mental disabilities | must have the language used around them carefully policed | because they can't handle the implied disfavor and | emotional harm that language may communicate via their | own agency, not like the rest of us. | | It's hypocritical virtue signaling. | mynameisvlad wrote: | Who are you to say they're fine or not? | | It's clearly controversial, and the commenter very well | knew it would be before they commented, and after they | got the replies they did. | | It takes less time than it took for them to reply | justifying their choice. As I said, be better. | jesuscript wrote: | I'm officially an adult, not a young adult, definitely | not a kid. I'd be a little careful around kids with that | word, and certainly parents with children that may be | dealing with it. Kids struggling with a shortcoming and | having other kids attack it can be hard. | | I like to think we're not kids here, and some level of | off color talk can be somewhat interpreted as _humor_ at | best, sardonic, sarcastic, _dark humor_ , and at worst, | _appropriately inappropriate_ - as in, we aren't kids, | and I hope you got me. | | So for example, let's not worry that I used the word, | because those who are truly retarded are actually | retarded enough to not be offended. Imagine if you took | what I just literally. Or did I say it to make a point? | | What is adult levity, I guess, is my question? What is | non pc, non safe for work (within reason) conversation, | among adults? Is it a constant "watch what you just said, | but I won't even consider the context of it". | mynameisvlad wrote: | Adults also know what tact is and what is considered | socially appropriate and not. You don't have to be a kid | to not be needlessly insulting to a wide swath of people | just to show it to a company who isn't going to read or | care about what you said. | pb7 wrote: | Who are you to say to be better? Policing people's | language doesn't make you better, it just makes you feel | better. Entirely performative just like woke people using | "Latinx" when 90% of Hispanic people preferring they | didn't[0]. | | [0] https://archive.ph/UONL2 | coffeemug wrote: | Use of terms like "be better" or "do better" arouses far | more resistance in people than the original use of slurs. | What leads you to believe you're endowed with moral | authority to tell strangers to be better? | kamkha wrote: | I get your frustration here, but keep in mind: your use | of that word is not harming Stripe any more than | alternatives you could use, but it does harm an unrelated | and oppressed group. | l33t233372 wrote: | What harm does it do? | dghlsakjg wrote: | Its unfair to compare people with developmental | disabilities to cold-hearted shareholder maximizing | sociopaths? | jesuscript wrote: | How would you define adult humor? Surely we have some | latitude to be a little off color without being straight | up racist, (blank)phobic, and vile? We aren't kids, we | have somewhat of a sophisticated ability to be at another | level of sarcasm, humor and dark humor. | dghlsakjg wrote: | Re-read my comment. You may be missing something | rgifford wrote: | People who are overweight should not be accused of being | similar to corporations that misallocate and overspend | (i.e. fat corporation, bloated spending, etc.). | | Anemic, impotent, bald, and on and on. | | Language is abstract. Some conditions are generally | disfavored. Referencing that disfavor abstractly can be | meaningful. | | Come now. At the root of all of this is an ableist, | patronizing assumption: People with mental disabilities | must have the language used around them carefully policed | because they can't handle the implied disfavor and | emotional harm that language may communicate via their | own agency, not like the rest of us. | willcipriano wrote: | For what it's worth, when I was a kid, I objected to the | idea that I was legally compelled to attend public | school, I did and do believe it is unconstitutional on a | number of grounds and thus I refused to participate. In | retaliation they placed me in special education classes | and I spent my time in school being called a retard by | the other kids on a daily basis. I'm not offended. | JshWright wrote: | It seems like you're saying "people used to incorrectly | think I was part of a marginalized community, but I | wasn't, so it doesn't really bother me". | willcipriano wrote: | Isn't the whole problem with being in a marginalized | community that people treat you differently? If people | ran around calling you the N word on a daily basis would | it be a comfort to you that you aren't actually black? | JshWright wrote: | That's certainly not the "whole" problem, no. | | Even if it were though, it seems obvious being on the | receiving of that slur would have significantly less | impact on you, as it didn't actually target anything you | saw as part of your identity. I don't see how your | experience puts you in a position to absolve others for | their use of the term. | | Personally, I think we should give significantly more | weight to folks who are actually in the impacted | community (those with intellectual disabilities, their | loved ones, etc). The vast majority of whom _do_ object | to the use of the word as a derogatory slur. | willcipriano wrote: | To be fair at no point have any of the educational | experts or administration ever claimed that I am not | retarded. It was never retracted I simply left school | when I was older. If we trust the experts on this I'm | severely handicapped. Who's to say I'm not a retard? | mynameisvlad wrote: | > as it didn't actually target anything you saw as part | of your identity | | The parent comment already covered this. You don't | believe you are, based on how you've talked about this | experience. At no point do you say you identify with the | word, just that it was used against you. | willcipriano wrote: | By this logic, wouldn't people the state labeled as | felons, who don't believe they are guilty, be unable to | speak about discrimination against felons, even though | they personally experienced it at both a institutional | and societal level? | foldr wrote: | A felon is someone who's been convicted of a felony, so | you're still a felon even if you're (really) not guilty | of the crime. | dandellion wrote: | They replied to a comment that mentioned the word by | explaining their experience, so they identified in some | capacity. | mynameisvlad wrote: | > I spent my time in school being called a retard by the | other kids on a daily basis | | > If we trust the experts on this I'm severely | handicapped. | | I mean they themselves basically said they do not | identify with it: | | > If people ran around calling you the N word on a daily | basis would it be a comfort to you that you aren't | actually black? | watwut wrote: | Special education you got is not reserved for those | diagnosed with retardation. You did not even said that | you was diagnosed with retardation. The other kids who | called you retard are not experts in this particular | diagnosis. | | There is no reason for school or experts to retract that | claim, because they never made it. The claim was done by | other kids. | JshWright wrote: | The problem is how you're using that word. You're using a | word that is used to describe actual people in your | search for a "vicious" word. Would you feel as | comfortable swapping that word out for a different slur | targeting a different demographic? | | Your anger at Stripe is reasonable, why are you | belittling an entirely unrelated set of people in your | attempt to express that anger? | LudwigNagasena wrote: | I am honestly amused by this. There are so many denigrating | words that have their origin in or deep connotations with | intellectual disability, yet somehow "r-word" is the one | that gets all the attention. Though, I must admit I've seen | people going even further and claiming that "crazy" is an | ableist slur. | | And I am not sure which is worse, being selective or being | consistent but annoying. | jasonshaev wrote: | "The origins of the latest epithet in vogue are | harmless." The origin of the word is irrelevant. Words | mean things and can be harmful, regardless of the origin | of the word. The meaning and context of words can change | over time, regardless of the origin of the word. | | Bringing Charles Darwin into the conversation does not | help your point. | | "Is it worse to have some condition of your birth used as | a casual insult -- a reminder of your misfortune? Or is | it worse to be constantly patronized, often behind your | back by throngs offended on your behalf?" | | This is a false trade-off. The whole conversation started | because someone used a harmful word, knowing full well it | was harmful. If they refrained from using the offensive | word they knew was offensive neither condition would have | happened (casual insult or patronization). | rjh29 wrote: | You know the euphemism treadmill right? The words moron | and imbecile were once valid terms for mentally disabled, | and offensive to use casually, but are no longer | offensive in that way. | | Conversely, people tried to introduce the term "special | needs" to avoid the connotations of "retarded", and then | "special" became an insult. | | The word "lame" is also incredibly widely used and no | longer considered offensive even though it's still a | valid term for those who have difficulty walking. | | I don't have a point, just find the whole thing very | interesting. "retarded" is definitely in the grey area | where I personally try to avoid using it, but it's still | commonly used. Perhaps "crazy" and "insane" are next. | jasonshaev wrote: | I was not familiar with the term "euphemism treadmill." | Thanks for the info, that phrase does help bring some | clarity and specificity to the discussion. | rgifford wrote: | Is "fat" harmful? Could we say a company overspending is | fat or bloated without offending? What about "impotent" | or "bald," are they harmful? Can we use them abstractly | without offending? What about "anemic?" | | Lots of conditions of being are generally disfavored as a | condition of our biology. Referencing that disfavor | abstractly doesn't bring it in to being. Ignoring it | doesn't make it go away. | jasonshaev wrote: | These are all hypotheticals. Is there any serious, non- | academic question about whether the word we're actually | discussing is harmful? Even if there is, we all have a | choice about what language we use and whether to respect | the fact that certain words may hurt others. The cost of | NOT using the relevant word is ... zero. This isn't an | academic exercise. It's an emotional exercise. | rgifford wrote: | I disagree. There's an ableist, patronizing assumption to | be analyzed here: People with mental disabilities must | have the language used around them carefully policed | because they can't handle the implied disfavor and | emotional harm that language may communicate via their | own agency, not like the rest of us. | | Sure, we shouldn't use harmful language and emotional | intelligence matters. If you're overweight and talking | with someone and they constantly find ways to | derogatorily refer to your weight or even being | overweight abstractly, they may be a jerk. But if someone | online abstractly calls something fat, it's not directed | at you. That's part of emotional intelligence in my | opinion. | jasonshaev wrote: | I do see your point and your explanation does add some | nuance to my thinking on this topic. That being said, I | still think it was a poor choice of words as evidenced by | the fact that the majority of the replies are debating | the OPs language as opposed to their original point. | schnebbau wrote: | He could say stupid, but that would offend stupid people. | He could say crazy, but that would offend crazy people. How | about insane? The expression is all the same. | | There are lots of injustices happening in this world that | deserve your attention. Policing the use of a word is not | one of them. | tasuki wrote: | What is wrong with using the word "retarded"? It means | slowed down. | | I could understand your objections _if_ jesuscript called | something /someone retarded, but they explicitly wrote "But | you see, Stripe isn't retarded." I think that whether a | word is offensive or not depends on the context in which it | is used. | | About the article you linked... perhaps I'm mentally | disabled, but despite its "Why Use of the R-Word Needs to | Stop" title, I was not able to understand why the use of | the r-word needs to stop. Would you mind to elaborate? | jtaft wrote: | Here's another article that may be helpful | | https://www.pacer.org/bullying/info/students-with- | disabiliti... | tasuki wrote: | Nope, I still don't get it. And I'm somewhat offended | that you're just sending me random links instead of | clearly explaining your position. | | So, there are certain... specific... groups of people | with specific characteristics who are sometimes not well | thought of by some other people. And there's a word to | refer to this specific group of people, and it's | considered a Bad Word. And then we as a society come up | with a new word for these people, which is now a Good | Word. But in a couple of years, it starts being used as a | slur (by the other people who dislike the specific | people) and quickly becomes a Bad Word. This process | keeps repeating ad infinitum and you're not going to | solve it by successively banning each subsequent word and | coming up with a new one which is now politically | correct. | | I don't think the words themselves are the problem here? | The problem is that some people don't think well of some | specific groups of people and whatever term is being used | to refer to the specific group of people quickly becomes | a Bad Word. And I don't think we'll solve this problem by | banning the Bad Word and replacing it with the Good Word. | dghlsakjg wrote: | Retarded, in this context, is being used specifically as | an insult by using a superseded medical term to imply | that a person is of lesser intellect. The condition in | question, intellectual disability as it is now known, is | one that cannot be influenced by a person's actions, but | is a consequence of birth. | | In western culture it is usually considered offensive to | use a characteristic that is a consequence of birth as an | insult. For example: "Don't be such a black | person/jew/asian" is considered offensive because you | cannot control the trait of your race any more than you | can control an intellectual disability. | | Compounding that, as I mentioned above, the term | 'retarded' or 'mentally retarded' is no longer used | medically or legally, in the same way that 'moron' and | 'idiot' aren't considered diagnoses anymore. | | Therefore, using the term 'retarded' is culturally | associated - _exclusively_ - with insulting a person 's | actions by comparing them to someone who is disabled with | the implication that a disabled person would necessarily | act foolishly or irrationally. | | It would be the same as if you needed an explanation | simplified for you, and from then on every person who | then needed a simpler explanation was then said to have | 'needed a Tasuki'. You can surely understand, even if you | personally don't mind, how that might cause offense. | | After all, you are 'somewhat offended' by someone | assuming that a link might provide a sufficient | explanation instead of holding your hand through the | explanation like someone who lacks reason, empathy, logic | and intelligence ... Or do I need to Tasuki that further | for you? | tasuki wrote: | > In western culture it is usually considered offensive | to use a characteristic that is a consequence of birth as | an insult. | | The problem is the insult, not the characteristic that is | a consequence of birth. "You're retarded" is offensive, | while "you're Asian" isn't. What about "You don't have | legs" said to a person born with no legs? It might or | might not be offensive, depending on the context. | | > Therefore, using the term 'retarded' is culturally | associated - exclusively - with insulting a person's | actions by comparing them to someone who is disabled with | the implication that a disabled person would necessarily | act foolishly or irrationally. | | I get how calling someone retarded might be considered | offensive, but jesuscript specifically said that _Stripe | was not retarded_. How is that offensive? Would you be | offended if I said you were not retarded? | | > Or do I need to Tasuki that further for you? | | Oh please do tasuki that further for me, I'm a simple man | and not offended by you suggesting so. | rgifford wrote: | Is it worse to have some condition of your birth used as a | casual insult -- a reminder of the generally accepted | disfavor of your condition? | | Or is it worse to be constantly patronized, behind your | back, by throngs hell-bent on pretending away that | generally accepted disfavor (and even Darwin himself)? | bombolo wrote: | Because they hire people they don't need to show growth and | attract investors. | mkl95 wrote: | You can break some records while failing to achieve your goals. | Companies set unrealistic OKRs all the time. | skeeter2020 wrote: | I think's actually required to set unrealistic OKRs, but | they're called "stretch" goals, like if only you'd try a | leetle bit harder... | akshaykumar90 wrote: | The decision to lay off must be made months ago. The point | about setting a new record is to convey and reassure future | growth potential to investors and employees (who are also stock | holders). | nytesky wrote: | I am always wary of non financial metrics. Eyeballs, DAU, | transactions. The old yarn about selling $2 for $1 and making | it up on volume comes to mind. | rboyd wrote: | first one of these I've seen that included an alumni email | account | laweijfmvo wrote: | what would be the purpose of this? sincerely hope it's not so | they can reach out to former employees for free consulting | corentin88 wrote: | Is this confirmed? More sources? | TSiege wrote: | Agreed, this is the thinnest source for being at the top of | hacker news | code51 wrote: | They say it was announced through company-wide email so I think | pretty easy to be confirmed in around 1 hour by the media. | [deleted] | lxgr wrote: | https://stripe.com/newsroom/news/ceo-patrick-collisons-email... | pid-1 wrote: | > In making these changes, you might reasonably wonder whether | Stripe's leadership made some errors of judgment. We'd go further | than that. In our view, we made two very consequential mistakes, | and we want to highlight them here since they're important: | | > - We were much too optimistic about the internet economy's | near-term growth in 2022 and 2023 and underestimated both the | likelihood and impact of a broader slowdown. | | > - We grew operating costs too quickly. Buoyed by the success | we're seeing in some of our new product areas, we allowed | coordination costs to grow and operational inefficiencies to seep | in. | | https://stripe.com/br/newsroom/news/ceo-patrick-collisons-em... | alexpetralia wrote: | I would argue CEOs generally find it optimal to "overgrow" | during boom periods and "cut" during bust periods. This is why | we see the routinely observe the pattern. It is not because a | bunch of confused CEOs are constantly making mistakes. This was | expected, even planned for (if not explicitly). This is how | startups work. Overgrow, then cut, then overgrow again. | Layoffs, especially around moonshots or non-revenue-generating | teams, are only problematic for PR purposes. | zeroonetwothree wrote: | It's true but it would be nice if they were honest about it. | It makes sense as a strategy because, if the bust doesn't | come (or as soon as you think), then you'd much rather be in | the position of having grown to take advantage of it than | not. | bombcar wrote: | It seems to me they are moderately open about it. "We | expected things to keep growing, acted on that, it didn't, | now acting on that." | | I suppose they could say "we thought the economy might | contract in 2022 as it would eventually, but that risk was | more palatable than not growing and missing out vs our | competitors if the contraction didn't happen." | iterati wrote: | And, of course, the leadership aren't suffering their mistakes. | [deleted] | [deleted] | BaseballPhysics wrote: | That first point is key, and I think they're being... less than | honest. | | The reality is there's very little evidence for an actual | "broader slowdown". GDP growth in the US was decent in the last | quarter despite a huge decline in home sales and headwinds from | inflation, and unemployment remains at record lows. There's | certainly some signs for concern, but the only real, persistent | decline has been in the stock market (which, honestly, is why | this whole period is kinda weird). | | The truth, when I look at these stories, is many of these tech | companies expected the major changes during COVID, which lead | to huge boosts in revenue for a lot of tech companies, to | persist post-COVID, and that simply didn't pan out. The result | is a lot of businesses with bloated workforces predicated on | long-term financial projections that haven't panned out. | | But, Stripe can't admit they made a major strategic blunder-- | the exact same blunder made by companies like Peloton--so they | have to blame it on "a broader slowdown" since then they have | an exogenous factor they can point to rather than admitting | they were just caught up in the techno-optimism of a | transformed post-COVID society. | meragrin_ wrote: | > The reality is there's very little evidence for an actual | "broader slowdown". | | I wish I could be in your bubble. In mine, people have been | spending more on less month after month. Businesses are | seeing slowdowns. Things are going to be even worse when the | winter heating starts. | chasd00 wrote: | One thing that i think hits Stripe harder than most is all | the people who quit their jobs to do their own thing. You | know they all setup Stripe accounts for e-com and other | invoice/payment functionality. I think reality is pushing | them back to regular day jobs and those new Stripe accounts | are going to sit with zero transactions. | waprin wrote: | The blog post literally says Stripe has higher transaction | volume than ever. | | Anecdotally my indie friends all report modest revenue | growth this year while my big tech friends report more work | for less money (due to equity grants decline). | | From the data I see, the "reality" is not the failed indie | dev but the failed inefficient big tech company. | chaos_emergent wrote: | Beyond pc _explicitly_ admitting that they made the mistake | you 're saying they didn't, Stripe and other payment | processors, especially internet payment processors, are | extremely sensitive to economic forecasts. I can think of | three obvious reasons that current market conditions would | tell them to prepare for a macroeconomic downturn: | | 1) The housing market is the largest asset base in the | world's wealthiest country and changes in that market | reliably predict macroeconomic downturns (1). 2) E-commerce | transactions are supported more than the economy as a whole | by discretionary income. Interest rates drastically change | consumers' spending habits; when rates rise, discretionary | spending drops as consumers save more (2). You can infer that | the GDP of e-commerce decreases at a rate higher than the | larger economy because of that drop in spending. 3) Stripe | has a very high retention rate for its customers. That | counterintuitively increases the volatility of its stock | because of increasing interest rates (3) | | Beyond the appeal to intuition you made around tech companies | assuming that post-COVID demand would remain, there are | plenty of reasons that a payment processor that primarily | services e-commerce would need to downsize. They are simply | more sensitive to macroeconomic conditions. | | [1] https://seekingalpha.com/article/4535186-how-to-predict- | a-re... [2] | https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/071715/how-do- | chang... [3] https://whoisnnamdi.com/high-retention-high- | volatility/ | fullshark wrote: | I think the fact that they used "internet economy" and not | "economy" in their letter is basically a shorthand way of | conveying exactly what you say here, though in a less self- | flagellating way. | pixl97 wrote: | >The reality is there's very little evidence for an actual | "broader slowdown". | | I'm not sure about 'broader slowdown' but in the industry I'm | in we've seen a massive slowdown in signups and expansions in | the existing customers. When we speak with our customers, | especially banks, they are seeing massive slowdowns on their | side. | | Someone has bad metrics here, and when most of our customers | across a wide range of industries are laying off, then I'd | say that's pretty broad. | [deleted] | ryandrake wrote: | I always wonder if the chicken or egg comes first. Maybe | I'm living in a bubble, but I didn't see any broad slowdown | until companies started laying off, saying there's this | broad slowdown that's totally coming soon. Now, with people | being laid off and tightening their spending, leading to an | actual slowdown, the prophecy is fulfilled! | | The last recession had a pretty clear cause you could point | your finger at: The collapse of subprime mortgages. This | one (presumably we're about to experience one) and the | first dot-com crash didn't seem to be caused by anything | besides a critical mass of businessmen agreeing "Well look | at that, we're headed into an economic slowdown!" | pixl97 wrote: | Inflation came first. Then the controls to slow Inflation | raise the cost of borrowing money. We're seeing the | fallout of that now. | theGnuMe wrote: | Corp greed came first I think.. inflation due to covid | was transitory. | donedealomg wrote: | umeshunni wrote: | Lol, ok, Bernie. | mc32 wrote: | Inflation goes up, cost of borrowing money goes up (cars, | mortgages) -> less money to spend on non-essentials and | the essentials get pared down to the minimum. | mbreese wrote: | _> The reality is there 's very little evidence for an actual | "broader slowdown". GDP growth in the US was decent in the | last quarter despite a huge decline in home sales and | headwinds from inflation, and unemployment remains at record | lows._ | | I thinks as a payment processor, they are in a better | position than most to predict sales trends. This effect might | be restricted to their segment of the market. But if the | payments they process are down significantly, then does it | matter (to Stripe) if parts of the economy that they aren't | involved in are more robust? | | I'm not excusing actions, but they have more data on the | economy than most, just from their position in it. They may | have thought (their part of) the market was going to keep | growing (the mistake), but that doesn't change the fact that | it isn't. | | I just feel bad for everyone affected. | dxbydt wrote: | > if the payments they process are down significantly, then | does it matter | | Closest comparable is Adyen, processes 516B with 2500 | employees. | | Stripe processes 640B with 7000 employees. | spamizbad wrote: | Stripe's reach as a processor probably isn't broad enough | to see those kinds of trends. Their processing fees are | quite high so there's huge industry sectors that will just | never touch them. | bastardoperator wrote: | I don't know why you're getting downvoted because | everything you said is 100% true. Stripe is small time | when it comes to merchant services. | tomnipotent wrote: | Stripe processes in the area of $350-400bln annually, | which is equivalent to about 1/10th the GDP of the U.K. | That's absolutely enough volume to see macro trends as it | relates the classes of merchants they support. | spamizbad wrote: | FIS, which I don't even think is one of the largest, does | over 600B _per quarter_ in the globally and 12 figures | yearly. | | Stripe needs to 6-7x its processing to be one of the | largest. | tomnipotent wrote: | Who said anything about being the largest? The question | was whether they have sufficient data to make predictions | about future trends, especially as it applies to their | business. | DebtDeflation wrote: | >GDP growth in the US was decent in the last quarter......and | unemployment remains at record lows. | | That is correct. However, I work as a consultant and deal | with a lot of senior execs at large companies (mostly non- | tech) and I can tell you that they are all in a panic right | now and expect an absolute economic bloodbath next year. It's | going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It really feels | like Wile E Coyote after he's run off a ledge but hasn't | realized it or started falling yet. Very weird. | ulfw wrote: | Agree 100% with you. Also having talked to recruiters there I | found them absolutely disorganised. At least here in APAC. | Might be better stateside. They gave me the impression of not | really knowing what org to build and job | descriptions/titles/org changed wildly during talks (and then | abruptly ended, leaving me with a terrible impression). The | one thing they kept going on about though is how they're the | biggest bestest most promising of unicorns and how much | they'd be in 'super growth mode' | jesuscript wrote: | The stock market didn't really decline. There was a | speculative play at the beginning of the pandemic that | allowed the shitheads that run that game to do a reallocation | of capital from "pandemic hit" industries to tech. That's why | tech ballooned to stupid levels. I say speculative because | while it may have been right to reallocate away from, say, | Airlines stocks, there was no good reason to run up tech to | those absurd levels. | | Tech didn't get hit by interest rates, it's just a | reallocation of that influx of money back to other sectors. | People didn't stop using tech. Now they reallocated out of | tech (the way it was supposed to be around 2019), and all | these shithead companies are saying "we're fucked, our stock | tanked". No, your stock went back to healthy levels, your | stock was just a bank for two years, that's all. | [deleted] | BaseballPhysics wrote: | Yup, good points. The stock market has been pretty damn | _volatile_ , which is to be expected given the broader | geopolitical context, the chaos of the post-COVID recovery, | etc, but the stock of a ton of these tech companies just | reverted to the mean, which is exactly what you'd expect if | the changes during COVID failed to persist. | 650REDHAIR wrote: | Anecdote here, but I sell vintage clothing, electronics, and | furniture on the side and have noticed a substantial downturn | in sales this year. Lower than pre-pandemic levels. | austenallred wrote: | > But, Stripe can't admit they made a major strategic blunder | | They quite literally say that? | | "In our view, we made two very consequential mistakes, and we | want to highlight them here since they're important: | | We were much too optimistic about the internet economy's | near-term growth in 2022 and 2023 and underestimated both the | likelihood and impact of a broader slowdown. | | We grew operating costs too quickly. Buoyed by the success | we're seeing in some of our new product areas, we allowed | coordination costs to grow and operational inefficiencies to | seep in." | [deleted] | xadhominemx wrote: | There has not really been a broader slowdown in credit card | processing volumes. Visa and MasterCard had good earnings | and guidance last week. What's really happened is exactly | what BaseballPhysics said - the pace of Stripes share gain | has slowed dramatically post-COVID. | ergocoder wrote: | In what world this person lives in? | | What do you there is no slowdown? It slows down | everywhere. A lot of companies' revenue is slowing down. | higlen22 wrote: | How do you know more than Stripe's entire leadership | team? Someone should hire you. | giantrobot wrote: | What senior management says publicly, what they say | internally, and what the _actual_ truth is are not | necessarily the same thing. The GP I think is suggesting | what they 're saying publicly is not necessarily the | truth. | ergocoder wrote: | So, you are saying there is no economic slowdown? Have | you looked outside? | BaseballPhysics wrote: | Why would I look outside? That's how you find out the | weather. | | I looked at the data. US GDP growth was positive in the | third quarter. Unemployment is at record lows. | | Again, there are headwinds. Inflation is high and as a | result consumer confidence is low. That's bad. But the | only people crying "recession" are people paying too much | attention to the stock market. The real story is far more | complex, and there's very little sign of a broad based | economic slowdown. | | Would you care to provide the data you're using to back | up _your_ claims? | ergocoder wrote: | Here is one data point: | | For example, Lyft and Shopify who are one of the largest | customers of Stripe is slowing down in their revenue | growth. You can just look at their financials in the past | few quarters. They even have layoffs themselves. | | That majorly has negative impact on stripe's revenue. | BaseballPhysics wrote: | Cool, two companies, one (Shopify) which saw a huge bump | in revenues during COVID thanks to a rise in internet | purchasing and is seeing the numbers slump back to normal | as shopping habits revert to the mean, and the other | (Lyft) that's in an industry that declined throughout | COVID due to pandemic concerns and hasn't surged back in | the face of competition from both Uber and traditional | cabs. | | Again: I have data about the entire economy. That data | tells a story that's mixed but relatively positive. | | You have two specific examples, each of which represent a | corner of entire economic sectors, and those sectors | represent only a fraction of the total economy. | | And I'm supposed to conclude that you're the one who has | it right? | ergocoder wrote: | > Cool, two companies, one (Shopify) which saw a huge | bump in revenues during COVID thanks to a rise in | internet purchasing and is seeing the numbers slump back | to normal as shopping habits revert to the mean, and the | other (Lyft) that's in an industry that declined | throughout COVID due to pandemic concerns and hasn't | surged back in the face of competition from both Uber and | traditional cabs. | | Why would your explanation matter? | | The conclusion still remains. Their revenue slows down. | Therefore, stripe's revenue slows down. | | For sure, it is not growing faster. | | You didn't contradict my point at all. | | > Again: I have data about the entire economy. That data | tells a story that's mixed but relatively positive | | Stripe's revenue growth does indeed slows down. There is | no dispute of that. | | If Stripe was making 1 trillions USD more, they wouldn't | have laid off people, obviously. | | Now I or the founders claim it is because the macro | economic is bad. You might contradict this part. | | Well you have been taunting it for 2 comments now. Can | you share your evidence? Or we should continue quibble a | bit more first? | xadhominemx wrote: | There is not a slowdown in nominal consumer expenditure, | which is what matters for Stripe. | ergocoder wrote: | That is not true. Multiple Stripe customers have layoff | due to slow down revenue growth themselves. | | For example, Lyft is laying off people today. | | Are we in a different universe or what? | xadhominemx wrote: | Yes, Stripe customers have seen slowing growth post-COVID | which is why Stripe's pace of share gain has slowed. | Macro, ie nominal consumer expenditures, has remained | strong. | ergocoder wrote: | Stripe is a growth company. When it doesn't grow, it has | to scale back. | | > nominal consumer expenditures, has remained strong. | | Compared to when? Not last year for sure. | xadhominemx wrote: | Do you know what "nominal consumer expenditures" means? | | https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCE | giantrobot wrote: | I didn't say anything about an economic slowdown. What I | said was Stripe's management may not be telling the whole | truth with their statements. | ergocoder wrote: | You meant stripe management lie about the economic | slowdown.... | | It is slowing down. | dehrmann wrote: | > We were much too optimistic about the internet economy's | near-term growth in 2022 and 2023 | | A lot of this was driven by covid-cautious WFH culture. Someone | working from home in the Bay Area in January 2022 might not | realize the extent other industries are back in the office and | other regions are done with covid. | breck wrote: | 1) Any Stripers looking for work we have plenty | (https://publicdomaincompany.com/) and it's as meaningful as it | gets. breck7@gmail.com or 1-415-937-1984 | | 2) Saving this in case I ever need to tell a portfolio company | how to do a layoff. | gzer0 wrote: | * Severance pay. We will pay 14 weeks of severance for all | departing employees, and more for those with longer tenure. That | is, those departing will be paid until at least February 21st | 2023. * Bonus. We will pay our 2022 annual bonus for all | departing employees, regardless of their departure date. (It will | be prorated for people hired in 2022.) * PTO. We'll pay for | all unused PTO time (including in regions where that's not | legally required). * Healthcare. We'll pay the cash | equivalent of 6 months of existing healthcare premiums or | healthcare continuation. * RSU vesting. We'll accelerate | everyone who has already reached their one-year vesting cliff to | the February 2023 vesting date (or longer, depending on departure | date). For those who haven't reached their vesting cliffs, we'll | waive the cliff. | | While layoffs in general suck, the terms of this one are quite | substantially better than many other companies. | travismark wrote: | what is "unused PTO" - I thought every company was now on the | unlimited/zero PTO model | eclipxe wrote: | What made you think every company had unlimited PTO?! | okaram wrote: | I don't know of any big company with unlimited PTO. | k4ch0w wrote: | Three weeks PTO at Stripe, that's it. | jvanderbot wrote: | Wait, you really thought every company had unlimited PTO? | Like, every single one? | vimda wrote: | Under non-US countries, they're still required to offer time | off in employment contracts, and payout for unused time off | under that contract | latortuga wrote: | Unlimited PTO sucks for employees. It isn't the case in every | state but some states, including mine, require employers to | pay out PTO upon separation. So having unlimited | automatically means you get paid out nothing on separation, a | bad deal for employees. If you're allowed to take time off, | then you have earned it but because of the policy, you don't | get to realize the benefit of having earned it upon | separation. | | Unlimited PTO also discourages using PTO because nobody wants | to be seen as the person taking the most vacation. And there | are therefore no useful guidelines about how much is | reasonable or allowed. A written or de facto company policy | of "if you take more than 2 weeks of PTO per year, you'll be | seen as abusing the system" is not unlimited PTO, it's an | excuse to not pay people. | jedberg wrote: | > Unlimited PTO also discourages using PTO because nobody | wants to be seen as the person taking the most vacation. | | That depends on the management. I took more vacation at | Netflix than anywhere else (where we had unlimited PTO). | But the management made a point of talking about their | extended vacations and making sure all the VPs took at | least a few weeks of vacation every year to set a good | example. | | There was no stigma to taking vacation. | gamblor956 wrote: | I have actually received performance review notes at my | current and former job (both with unlimited PTO) for not | taking enough PTO... | | But in both cases, the CEOs actively encouraged PTO. At my | current job, people take PTO regularly (several people at | my department have taken roughly 3-4 months of PTO over the | course of the past 12 months, and were promoted). What | matters isn't time-in-seat, but whether tasks get done. | datavirtue wrote: | "Unlimited PTO also discourages using PTO because nobody | wants to be seen as the person taking the most vacation" | | This fallacy needs to die. When I was at GE everyone in my | blast radius took at least 1 month per year. Many took much | more than that. There was no stigma. | jcadam wrote: | I was laid off at the beginning of October and still can't find | anything. It's definitely a buyer's market for senior level | engineering talent. | DeathArrow wrote: | Me too. I was laid off at the beginning of October. I got | three good offers, picked the best and signed the contract. | | I went through about 15 interviews and applied to maybe 50 | positions. | WFHRenaissance wrote: | What sort of engineer are you and how many years of | experience? | jcadam wrote: | 16 years. Working at the Senior/Staff level. | | Most recently Clojure work. I've done a lot of Java of | course, although I've been rejected from some of those jobs | because I spent the last year doing Clojure full time | instead of Java. | kyawzazaw wrote: | Amperity in Seattle uses Clojure | [deleted] | kamkazemoose wrote: | My company is actually hiring senior/staff Clojure devs. | | https://grnh.se/08cec3bb4us - Senior Engineer | https://grnh.se/5c028b554us - Staff Engineer | | You should take a look and let me know if you have any | questions. | bogomipz wrote: | Any company that rejects your 15 years of Java and other | language experience because you spent the last year | working in a Clojure shop is probably not a good company | to work for. And not worthy of you. Think of it as your | filter. | throw8383833jj wrote: | yeah, it gets to be tough once you get over the 10 to 15 | year mark. Alot of companies probably prefer younger | folks. | cappuccinooo wrote: | wtf is happening in software? it seems tough to break in, | and apparently it gets tough after ten years? so there's | a ten year gap where the 'going is good'? | okaram wrote: | Different people have different experiences. | | From what I have seen, it's slightly hard to get the | first position, easy after that. | | It's not hard to get a position after 10 or 20 years, | but, if you lose your position, you may need to adjust | your expectations. | karmasimida wrote: | I think it is mainly because in some startup or smaller | shops they don't need senior staff to work on their | problems | | Plus, senior folks are expensive | jcadam wrote: | You use inexperienced and/or cheap programmers to build | the foundation of your company. Then you bring in | experienced folks to keep the barely-functional ball of | mud shambling along for the next 10 years. | | It's the SV way. | hattmall wrote: | Yes, but it started roughly 10 years ago. It wasn't hard | to break in and being older didn't matter. Now we have a | massive glut of CS/IT graduates and a maturing industry | exiting the rapid growth phase. On top of that we have a | market and economy being propped up by 2 trillion in | reverse repos. | | https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RRPONTSYD | Rezwoodly wrote: | Lmao not at all. | yieldcrv wrote: | I erase years off my resume | | People expect the 10 year engineer to be a 10x engineer | lol | jcadam wrote: | I guess I need to figure out how to do this without it | being obvious. | soperj wrote: | Just don't put years worked at a job on the resume. I | never have and I've never been asked. Most relevant jobs | go first. | unexpected wrote: | This is monumentally stupid, but I wonder if you should | just leave the last year of Clojure off of your resume. | Grazester wrote: | Amazon and Google are always calling, even now I gets emails | from both. Amazon recruiters just spam me. Shoot your shot | there if interested | rexreed wrote: | Recruiters are always willing to waste your time especially | since their job is to provide their employers options, and | besides they need their pay as well. If they aren't | recruiting, then they aren't justifying their own salaries. | So while you might be getting interview or connection | requests, that doesn't correlate to actual hiring. | CTDOCodebases wrote: | They mine you CV for info and use that for lead | generation. | confidantlake wrote: | Yeah, did the google interview late this summer and then | they froze hiring. Got contacted by a recruiter from google | last month. Told him I had already interviewed. He told me | I should just wait until the freeze is over and not | interview again. | sulam wrote: | The freeze has been over for weeks. I do an interview | every week, and my team has two open roles right now. | ketzo wrote: | Amazon announced a corporate-level hiring freeze just | today, FYI. | okaram wrote: | Meh ... From their announcement: | | we will hire backfills to replace employees who move on | to new opportunities, and there are some targeted places | where we will continue to hire people incrementally | karmasimida wrote: | Recruiters are actually slow in this development, because | it happens last night after 8 PM PST. | | Effectively no offer would be able to generate through | the system. | | I would say the Amazon spam will go away for next 6 | months if not longer. | DeathArrow wrote: | Funny, I did my first interview with them a week ago. | X-Istence wrote: | Someone should tell the two recruiters in my inbox... | kemiller wrote: | They're not really serious. | truthwhisperer wrote: | kemiller wrote: | Took me ~3-4 months of steady work, but good things are still | out there. | megablast wrote: | > Took me ~3-4 months of steady work | | Were you unemployed or working. | xyst wrote: | I feel most decent engineers can get rehired elsewhere with 14 | weeks of runway. I do agree this is generous af. | | Most companies just give out minimum severance. No acceleration | of vesting. Healthcare continues for maybe 1-2 months. I know | at my current company, I will lose all PTO. | oblio wrote: | > I feel most decent engineers can get rehired elsewhere with | 14 weeks of runway. | | Oh, sweet summer children and children of recession free | economies for IT. | | If job openings fall to 10-20-30% of current ones and tens, | hundreds of thousands of IT workers are fired, good luck | getting hired quickly, when any of the few good remaining job | opening has hundreds of good applicants. | | We'll be back to the days of: | | Sure, you can code, your algorithms are efficient and your CV | is impressive, but can you tell me how many overloads of | string.contains are there in the Foo lang standard library? | Ah, you say that's unfair? Well, the previous 10 candidates | where just as good as you so we need more. We need you to hit | the ground running, be productive the first week and be | coaching our experienced devs within the first month. | [deleted] | sirsinsalot wrote: | I've been a continuously hired coder for 20 years, with | zero qualifications, and have never experienced anything | but demand even in recession. | | There's always non FAANG boring crud apps to code. | throwayyy479087 wrote: | I want to write boring ground-up CRUD apps. How do I find | that work? I'm tired of big distributed systems that are | too complex for a person to grok. | jacobsenscott wrote: | Can we please retire this "sweet summer child" thing? It is | annoying af, rude, and likely never written by anyone over | 30. | nfgivivu wrote: | sammalloy wrote: | Tell me you're not a fan of GOT without telling me... | slackfan wrote: | Oh you sweet summer child. | fny wrote: | Do you know how much hiring and job hopping happened over | COVID? | | Stripe began aggressively hiring in Europe in 2021: | https://twitter.com/collision/status/1356275041277657088 | | The same applies to all the big tech cos. Facebook was | actually complaining about not being able to find talent as | recently as December. [0] | | [0]: https://www.protocol.com/workplace/facebook-docs- | hiring-recr... | | Stop believing the bullshit you're being fed. | bogomipz wrote: | I can not understand how your comment relates to the | parent in any meaningful way. The tech hiring boom that | occurred with Covid was certainly one contributor to | over-staffing. | | The parent is simply stating that market conditions are | changing and that it might not necessarily a given that | it will be so easy to find something new if we continue | to see layoffs. That all seems pretty logical. However | your response seem to be two links that are now a year | out of date and bizarre statement to "Stop believing the | bullshit you're being fed"? | acjohnson55 wrote: | I think that scenario is increasingly unlikely. Unlike the | past two downturns, there are vastly more mature companies | with devs essential to their business models. | RC_ITR wrote: | >I feel most decent engineers | | Get ready for the definition of 'decent' to get a lot more | scary... | bergenty wrote: | That's really cool of stripe. That's a comfy launchpad for your | next job search. | udev wrote: | Makes sense. There is an expectation that they might want to | welcome some of these people back at some point. | system2 wrote: | Would anyone go back and work at an office where they were | laid off? | Pasorrijer wrote: | Definitely. | | We laid a ton of people off due to Covid. One year later | back in business, hired most of them back. | lr4444lr wrote: | Companies that come crawling back on their knees to you are | usually ready to substantially up your comp. or improve | your work duties, considering the position they must be in | to be trying it. | FerociousTimes wrote: | Definitely me. | | I don't take these events personally, it's strictly | business after all, esp when the termination agreement is | generous enough, and conduct is kept professional and | decent between the employer and employees. | | It's like a breakup but on very amicable terms, it sucks at | first esp when it's abrupt but you get used to it, and | there's always the chance of you getting back together. | | No hard feelings! | cableshaft wrote: | Depends on how much I liked the job and if there was any | hope of being paid what I'm paying now. | | I can think of three jobs I would happily go back to if | they paid what I get paid now (and the companies still | existed). One game dev company, one game publisher, and one | retail job, where I mostly chatted with other employees, | stocked and cleaned up shelves, and helped about a 1-2 | dozen customers a night. | | My current job I might be willing to come back to at some | point if I left it. It has some warts, but it's been pretty | good overall. | | Other past jobs, not unless they paid 50-100% more than I'm | making now. Nothing against them necessarily, but I | wouldn't want to have that job again. | yodsanklai wrote: | In a big company with thousands of employees, for sure. You | probably won't even see the same faces. It's totally | impersonal. In a smaller company, it's different. I | actually left a (small) company in very good terms, but | yet, I feel it would be weird going back there. | chrischattin wrote: | Absolutely. The airlines do it all the time with pilots via | furloughs during downturns. | mrtweetyhack wrote: | amalcon wrote: | I've known people to be laid off from one position, apply | for a different position at the same company the next day, | and end up hired into that position. It can happen. | 0xjmp wrote: | I enjoyed working at Stripe. I would go back. | geuis wrote: | Sure, depending on the circumstances. Had a friend just | start back at a company in a different city after leaving | for a couple years. He left mainly because of a bad manager | the first time. That wasn't being laid off, but it's | similar. | | Sometimes companies need to do layoffs to survive, or they | merged and have duplicate roles. Lots of reasons. It makes | sense to take care of good talent that have to be let go in | case they come back later. | baq wrote: | leaving on your own terms is most definitely not being | laid off. not even close. | haggy102 wrote: | I would yea, especially if the separation was handled well | and I was still looking for consistent work. | djur wrote: | It happens in other industries all the time. Knew a guy who | got laid off from the same factory 3 times in 8 years or | so. I've even seen it happen once or twice in tech. | truthwhisperer wrote: | pugio wrote: | Random shot here, but I work for a non profit interested in | building a better kind of education (focused on programming, ml, | and data science). | | We've been having a hard time figuring out how to hire qualified | people to build top-notch educational content because we pay less | than industry rates. | | The upside is that we do meaningful work, have good health care, | decent pay, good work environment, (edit: also fully remote- | able), and job stability (we're funded by philanthropists and | don't need to make a profit). | | If anyone hit by the recent layoffs is passionate about good | education and would like a change of pace, feel free to email me | (address in profile) to start a conversation. | dimitrios1 wrote: | I think most of us graybeards here might agree that a focus on | STEM, and programming particularly, is not in any way shape or | form a better education. The treatment of the humanities as | "lesser" has been catastrophic, in my opinion. | pugio wrote: | I didn't mean that "a better education is one which focuses | on programming". We'd like to improve education across the | board, but have chosen to focus our efforts on STEM topics at | the moment. | | Humanities are by no means lesser, they're just not what | we're focused on, presently. (Also, a really good humanities | education probably looks very different from a really good | STEM education setup. Different challenges, different | problems to solve, at least initially.) | j-krieger wrote: | Have you considered hiring outside of the US? | irrational wrote: | > to build top-notch educational content | | I'm confused as to whether you are looking to hire | Instructional Designers (who probably have a masters degree in | educational/instructional psychology) to design/build | educational content, or if you are looking for programmers to | build the learning management system (LMS) to host the content | the Instructional Designers are building. Or... maybe you are | looking for programmers to be subject matter experts for the | Instructional Designers? | | I sure hope you are not trying to get programmers to design and | build top-notch educational content. That's like asking a | programmer to also do the work of a graphic designer. They are | two entirely different skill sets. | pugio wrote: | In short: we're looking for people with overlap between | instructional design experience and programing+ml industry | experience, to create instructional content. | | A masters in education/instructional psychology isn't needed, | so long as you can demonstrate pedagogical aptitude. In other | words, can you put yourself in the mind of a beginner, and | craft an explanation which is clear, intuitive, and | anticipates common student questions/pitfalls? | amrrs wrote: | Are you also US only hiring or True Remote from the other | side of the globe ? | mrits wrote: | Have you tried paying industry rates? I've never understood the | idea that a greater number of less qualified people is a way to | build a "top-notch" product. Scale down and hire the people you | need. | pugio wrote: | It's a fair point. Qualified ML people working at big | companies command huge salaries. Work at big tech: get lots | of $$ and access to big compute. | | Our value prop is different. Work with us, and do something | really meaningful. I think that's a pretty normal tradeoff | between for-profit and non-profit companies, no? (Higher pay | vs possibly higher goal satisfaction). | ivraatiems wrote: | How far below industry are you? What's your tech stack? | | Have you posted in the "who is hiring" threads? | __Parfait__ wrote: | If you're in the US, try a marketing pivot to minorities & the | disadvantaged, then seek grants. Just a shot in the dark | though. | sngz wrote: | what kinda positions are you looking to fill? I currently work | for less than industry rates by far but I enjoy the work life | balance and generous PTO, and I wouldn't mind doing some more | interesting work for the same. | augasur wrote: | As it is sad news for those who have been impacted, severance | packages seems quite generous, with 14 weeks of pay and vesting | acceleration. | benreesman wrote: | Stripe is a great company. I interviewed there once and they | passed, and I still think it's a great company. | | Pat Collison is one of the great hackers of our age, and he | embodied the YC motto better than most: "Make something that | people want." | | I'm sure the cuts are painful, but as a person who is quite | literally bereaved: life goes on, and Stripe will still be a | great company 5 or 10 years from now. | tannhauser23 wrote: | 6 months of health insurance is huge. Props to Stripes for | offering that. | treis wrote: | Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33450152 | eatonphil wrote: | Unlike that, this is a stripe.com post. | SeanAnderson wrote: | Dang will merge the dupes | gjsman-1000 wrote: | [deleted] | jasmer wrote: | This is the part I don't like. | | Stripe is a hugely successful company and they have no urgent | material need to let people go. This is an optimization effort. | | I actually do believe that 'pruning' is a healthy thing for | organizations, to enable them to be nimble and dynamic - however | - obviously this comes at great social cost. | | The benefits of 'pruning' come at the cost of externalizing | regular, creating real human challenges. | | One somewhat obvious solution might be to 'reallocate' people for | a while, and have them do 'window dressing' (like in Japan) while | this happens. Some would argue this doesn't get you to the | pruning, because there needs to be an element of existential | churn, but I suggest otherwise. | | At minimum, growing companies should 'find stuff' for people to | do. Stripe is 100% looking to the future, there is no doubt, so | maybe we can try to find a way to make this work on their future | endeavours. | | I feel that the whole 'California' project elides the negatives: | homelessness in Los Angeles has reached impossible levels, there | always were enormous problems with equality at least partially | due to lack of civil resources, adverse school funding etc.. | | This is not a 'model' to brag about. | | I think we can do better. | anm89 wrote: | It's a business, not a charity. Their goal is to optimize. | guax wrote: | Exactly, its goal its to make money only for the | shareholders. Anybody else can go to hell. /s | Axsuul wrote: | The employees are also technically shareholders, no? | spbaar wrote: | Window dressing projects might be a bit much, but in general it | is curious that for all the noise Zuckerberg and Pichai have | made about productivity, they don't really complain that the | headcount is holding back a project or initiative. If I was on | the board, I would be much more concerned that the org is not | able to use the headcount to grow marketshare/topline/new lines | of business more so than anything else. | p0pcult wrote: | dang wrote: | " _Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents._ " | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | | Please avoid generic ideological battle especially - it just | makes threads predictable, therefore boring and eventually | nasty. | p0pcult wrote: | Why is it that discussing the way that the wealthy in | America conduct nonstop class warfare, is always itself | derided as class war? | | This style of capitalism does not exist everywhere; this is | not flamebait, and it is not a generic tangent. It is | completely relevant to the parent comment. | pvg wrote: | It's a generic tangent because you can attach it to | almost anything - it's just a short, shallow reflexive | trope comment and not a meaningful critique of anything. | The latter is totally fine, the former is something the | that's bad for the forum. | jelling wrote: | > Stripe is a hugely successful company and they have no urgent | material need to let people go | | Indirectly, what you are suggesting is that the company string | people along for as long as possible and give them busy work. | So people would get the money, but not their time. | | What Stripe did with their severance package is give employees | both the money and their time back. Few people would likely | prefer still having to go to a pointless job. | | (And of course Stripe had an urgent need to let people go, they | wouldn't have the money to pay such significant, if any, | severance.) | | There is no "zero costs" way to operate an economy. If we | increase the long-term responsibilities of a company to their | employees - as opposed to giving the same amount of safety net | via public means - it will have a significant impact on | willingness to hire. | | Stripe's severance package, which is as generous or more so | than the most advanced democratic socialist countries, is about | as good as one can hope or should hope to get from a company. | | If longer benefits are desired, the voters of California would | need to come together on that and figure out how to finance it. | But conflating the LA homeless / drug crisis with the 14-week | severance packages for high skilled workers doesn't add up. | | (Side notes: the perception of job loss in Japan is drastically | different than in the U.S. and the Bank of Japan has been | lending money at near zero rates for decades. The result has | been a plethora of zombie companies.) | draw_down wrote: | MuffinFlavored wrote: | > they have no urgent material need to let people go | | Why doesn't the company reserve the right to optimize/choose to | focus on profit? | guax wrote: | They do, but it would be novel if for once, they choose | decency instead of profit. | twblalock wrote: | That could easily turn out to be suboptimal for "decency" | in the long term. If the company does not operate | efficiently, it might have to lay off more than 14% of its | workforce a year from now. | LudwigNagasena wrote: | What's so bad about optimization efforts? I would prefer | normalizing layoffs with 12 weeks severance package to | normalizing developers who code 10 hours a week and whose cost | the companies inevitably pass on to their consumers. | jedberg wrote: | The problem with that is that in some cases there's really | nothing else someone can do. If they are a recruiter, and the | company is no longer hiring, keeping that person around doesn't | help anyone, including that person. | | Honestly the way Stripe is handling this seems pretty good. | They are telling you now that you have until March to find a | new job. They are essentially doing what you suggest, without | making them come to work, by essentially paying them until | March. | | And some of them will probably get rehired as Stripe opens up | new recs. Chances are the former employees will have a fast | track into the new positions as they open up. | | What you suggest is basically to just drag out the inevitable | to the detriment of both the company and the employee. | jasmer wrote: | It's important to understand that growing companies are not | laying off because they have 'nothing for staff to do'. | | This isn't likely a situation of 'Ford Motorcars had a bad 3 | quarters, and sales forecasts are way down, we have to close | two plants'. | | They are laying off to improve efficiencies on paper, capture | some excess value created by those staffers (hey - you built | that thing, great, bye, don't need you! For now ...), and | likely to bulk up the balance sheet before a transaction, | like an IPO etc. - and as an excuse to get rid of what they | perceive to be lower performing staff (who may or may not be | adding value). | | It's a supposed 'optimization' not a 'necessary' thing. | | I suggest that in these scenarios, that there could be better | alternatives, if we put our heads together and thought about | it a bit. | austhrow743 wrote: | The whole company is an optimisation thing not a necessary | thing. | jasmer wrote: | Optimizing for what, and in who's interests? | | From the perspective of those who are not shareholders, | corporations are just a means of providing some service - | even those that are 'necessary'. | | It's odd that so many people fight so hard for the | 'freedom and rights' of fairly powerful interests, | systems which they will never be a part of or benefit | from, and which regularly act against their own | interests. | | There are multiple stakeholders at play, the arbitrary | posture of 'optimization for capital' is worse than naive | in 2022, we've been through these experiments by now. | | There are better ways; we're not even trying. | whimsicalism wrote: | > keeping that person around doesn't help anyone, including | that person. | | Seems to me it obviously helps that person, but I generally | don't understand corporate-speak so I might be missing | something. | BoorishBears wrote: | You'd rather stay at a dead-end position until a lack of | money forces you to be laid off by a broke company that | can't afford cushy terms? | | The alternative is being fired early, given several months | of pay, months of free healthcare, early grants, help if | you're an H1B holder, and help from your old company in | getting a new job... | | There are bad layoffs and there are ok layoffs, I'd say | this is an ok one. | whimsicalism wrote: | Seems like the option of continuing to "work" for your | employer while finding another job is net better than | that option. | | And good luck finding another job if you are a recruiter | right now. | BoorishBears wrote: | > Seems like the option of continuing to "work" for your | employer while finding another job is net better than | that option. | | I guess it depends on the person. My mental health would | be 100% better knowing I have guaranteed income for X | months and can freely spend my time working on getting a | job and decompressing. As opposed to knowing I'm on a | sinking ship but still having to half-ass 8 hour days for | appearances. | | Also recruiters who have been let go now are in a way | better place than recruiters who are on ghost ships right | now and will be let go deeper in the thick of the brewing | storm... | theptip wrote: | It's better to get generous severance than to have to come | in and do bullshit made-up work. | whimsicalism wrote: | At any time, you could choose not to do it and instead | search for other jobs with basically the same result. | nyuszika7h wrote: | no, you'll be worse off if you do that because then you | won't get severance. especially if you're not able to | quickly land another job. | whimsicalism wrote: | They generally won't be able to fire you fast enough that | it compares unfavorably with severance + you will get | unemployment. | jedberg wrote: | If you keep someone on board with the intention of letting | them go later, you do them a disservice by making them | think they have a steady job. It stops them from looking | for something else and missing possible opportunities. | | If you tell them you will fire them, then you do them a | disservice wasting their time if you don't expect them to | work anyway. | | That's why a severance payment makes sense. Pay them what | they would have been paid but don't make them work. | jesuscript wrote: | This might sound wild, but maybe the decent thing to do is if | the company warns the team months in advance that a purge is | coming. Let those who need to leave, leave. Quietly tell | those who you really want to remain that they should not | fear. | FinalBriefing wrote: | I've worked at a company that did this. Not fun. | | You basically have a bunch of employees who know their job | is going to end...waiting for it to end. Mentally, you're | checked out. You're not going to produce your best work for | your company and it becomes a struggle to stay engaged. | That's my experience, anyway. | | The better approach for everyone is to _maybe_ give 1-2 | weeks warning so everyone can wrap up what they're working | on, then give fair severance packages when the day comes. | baq wrote: | This is a very good way to destroy a company: every top | performer will jump ship in the week (or 15 minutes if it's | still an employee's market) she catches wind of the purge. | ergocoder wrote: | It does sound wild. | | Letting people who are likely angry having access to | company resources and financials being able to make real | damages to Stripe's customers. | | Companies want to keep high performers. Voluntary layoffs | is a very dumb move. | vorador wrote: | This is such an adversarial read of things. Some | companies do offer employees to quit in exchange for some | compensation. It's win-win, the company reduces costs and | the employee doesn't work at a place they don't want to | be at. The whole "the employee can cause damage to the | company" view is ridiculous - guess what, the employee | can already do damage to the company while employed | there, yet they don't. | ergocoder wrote: | It is not a win for the company to have low performers | stay and high performers leave. | | > The whole "the employee can cause damage to the | company" view is ridiculous - guess what, the employee | can already do damage to the company while employed | there, yet they don't. | | Yeah, because they don't know they will be fired. They | aren't angry employees. | | Laid off employees are angry. | | Let's talk about being obtuse. | jesuscript wrote: | Furthermore, imagine if someone unknowingly embarks on a | major step in life like buying a home, getting married, | pregnant, moving, etc, and boom this hammer drops. You | live on your toes if this is how the companies behave. | ergocoder wrote: | Companies always behave this way. Companies do what is | best for themselves, and sometimes it benefits both | companies and employees. | | In the case of layoff, the company wouldn't be benefit at | all if low performers stay and high performers leave. | Actually the company might collapse. | IanPBann wrote: | I have to disagree with your opinion on voluntary | layoffs. | | Here in the UK an employer has to inform the government | and go through a mandatory redundancy process when laying | off more than a given number of employees (I think it's | 100 off the top of my head). At my last role I was put at | risk of redundancy and went through the process. One of | the first steps of that process was offering voluntary | redundancy which had a higher redundancy package than if | you received compulsory redundancy. | | If someone was considering leaving, or was close to | retirement leaving voluntarily gave them the opportunity | to leave early and with a nice payout. Or if you had | skills high in demand it gave you the opportunity to get | a lump sum and walk into a new job. | | This significantly reduced the need for the company to | make compulsory redundancies. | ergocoder wrote: | Your point doesn't contradict mine though. | | It is a bad idea for the company to do voluntary layoff. | | Your point focuses entirely on what is good for | employees, which is unrealistic. Companies do what is | good for themselves, not employees. Sometimes they | overlap, but sometimes they don't. | kyawzazaw wrote: | Voluntary layoffs has happened before in other companies. | ergocoder wrote: | I didn't say it never happened before. I say it is a bad | idea. | sharkweek wrote: | I have one friend at Stripe who, after the rumors started | swirling that this was coming, was hoping they were going | to get laid off today (they didn't), so now they're stuck | in a job they don't want anymore, but don't have the | headspace to effectively job hunt right now. | | Imagine a world where the company had offered them the | opportunity to quit with a buy out package, probably quite | a bit healthier of a situation for all involved given this | person's abysmal morale in their current role. | | I see the "get paid to quit" trend from time to time and I | think it's a great idea. | midhhhthrow wrote: | It's not about the people that get laid off. | | It's about the other 85%. Companies figure that a higher level | of fear will increase people's willingness to work overtime on | weekends and nights too. Most people don't even realize it but | that's whTs going on the employees subconsciously | musha68k wrote: | Or it makes them quit themselves.. I have done that before as | the company changed character / culture got hit by layoffs. | | People and general positive vibe is what makes me want to put | in the good work for my team. Fear culture is for | exploitative / loser companies IMO. I wouldn't want to work | for such a company anymore. | Axsuul wrote: | It goes both ways. Keeping under-performers around starts to | muddy the culture and push away your high-performers. | twblalock wrote: | We expect our companies to be efficient and competitive -- and | that is the correct expectation to have in a market economy! | Giving people busywork will hurt companies, and thus the | overall economy, in the long run. That will make everything | worse, including school funding and homelessness and | inequality. After all, if you want to redistribute wealth, you | have to generate wealth! | | It would also mean companies would be less likely to hire | people. A lot of those people who got laid off never would have | been hired in the first place if it was not going to be easy to | get rid of them if market conditions changed. | | Everyone who works for a startup should know that the market is | very dynamic and companies that scale up might also scale down, | and they should have a mercenary mindset about this. People who | don't like that should work in different industries. People are | expected to be adults about this stuff. And frankly the | severance package the people who are laid off from Stripe are | getting will add up to more money than most Americans make in a | year. | | I would never under any circumstances recommend the way Japan | runs companies to anyone. Their economy is stagnant for a | reason, and being an employee in Japan is terrible. You get | lifetime employment at the cost of your own personal life, | because the company owns all of your time. | jasmer wrote: | So there's a few issues with your statement: | | 1) "This is how market economies work!" - is tautological. | It's not an argument. | | 2) "Busywork" is the wrong term because: a) | As I mentioned, Stripe is not stopping growth. They will be | re-hiring soon enough for valid projects. This isn't a | factory closing and moving to Vietnam, or, even a company in | dire straits. b) Better expressed as an issue of | 'cost of capital'. It might be slightly more efficient to | 'dump them now' and re-hire in a year for now, but probably | not by much. If Stripe has positive NPV (Net Present Value) | projects to work on in the future (they do) then they can get | going on them now. It might cost a bit more - but that's | subjective, again it's just a question of efficiency. | c) That said - I actually doubt the net efficiency of all of | this anyhow! I don't necessarily believe that the co-CEO / | Exec team have the experience in these matters, and that this | actually might be a 'short term decision': this is the 'cut | phase' bodybuilders do before a show (the IPO), where they | only eat protein and cut down on water intake, which is | unsustainable. From a 'long term' view it might actually be | even a net negative. | | 3) It doesn't make it more risky to hire people if you | shouldn't fire them when you don't have to. If companies have | to let people go, they will. This isn't France. | | 4) "Everyone who works for a startup" - except Stripe is not | a 'startup'. | | 5) You're making assumptions about how and if the Japanese | model leads to stagnation, and, that my argument rested on | the Japanese model, which it does not. If people don't want | to 'pretend to work' for 2 months while they are re-allocated | they can chose to leave. | | With the huge and obvious caveat that I'm not an insider | obviously and have only a glancing relationship to the | situation ... I'm not confident with this. | | I suggest there's a broken operating artifact here. | | These are opportunities for supposed 'innovators' to actually | 'innovate' and find 'winning outcomes'. | | The 'California Model' aka variation of | 'creative/destruction/capitalism' is I think, over, or at | least, entering a new phase. | LightG wrote: | Japan isn't the only other example of difference out there. | | Odd that you should have chosen such an extreme example. | twblalock wrote: | I didn't choose Japan as an example. The person I was | responding to did. | FpUser wrote: | Companies should be able to hire / lay off at will. They | exists to generate profit for owners. To protect people we | have taxes and we should also have UBI. Some countries can | definitely afford it. | bogomipz wrote: | >"I feel that the whole 'California' project elides the | negatives: ..." | | What is the "California project" here? | moonchrome wrote: | I've worked in a system like this. Seeing a guy walk into work | to surf the web all day because he was obsolete but 5 years | away from retirement and a friend with most management there | meant I was stuck at temp employment for lower wage because the | higher paying position was technically filled. It was the first | job I had after school - it burst my early life ideas about | socialism and social justice. | almost_usual wrote: | That's nice compensation for a lay off. | throway20221103 wrote: | Throwaway because of obvious reasons, | | This process as Stripe reads as exceptionally cold and distanced | to me. There's an ongoing downsizing at my workplace as well | right now, and it's going a little like this: | | * Change in strategy and its consequences announced together in | all-hands | | * Company strategy changed to focus less on rapid growth | (something we'd been structured for) due to major changes in | capital markets | | * All personnell changes are made directly to support and enable | this change in strategy | | * No departures outside of C-suite had been determined at the | point of announcement | | * Immediately after announcement, groups of teams gathered in | breakout sessions to learn of changes to their structure | | * All changes are based on roles and not specific individuals | | * Everyone gets to be considered for new roles if their existing | role changes, or if they wish to change roles | | * New managers to be decided about one week after announcement | | * Changes to IC positions to be determined within two weeks after | that | | * Nobody will get a notice before a consultation meeting | | * HR and leadership are holding all-hands about every third day | during the process, for QA and updates | | -- | | Mass layoffs by email just seems so immensely inhuman by this | comparison. I wish everyone leaving Stripe as part of this all | the best, and I hope you find great and inspiring opportunities | <3 | | EDIT: Formatting | staunch wrote: | They're paying severance, bonus, healthcare, etc which is the | only way to do an ethical layoff. CEOs that wait until the last | minute to do layoffs and then pay little to no severance are | shitty people, and no one should trust to work for them ever | again. CEOs that provide a softer landing for laid off employees | should be rewarded by not having their reputations destroyed in | the mind of current and prospective employees. It's a display of | ethics and competence. | dmazin wrote: | Reading this letter, seems like they're also going to try to cut | cloud costs. A consultant who wanted to travel around companies | and help them lower cloud costs could make a KILLING right now. | vasco wrote: | There's one of those under every rock you turn. | jupp0r wrote: | Glad to see that Stripe has a pretty good package for the laid | off employees. This is the right way to do this and I imagine the | vast majority of people laid off will be able to find new jobs | fast and pocket some of the severance pay. | pastor_bob wrote: | They have almost 700 jobs listed on their careers page: | | https://stripe.com/jobs/search | | Seems like a move to just dump some redundant people and blame | the macro situation | roflyear wrote: | Most interesting, is they seem to not care about the recent NYC | law (see: https://stripe.com/jobs/listing/backend-engineer- | enterprise-...), so yeah - they haven't updated this part of | their business or paid much attention to it in a while. | | Likely, everyone has been busy with the layoffs. | pastor_bob wrote: | Well this is their response to the CO law: | | >For candidates or potential candidates based in Colorado, | please reach out to colorado-wages@stripe.com to request | compensation and benefits information regarding particular | roles. Please include the city in Colorado where you reside | and the titles of the applicable roles and/or links to the | roles along with your request. | | which seems to be a violation of the CO law[0]: | | >Effective January 1, 2021, Part 2 of the Equal Pay for Equal | Work Act, C.R.S. SS 8-5-101 et seq., requires employers to | include compensation in job postings | | So I doubt they care either way. I'm guessing they'll pursue | a similar strategy if challenged. | | [0] https://cdle.colorado.gov/equalpaytransparency | chipgap98 wrote: | I'd wait a week or so to see how that changes. If you tell | recruiting to pull down all of those job postings it kind of | tips your hand that a big change is coming | yohannparis wrote: | Good controls of rumours to share the letter on their press page. | pbiggar wrote: | - 14 weeks severance | | - 2022 bonus and PTO paid out | | - accelerated vesting | | - 6 months of healthcare. | | This is a phenomenal severance package and I hope one that will | set the standard for companies doing layoffs. So many companies | in the US do two weeks or less, with nothing else (not even | healthcare) or even use it to claw back shares. | adam_arthur wrote: | The Fed is telling you as explicitly as they're allowed to that | they'll induce a recession to halt inflation, yet many tech cos | aren't getting the message and continue to hire frantically. | | Doing their new hires a disservice, when in many cases they'll | likely have to be laid off within the year. Looking at big tech | here, primarily | [deleted] | skidev wrote: | 14% seems like a very high number to me to axe at once, how have | you got 1 in 7 employees that your business doesn't need to | function when it is growing. | luxcem wrote: | With 3x growth during the pandemic it seems that the layoff | would be avoidable by reducing future growth factor. So what | the letter doesn't say is that they layoff people to have | better numbers to show to investors, not because it's not | sustainable. | [deleted] | JohnJamesRambo wrote: | Money was cheap to borrow and get from investors and now it | isn't. | jagtesh wrote: | Ah. It all makes sense now. It is cheaper for them to layoff | with a decent 3 month severance than it is to pay high | interest on the debt that is funding their salaries (interest | rate will stay high > 1 year, going by Powell's comments). | | I am glad they did it transparently, but I wish they had been | more open about this fact. Shifts the entire perspective IMO. | csa wrote: | They are rolling back to February 2022 levels, after having | grown a lot in 2020 and 2021. | | If this is the only cut (big if), then I imagine that most | areas outside of HR will not feel much different. | mritchie712 wrote: | better for morale to go big once then chip away. With this cut, | they can confidently say: "this will be the only one". | breck wrote: | 1) Any Stripers looking for work we have plenty | (https://publicdomaincompany.com/) and it's as meaningful as it | gets. breck7@gmail.com or 1-415-937-1984 | | 2) Saving this in case I ever need to tell a portfolio company | how to do a layoff. | testemailfordg2 wrote: | I am suddenly seeing articles about multiple US tech companies | doing layoffs / pausing hiring on HN as well, not sure why and | how all this relates....Has global recession started??? | extheat wrote: | > Has global recession started | | Long ago. It's going to get worse before it gets any better, | IMO. | | Companies have to be forward looking, not backward or just | present looking. If there's tough times ahead, you want to be | ahead of, not behind market headwinds. | mandeepj wrote: | > We overhired for the world | | > John and I are fully responsible for the decisions leading up | to it. | | No, you don't! You'll take responsibility only after stepping | down. Do you have any idea that you - and other executives - are | playing with people lives? Do you have any clue from where they | are going to earn their living once you let them go? People are | not machines that you are hiring and firing them on your whim. | Clowns! | IChooseY0u wrote: | Sounds like they are being more than reasonable. | | > 14 weeks of severance for all departing employees > will pay | our 2022 annual bonus for all departing employees, regardless | of their departure date > 6 months of existing healthcare | premiums or healthcare continuation | Knufferlbert wrote: | I make mistakes all the time as a developer, I would hate to be | fired for them and if I would, I would never claim | responsibility. | | And that's why I don't get how people expect directors/managers | to be infallible. | | Taking responsibility isn't about walking away from the job, | but learning from it and making it right. | | Whether that is done well in this case, I don't know, but that | wasn't your point. As far as I can tell they got pretty decent | severance packages. | anm89 wrote: | Yeah, so you're going to go march in there and do something? | What exactly are you proposing here? | | It's a layoff. It happens. It's ironically a sign of them being | good executives and doing what they need to do to keep their | company viable so they can keep the ship running going forward | for the remaining sustainable head count. | InCityDreams wrote: | Apparently it's not a layoff until the eighth paragraph. | [deleted] | gt565k wrote: | I mean it's a pretty damn generous package. Hell, I'll take it | and chill for a month or two before jumping into another job. | | I'd love to get laid off with a quarter+ of a year paid for. | tempsy wrote: | It's a little different when everyone is cutting staff at the | same time and there's lots of competition for a limited number | of "good" jobs | Xeoncross wrote: | IDK, there seem to be plenty of big tech jobs still open. I | just got one. Overall, there are about 1.9 open jobs in the | US for every person unemployed. | tempsy wrote: | Tech jobs follow a bimodal distribution. | | Only a few pay the $400k-$500k Google level salaries you | hear about for mid level employees. | | It might be relatively easy to find a $120k job but that | doesn't mean every laid off person can now walk into Google | with ease when even big tech is laying people off or | freezing hiring. | roflyear wrote: | Not everyone needs to make $500k? I don't understand this | argument. Many companies are hiring seniors right now for | $200k base. Small, medium, and large companies. That is a | great salary. | | Don't compare yourself to the .1% of software devs. | tempsy wrote: | $200k base is maybe $10k a month after tax and retirement | contributions. | | A 2 bedroom apartment in NYC or another high cost area | where these jobs are generally located will cost | $4000-$6000 | roflyear wrote: | Totally ridiculous and also untrue. Living in Manhattan | is a luxury, there are affordable options 20-30m from | NYC. You can get a 2br for under $<2k <30m bus ride from | NYC. $1600-1700 if you look and get a little lucky. | | Even in Manhattan, there are plenty of 2br available for | <$3k. Zillow is bringing up hundreds of results. You're | not living large, but you'll have money for savings. | | Most people who live in Manhattan don't live there alone, | anyway. That luxury apt for $6k is a great place to live | with 1-2 roommates. | tempsy wrote: | the fact there exists 2 bedroom apartments for under $3k | doesn't mean that's the norm in Manhattan. there's very | few and it's clearly nowhere near the median when the | median 1 bed is over $3800. | | and you've mistaken what I said if you think I'm | suggesting it's "hard" to live on $200k in NYC. the point | is more that it's just a normal salary in a high cost | area at this point, and after taxes and retirement | savings and regular monthly expenses you'd be lucky to | save $30k a year. hard to save for a house or start a | family and care for dependents without being close to | paycheck to paycheck at that income. | roflyear wrote: | First, I'm looking at apartments on the market RIGHT NOW | that are under $3k. You can apply for these right now. | | We're also using an extreme, living in Manhattan is a | luxury. It is one of the most expensive places to live on | the planet. Even using this extreme your argument doesn't | hold water. You would do well on $200k paying $3.5k/m in | rent. That's high, but shouldn't kill you. | | I would argue that using the median or average in an area | that has so much luxury housing is also dishonest. I know | people paying over $5k for STUDIO APARTMENTS in NYC. | | They love the building, I dunno! | | JC median 1br is $3k, north bergen nj 2br is $2,400.... | but there are plenty of 1 and 2br in JC and NB that are | under $2k on the market right now. Thousands of units, | actually. | | Including kids, or if you have a stay at home spouse or | something, you're right. You can't really live in the | area on $200k. That is a problem. Your wife needs to work | and bring in at least $80k, especially if you have more | than 2 kids. But we're kind of moving the goalposts here, | aren't we? | pb7 wrote: | Leaving you with $48,000 to $72,000 for everything else, | roughly twice as much as much as the median pretax | individual income. The horror. | tempsy wrote: | I continue to find it funny that we've come to the point | where workers are guilted and shamed because they demand | more for themselves. | | Even if you're somewhat disciplined about spending you | are probably spending $40k a year easily in a higher cost | metro on normal everyday expenses/personal travel, | leaving you with maybe $20k-$30k to tuck away. Difficult | to save up for a family or house on $20k/yr to | save/invest. | pb7 wrote: | I demand more for myself. I would also be ashamed | convincing people I don't have enough as it is. It's | possible to prefer to make $500K over $200K and not argue | that $200K is peanuts to live on. Argue that you prefer | the even more lavish life that $500K can provide you for | the skills the market deemed you have. | roflyear wrote: | Demand more for yourself, but don't pretend like you | can't live on $200k. You're worth a lot but making up | shit about rents is not going to help your argument. | kache_ wrote: | try not living in new york | tempsy wrote: | or if you're talented and have in demand skills don't | settle for a $200k salary because people online told you | you were entitled for asking for higher comp in high cost | of living areas. | p0pcult wrote: | This comment reeks of entitlement. _I can barely get by | on a salary in the top 5%_ | Klonoar wrote: | That's not entitlement, they are simply stating what the | rental market is. They have no control over that. | roflyear wrote: | They are being misleading about the rental market. | Klonoar wrote: | No, they're not. NYC is stupid expensive to live in, and | this is why we have a thing called "cost of living". | roflyear wrote: | They are for several reasons. They are lying about the | price of rent, saying it is higher than it is. They are | insisting that you need to live in Manhattan, when there | are places about half as cheap very close to Manhattan. | | I'm not saying the area is inexpensive. Don't argue with | a strawman. | keneda7 wrote: | I would agree with you for the most part but also keep in | mind 200k may not be the top 5% for particular locations. | In San Fran county the top 5% is 808k | (https://www.kqed.org/news/11799308/bay-area-has-highest- | inco...). | | I would be jumping with joy to make 200k a year with | where I live now. However if I was in offered the same | job in the bay area for 200k a year I would not be nearly | as happy. | tempsy wrote: | Entitlement is being realistic about $200k not going far | in large expensive metros? I don't think so. | p0pcult wrote: | Entilement is making your own decision and then whining | about its consequences. | tempsy wrote: | We are talking about a hypothetical situation where | someone was asked to be content with a $200k salary in a | high cost metro. | | In this scenario the person has made the decision that it | isn't really that great of a salary considering cost of | living, yet you're on here getting angry this person is | being "entitled". No decision was made to accept this | salary as a good one in this scenario. | tempsy wrote: | I feel bad for employees that have waited a decade to cash out. | | No reason why Stripe couldn't have gone public in 2020-2021 at a | huge valuation but from past interviews it sounds like the | decision to remain private was just a founder preference thing | because "focus" or something. Now the IPO market is completely | frozen and its valuation is likely cut in half from peak, at | least. | brentm wrote: | The trend of companies taking huge late stage rounds was always | going to blow up the public tech IPO market. Many companies get | too used to free money and operating with little inspection. By | the time they feel like they "have to go public" the growth | rate has peaked and they haven't learned to operate with any | level of financial scrutiny. Result is private market investors | do great and all too frequently public markets bomb in 6-12 | months or sooner. | umeshunni wrote: | Yup! This has been the trend for the last 10 years. Facebook | was probably the last well run company to go public, probably | because it grew during the pre-Zirp era. | neivin wrote: | Anyone who has been there for a decade had options and has | already cashed out. | | Folks who are getting screwed are the ones that joined in ~2017 | when they started issuing RSUs instead of ISOs. | melvinmelih wrote: | Why? I always thought RSUs were better than ISOs | e28eta wrote: | They're double-trigger RSUs, to avoid tax liability pre- | liquidity. | thesandlord wrote: | RSUs typically expire if the company doesn't go public in X | years | no_butterscotch wrote: | At this point in time I wonder if many people with senior level | shares have found other alternatives to cash out. Secondary | markets for instance. | throw3823423 wrote: | For anyone that has been there anywhere near a decade, there's | been opportunities to cash out partially, at very good | valuations. You'll see that a vast majority of early employees | have departed, and they didn't do that by giving away their | early options, or getting crushed by AMT by exercising without | liquidity. | | While it might have been nicer to IPO by now, early employees | are doing extremely well. | tempsy wrote: | sure that's true of most unicorns. early employees are a tiny | fraction of the workforce waiting to cash out. | mywittyname wrote: | How generous were these cashouts? I've seen order of $1MM | caps on early cashouts, but I have no idea if that's the norm | or not. | ohmanjjj wrote: | They couldn't IPO. Stripe is a bubble. They don't want their | financials under a microscope. | topicseed wrote: | What leads you to believe they're a bubble? | paganel wrote: | Genuine question, what's the real value proposition of | Stripe? | | They do have a slick integration process for outside | developers, but is that enough for to justify the financial | values attached to them in the recent past? | celestialcheese wrote: | As one of the earliest stripe customers, yes, that was the | reason why we switched to them from Authorize.net. | | Developer docs and easy API integration was, and is still, | their "stickyness". But the eco-system of new products | they've added have grown that moat to make it easy and | cost-efficient to offload more and more of the financial | and subscription stack onto Stripe. It's a virtuous cycle | mritchie712 wrote: | There's a healthy secondary market for companies like Stripe. | Employees there can sell a good amount of their stock already | (and have likely been able to for years). | tempsy wrote: | Pretty sure the company doesn't let most employees sell. I | have never seen Stripe shares offered on Forge or EquityZen. | itsoktocry wrote: | > _its valuation is likely cut in half from peak, at least_ | | So you wish they would have got to dump overpriced shares on | the public to further enrich insiders? | | It's not like Stripe engineers were earning minimum wage | digging ditches for 10 years... | nytesky wrote: | Is Stripe profitable? I heard some of its financing is from PE | and bank funding, which tend to be less tolerant of money | losing or low profit operations. If they are not profitable | they will need more capital eventually or to lengthen their | runway. | brentm wrote: | I don't believe that is public information but they always | could be cash flow positive if they needed to be that's for | sure. | ffggvv wrote: | that 15% number was probably picked for a reason. (to make | them cash flow positive) | sdrinf wrote: | The second they go public it triggers a 6-12 months window | after which all of their employees can cash out. This will, | inexorably lead to an exodus of their most senior peeps, and | when it happens, will probably be ground zero for the next gen | of fintech startups. | | Delaying going IPO this way, amongst other things, is about | retention. | tempsy wrote: | I don't think this is correct. Then your theory is that every | tech company that went public in last 2 years have | experienced a brain drain that Stripe has not. | | Lock up periods aren't set in stone. They probably didn't | need to raise money and could have done a direct listing and | let employees cash out immediately. | tfehring wrote: | Most tech companies have four-year vesting periods. Lots of | people at my current employer, which IPOed in 2020, are | still vesting shares from pre-IPO stock grants. As a | result, those people have a very strong financial incentive | to stick around. | | Stripe is a rarity in that it issues one-year equity | grants, which would make it more susceptible to brain drain | after an IPO compared to companies with longer vesting | schedules. | nscalf wrote: | There's also no lack of buyers for stripe on secondary | markets. | tempsy wrote: | whether you can sell on secondary markets is restricted | by the company. pretty sure Stripe has not let most | employees sell on secondary markets. personally have not | seen them solicited on Forge or EquityZen myself. | adrr wrote: | How do they prevent you from selling on the secondary | market? Would love to see that clause on their options | agreement. Most companies have first right of refusal | which gives them the option to buy them first. | dehrmann wrote: | A fun question to ask when interviewing at a startup is | to what extent they block or facilitate employee share | sales/transfers. Also check with private markets to see | what their experience with that company is. | nscalf wrote: | Ahh I wasn't aware of that, thanks! | eigenvalue wrote: | A "brain drain" doesn't just mean that people actually quit | and leave. They can also dramatically ramp down the | intensity because they are suddenly in a very comfortable | financial position and the big risk they have been working | so hard to avoid (losing their valuable equity for whatever | reason) is off the table. It sucks, but that's the way it | is for many people. It's hard to keep up the super high | level of intensity after so long, especially when the | downside case is mitigated by newfound financial | independence. | [deleted] | sanjayio wrote: | This is a problem that people are well aware of, it's | mitigated with stock refreshers. It's not perfect but helps | retention. | theptip wrote: | To some extent, but if you have been around since the early | days it's unlikely your golden handcuffs will be worth as | much as your long-vested options. | ulfw wrote: | To a certain extend yes you're right. But they've | overextended. Realistically there won't be a fertile IPO | market at their size/level of valuation in years now. So | unless they up their salaries, it's doubtful some people who | joined in hopes of cashing out after 1-2 years would be | willing to wait an additional 4 or 5. | [deleted] | [deleted] | [deleted] | throwawaysleep wrote: | It is far better to be a massive underperformer at three jobs | than be a good employee at one. Layoffs that are large usually | have nothing to do with performance as if they did, word would | leak. | | This is why I feel no guilt over letting my teams down | repeatedly. It doesn't matter unless you are bad enough to fire. | Taylor_OD wrote: | > It is far better to be a massive underperformer at three jobs | than be a good employee at one | | Can you explain this? Do you mean working three jobs at once? | throwawaysleep wrote: | Yes. Find three remote jobs. It is what I do. | UncleOxidant wrote: | So you can burn out in 1/3 of the time. | endtime wrote: | You contribute to anti-remote work sentiment by doing this. | throwawaysleep wrote: | In a tragedy of the commons, one should race to exploit | the commons. | bbor wrote: | That's so sad... do you see a bright future for the human | race? | higlen22 wrote: | LOL, *you* are the only tragedy here. 3 jobs, i doubt you | even have time for friends. | danbolt wrote: | What makes you feel that way? | colinmhayes wrote: | probably game theory | John23832 wrote: | That's not their fault. If they're doing the job well | enough at all 3, they've satisfied the requirements for | employment. Who cares what others think about their | "remote sentiment"? | chucksmash wrote: | This smacks of "not their fault, they are just making an | economically rational decision" justification to me. | | If they signed a contract to the effect they would work | exclusively for one company, their choice to lie is | unethical. It might be profitable as well, but "not their | fault because it's profitable and they can get away with | it" shamelessness, writ large, is making everything | worse. | John23832 wrote: | > This smacks of "not their fault, they are just making | an economically rational decision" justification to me. | | This is exactly the point. | | The if's don't matter because they weren't addressed. You | can't assume that person is breaking contract law. You | have no idea. | chucksmash wrote: | Or maybe intentionally screwing people (coworkers, your | employer) over is an unethical thing to do even if we | lean into the extreme credulity you profess here and say, | "hey, we don't know if this poster signed one of those | special 'FYI I will be screwing you over' contracts, it | is not for us to make assumptions, we haven't reviewed | the contract." | John23832 wrote: | Couple of things: | | Nobody owes their employer any more than the minimum that | is guaranteed by the employment contract. Sucks, but | that's life. | | If you feel like the quality of your coworkers that give | minimum effort is screwing you over, talk to your | employer. | | If an employer can be picky enough that they require you | to only have them as your only employer, they would need | to specify that in an employment contract (it's not | enforceable, you have a right to privacy from your | employer). | | If you want to be "ethical" (ie, servile to your | employer) to the detriment of your economic survival, | that's fine. That's your choice. Everyone else is going | to play the game to the rules. | nrmitchi wrote: | > It is far better to be a massive underperformer | | In what world do you read this and think "doing the job | well enough at all 3"? | John23832 wrote: | Because they haven't been let go? They're paid for the | time they're there, not the time they are not. | throwawaysleep wrote: | They are the same. You want to be a 30th percentile | employee. Bad enough to do little work and never be | trusted with anything important or with hard deadlines, | but just good enough not to fire. | | He is saying that if I am not getting fired, I am good | enough to continue working there. | nrmitchi wrote: | I am familiar enough with the concepts of OE. | | There is a difference between being good and efficient | enough to handle number roles, and the borderline scam of | "get a remote job and try to stay under the radar and | drag it out before they fire you". | | I'm honestly not 100% sure which of those you are | advocating for. | true_religion wrote: | I'm just confused. Why can't people have second tech | jobs? | | Cashiers can have second jobs working in a different | store. Factory workers can work in other factories (it's | hard on your body but overall okay). | | No one would similarly complain if an Google software | engineer was also 'forced' to make ends meet by working | in an Apple retail store. | | Yes, it's hard on your body and mind to work more than 1 | job, but if you need the money then what choice do you | have? | willio58 wrote: | No amount of money would make the stress of 3 jobs worth it to | me. To constantly be letting down people around me would be | depressing, don't care if I'm making 500k/yr. | throwawaysleep wrote: | They don't care about you. Don't make the error of caring | about them. | willio58 wrote: | It's not about caring about the employer, it's about living | my own life. Your work life is most of what you do for | several decades of life. I don't want to suffer, barely | squeaking by, stressed and at the brink of being fired by | multiple employers for decades. I make a fraction of what | some people here make and I still make more than I need. | Money beyond a certain amount doesn't make you happier, in | fact I'm pretty convinced it makes it harder to be happy. | jesuscript wrote: | You may not believe it, but people are fickle. It's that old | Eddie Murphy bit about "What have you done for me lately". | Believe it or not, you have pleased and disappointed your | company over and over, back and forth, based on things you | did, and they only look at the last thing you did. | thundergolfer wrote: | A single Stripe E3 role (senior eng) can pay over $500k/yr. | animitronix wrote: | And that's why they're having layoffs today | trimbo wrote: | How much of that $500K is liquid? | wetpaws wrote: | this is a $500K question | countvonbalzac wrote: | Looks like on average an L3 SWE at Stripe gets paid 215k | stock, 218k stock, 34k bonus. So ~53% of pay is liquid | (cash), the rest equity in a private company. | | Source: https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Stripe&track=Soft | ware%20Engi... | thundergolfer wrote: | The equity vesting is a $$ amount though, not a number of | shares, so it's less volatile than typical RSUs. | ajb wrote: | You're screwing over your colleagues, not just your employer. | We just fired someone like you. | animitronix wrote: | I want to interview him just to confirm I'm correctly | screening out people like this guy | o10449366 wrote: | They've been doing "layoffs" for quite some time, they've just | been trying to keep it quiet. I know multiple people (including | engineers) that were let go in the past two months. | thrwwy95fab9d1 wrote: | Yeah, this is round 2. It would be nice if they retroactively | provide this same support to those folks. | petrusnonius wrote: | +1 | hobs wrote: | Don't forget not giving raises and promotions that are bonehead | obvious, had several friends find new jobs after getting passed | over from some BS. | thunkle wrote: | I work for Stripe and got laid off this morning. Sucks because my | manager was only told this morning, and didn't have a chance to | talk about how well I was doing or take any part in the decision | making. We'll at least I'll get a break. I worked nights and | weekends all of October. | orsenthil wrote: | > Sucks because my manager was only told this morning, and | didn't have a chance to talk about how well I was doing | | Usually, these 14% lay off happens to get rid off weaker folks. | It is data driven. | another_devy wrote: | You would think that! | | When firing 14% staff like more than 1000 and decisions are | made by handful of people it's not about who performed better | or worse it's about firing whom will have more impact on | reducing spendings and less disruption in software delivery. | blobbers wrote: | This is probably good for re-normalizing behavior. | | The corporation is not your friend, and it can quickly turn on | you. The bigger the corporation is, the less your realistic | impact above replacement is. You may think you can climb the | pyramid but it is very difficult to do so in a meaningful way | at the mega corps. | | If you want to work nights and weekends, do it for yourself or | a small company where you can make a difference in outcomes. | mandeepj wrote: | ceras wrote: | Layoffs do sometimes happen this way. I was an EM at a | company with layoffs where line managers were not told at all | about layoffs or included in deciding who to lay off: all | discussions happened at the director level and up. | the_af wrote: | I know it's true this happens because in a recent round of | layoffs, my manager not only found on the very same day, but | got fired himself. | | During mass layoffs, your immediate manager is often not told | in advance in order to stop leaks and also because he/she may | be one of the people laid off. (You cannot tell only _some_ | managers and leave others out, because managers of the same | level talk among themselves. The ones left out would know | why). | tasuki wrote: | > I worked nights and weekends all of October. | | Sorry to hear that. Why were you working nights and weekends? | par wrote: | Probably because they were scared of losing their job and | were being asked to work harder. | memish wrote: | Or they are a self motivated high achiever. | rchaud wrote: | Didn't seem to make a difference here. | hanspeter wrote: | Or they have fun coding. | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | I have fun coding. I can't get out of work fast enough. | Partly to do my own coding. | hklgny wrote: | I have fun coding. I can't wait to dig into interesting | problems and figure them out - regardless of if it's for | my own coding or my employers. | Jackpillar wrote: | This is a case study of the futility of intra-corporate | "high achieving" when you can be laid off on a whim | regardless of performance. | Pet_Ant wrote: | Layoffs can be random, but promotions rarely are. It's | not necessarily a bad play. | pyr0hu wrote: | Ah yes, jumping to conclusions without letting the parent | commenter reply. Genius. | [deleted] | [deleted] | ZachSaucier wrote: | I believe that this is the case for all employees laid off by | Stripe, including myself. | melony wrote: | What was your role? | Tade0 wrote: | This appears to be a trend. A while ago my project owner's role | went "poof" and he was notified of this via email the same | morning. | | The weird bit is that company policy is to award a generous | notice period during which... you're not allowed to do | anything. | | It's been half a year now - most of the benefits of that | period(like salary) are gone. He still appears to have access | to the office, but nothing to do there. | | I don't understand how a company which has such a program for | laid off people doesn't bother to notify them in advance. | jcadam wrote: | They will always tell you your job is secure up until the day | you're let go. | andy_ppp wrote: | That's actually never how it worked at Yahoo! there was a | tonne of notice that redundancies were happening and | further to that more notice once your job was marked at | risk. Seems particularly brutal that there doesn't seem to | be a clear process or reasoning - presumably some metric in | GitHub that removes all context about what the employee was | doing... | bigstripedrama wrote: | Sorry you're going through this and hope you don't have too | much stress. I also echo the sentiment about needing a break, I | wish I got laid off today. I'm not sure I can handle the Stripe | culture that emerges from this. | baxtr wrote: | How will it change you fear? | UncleOxidant wrote: | I don't work at stripe, but in general after a big layoff | there's still the same amount of work to be done but now | you have less people to do it. It's not just the people | that were laid off that are gone, but others will leave | after the layoff occurs fearing more layoffs to come. | Leading to even less people to do the work. It can become a | downward spiral for those who are left. | kache_ wrote: | it's fine | | I'm sure that most of stripe work reasonable hours | gloryjulio wrote: | From what I heard from various sources, you probably | meant to put a /s at the end | midhhhthrow wrote: | At that point you really want to quit. At least until it | gets to the point where the company is trying hard to | keep employees That's when they start handling out raises | again | neoplatonian wrote: | Hey thunkle. Sounds like a tough spot to be in, but as you | said, there's always a bright side, and who knows what lies | ahead. What would be a good way to contact you? | thunkle wrote: | Ya'll are hyper focusing on the nights and weekends. That was | my personal decision, not part of the culture. | berjin wrote: | But in doing so were you not influencing the culture? | Depending on how promotions etc work others might feel they | need to keep up with that one guy working in the weekend. | whimsicalism wrote: | The culture is the product of many personal decisions. If I | was working nights and (especially) weekends at my current | employer (another big tech company), I would be told to stop. | TearsInTheRain wrote: | why is that a good thing? | rjh29 wrote: | If some % of people are doing it then everyone will | eventually be pressured to do it, otherwise they'll be at | the bottom of the performance list. (Unless they are very | good) | carstenhag wrote: | In Germany that is required by law (if your employer sees | you working when ill, working too long, working too much | - they have to force you to stop). | | If not by law, then because almost noone is happy working | 60-70h and it puts pressure on others who feel like they | also need to work similar hours. Additionally the | efficiency gets worse as the weekly hours increase. | toomuchtodo wrote: | To not drag down everyone else's quality of life. Culture | comes from the top. Defaults matter. | | Overarching thesis is the people who work to live don't | want to be dragged by those who live to work. Not a | judgement about someone's passion. | apozem wrote: | The pressure is there if someone on your team works | nights and weekends, especially if they are senior to | you. They may not even realize they are pressuring you! | But it is impossible to avoid. | | Something to remember, especially if you have anyone | working under you - your work level will be seen as the | _minimum_ for your team members, not the exception. | danielrhodes wrote: | It seems unreasonable to dictate the way your colleagues | work because it doesn't match your own value system. If | the culture of the company/team is fast paced or long | hours, maybe it isn't the right fit for you. | | Generally speaking though, companies should value output | and results over hours. Easier said than done. | Additionally, value should be placed on what one commits | to do and delivers on. So if somebody is constantly | having to pull late nights to complete work, they may be | overcommitting. It's also possible a manager will | consistently push people to overcommit: this is a problem | because that can indicate poor boundaries, bad planning, | poor resourcing, and so on. | [deleted] | kdmccormick wrote: | > If the culture of the company/team is fast paced or | long hours, maybe it isn't the right fit for you. | | Sure. And if the culture of the company/team is working | 40 hours a week max and calling people out when they work | more than that, then maybe it isn't the right fit for | you. | ljm wrote: | I agree with the overarching sentiment, which is to lead | by example (even if you're not explicitly in a leadership | position). | | At the same time I can accept some nuance here, e.g. | working nights and weekends because you're taking some | time back during the day in the week. | | Similarly with remote working, if there's a wide enough | timezone difference you might shift your routine to | maximise overlap with the team. | | I'm strongly in favour of maintaining harmony between | work and life such that you're able to comfortably do | both, but would not insist on a hard and fast rule. | | If someone even further up the ladder says X does nights | and weekends, so should the rest of the team, then the | buck stops with that person, and they are contributing | negatively to the culture. | reducesuffering wrote: | Actually, with a 3.1 WLB rating, it seems that it likely is | very much part of the culture. | https://www.teamblind.com/company/Stripe/reviews | petrusnonius wrote: | It is. | givemeethekeys wrote: | Due to the recent news of other tech companies making their | employees work nights and weekends before laying them off, it | is easy to interpret your earlier message such that Stripe | did the same. | filoleg wrote: | > recent news of other tech companies making their | employees work nights and weekends | | Are there any companies aside from Twitter that would fall | under this? Because that's the only one I've seen mentioned | in the news that way, but you make it sound like there are | plenty others. So I was curious if I simply missed | something. | hnews_account_1 wrote: | Don't worry. Online forums are always like that. They'll | pretend like they've never had a high pressure job that paid | out handsomely if you applied yourself and hence motivated | you to work harder. To them, they think everyone should have | work life balance from the age of 23 just because they've | discovered its importance at 32 years of age. | | Young people have to work hard. I don't expect my reports to | work on any evenings or weekends and if they even suggest it, | I tell them not to and give them more lead. At the same time, | if they override my decision and work through the evening, I | am ready to answer questions over IM if I'm free too. I'm not | going to say "why are you working evenings?". | | People online are daft. | lmarcos wrote: | It could be as well that it's an European thing. At least | over here work is just work (9 to 5, or less if possible), | so we prefer to spent life with friends and family. Yeah, | we don't earn $500K/year, but that's alright. | hnews_account_1 wrote: | Yeah exactly. I don't think of a worker who wants to | stick to 9-5 as worth less until appraisal. I may still | give them a full rating but not as much in bonus. You're | already paid plenty just to do your daily job. If anyone | is going above and beyond in meaningfully productive | ways, they get paid more. | gurumeditations wrote: | That is so willingly naive. A culture that allows something | which grants an advantage eventually requires you do that | thing by implicit force. Don't fool yourself. This is 101 | stuff and anyone who doesn't understand this concept | shouldn't be in charge, because it doesn't just lead to | overwork but also to more pernicious evil things, see MeToo | and others. | hnews_account_1 wrote: | This is nonsense. You want to muzzle a hard worker | because you think the rest of the workforce will not | match up? What I count is the output, not if people are | working evenings and nights or during the workday. Work | output is capped by what I require so I hold all the | cards and I'll pay the guy who wants to work more. | | Harrison Bergeron much? | truncate wrote: | I just reached my 30s, and have pretty good WLB. Good WLB | is just part of the picture though. You can work 5 hours a | day and be miserable, and you can work 12 hours a day and | be happy. It's also nice to have flexibility and | independence I think. Being forced to work 12 hours always | sucks over voluntarily working 12 hours. | | I'd not recommend 23yo to stay chill in job, particularly | if they have some ambition. At the same time, don't devoid | yourself of other experiences in life if possible. | Honestly, there is plenty of time in a day. If we have good | discipline and prioritize correctly, lot can be done. | That's what I struggle with personally. | hnews_account_1 wrote: | Yes. Typically the guy who is working harder also happens | to have varied interests. I've yet to see a work drone | without an outside life who is doing 24/7 work. If I see | them, I'd definitely limit them from work. I was the same | 23 yo. I had an active social life and all the troubles | of finding love etc. I did all right. Maybe a little | worse than some of the folks I see today. | gaws wrote: | > I worked nights and weekends all of October. | | Just in October? Has this happened before? | TorKlingberg wrote: | > Sucks because my manager was only told this morning | | As a manager I find their really curious. I guess they were | trying to avoid leaks. I wonder how they chose who to lay off. | Most recent performance rating? Next level managers impression? | bergenty wrote: | Usually squads that aren't totally "essential". We ended up | firing a lot of our analytics department since our new head | wasn't as data oriented. | naasking wrote: | > As a manager I find their really curious. I guess they were | trying to avoid leaks. | | That's something I don't quite get. This adversarial | relationship between employees and employers and management | is stupid. Why not tell the workforce you have to cut costs, | so if you're thinking of changing careers now is the time. | Whoever is left presumably wants to stay. | cldellow wrote: | Some possible reasons: | | You may not get the number of volunteers you need, so you | still have to do layoffs. Except now, more people have been | stressing about it for a longer period of time. | | The "low performers" who will have a hard time finding a | new job elsewhere are unlikely to voluntarily leave. So you | offer a buyout package to derisk the decision for them. But | then the "high performers" who you'd rather retain might | decide that yeah, it's easy to get a new job, so they'll | take a sack of cash and go do something new. | naasking wrote: | Yes, there's stress associated with possible layoffs, but | buyout packages and knowing it's not going to happen for, | say 6 months, means there's loads of time to make the | necessary adjustments. I think a big part of the stress | is the suddenness of it all. Something like 50% of people | are living paycheque to paycheque, so of course a sudden | round of layoffs would be crazy stressful because there's | a chance that your life is about to implode. Knowing you | have 6 months to figure something out would not be nearly | so bad. | | So what I'm suggesting is that you announce ahead of time | and let people who were considering a change go ahead. | | Then when that deadline is reached, you offer those | buyout packages to the low performers or others you don't | want, until you reach your target. | [deleted] | cldellow wrote: | I'm open to the idea that there might be some employees | who would find this more humane. | | However, I think a lot of people really struggle with | uncertainty. During these six months, especially in a | large corporate environment, there would be a lot of | horse-trading. Employees will seek assurances they won't | be fired. They may avoid projects or people they think | are likely to get cut. | | At the same time, the business likely has an idea of | where they want to go. The "in" managers will navigate | their preferred people to safe projects. But there isn't | room in the boat for all of their employees -- after all, | the business has announced the target for layoffs. | | This was my experience when I was at Microsoft during | their horribly ill-conceived layoffs in 2009. They | basically announced that there would be 3 rounds of | layoffs tallying up to 5,000 people over the next several | months. It was... incredibly demoralizing. | | I still remember one fellow on my team who got fired in | the 2nd or 3rd round. He took it poorly (understandably!) | and then ripped into the people who didn't get fired | (also understandable, but still really shitty). | | I don't really know that the advance warning helped him. | I think he knew he was likely to get fired when layoffs | were announced. Being a dead man walking... not very good | for anyone, really. | kmonsen wrote: | I struggle with uncertain, I struggle even more with not | being able to pay the bills. I think I'm not alone. | | Uncertainty is important in general but right here right | now I'll take it. | cldellow wrote: | I think you're saying that if you were being fired, and | you were given a choice of: | | (1) you're fired immediately, with 3 months severance pay | | (2) 6 months notice, at the end, you're fired with no | severance pay | | you'd prefer the second choice? | | That's reasonable! | | The uncertainty I was describing in my comment applied | not only to the fired employees, but to the ones who were | being kept. From the company's perspective, there's value | in providing clarity to those employees. That's why | they'd rather pay 3 months severance (and get no labour | from the employee) vs paying 6 months notice (and, | theoretically, getting 6 months of labour from the | employee). | ahoy wrote: | Wage labor in capitalism is by its very nature adversarial, | I'd say. | winphone1974 wrote: | This is a crazy approach. It signals the company is on | trouble so the first to go will be your best, who all have | lots of options. Anyone half decent will immediately start | risk diversification by looking for other opportunities. | Meanwhile nothing will get done by anybody and in the end | your left with the dregs. | | Far better for everyone involved to do it quick rather than | perfect. Those getting let go shouldn't see it coming and | those staying shouldn't find out before it's all been done. | rightbyte wrote: | The tell in advance approach is common place in countries | with strong unions. The company might need to announce | layoffs half a year in advance of the actual layoffs. | | In effect noone will lose their job quickly unless there | is a bankruptcy. | | There is probably way less confusion in that way since | you know that security guards wont escort you out any | minute ... | reikonomusha wrote: | Presumably because you want to lay off 15%, not 50%. | jlrubin wrote: | that'd cause an org wide panic, and you might lose key | personel in your actually profitable business units. | cutting costs at this scale is not just reducing employees, | it's getting rid of employees who are working in areas you | need to cut. the secrecy lets management retain control. | naasking wrote: | > cutting costs at this scale is not just reducing | employees, it's getting rid of employees who are working | in areas you need to cut. | | Sure, but if people are going to leave after cost cutting | is announced, then you can often shuffle people from | those areas into other areas without dealing with whole | hiring rigamarole. | idontpost wrote: | lazide wrote: | Like the court system being adversarial, it's that way | because it's the only thing that scales, for a number of | reasons. The longer a company can avoid it/bigger they can | be without it, the better everything is. At some point | however, it's inevitable. | | To answer your second question, because the ones who leave | are often the ones with the most options and lowest risk to | themselves if they are unemployed, which highly correlates | with those who are the 'best' (in most hiring managers | minds). | | So it's pretty common for all the 'high performers' to bail | (happens anyway, but to a lesser extent on it's own the | moment 'growth' isn't the first thing on peoples minds), | and the folks left behind to be those that don't feel | comfortable finding another position. | | Either because they have a mortgage hanging over their | heads, or don't feel confident in their skills, or are | preoccupied with other responsibilities (kids, older | parents, etc) and have less free time/are less interested | in doing extra hours, or just hate interviewing, etc. | | It's basically the equivalent of a hot/pretty boyfriend or | girlfriend. They are able to find other options easier, so | tend to be the first to bounce if they stop getting what | they want. | | If you're a manager, that's obviously not great. Especially | if you're shallow. | naasking wrote: | > To answer your second question, because the ones who | leave are often the ones with the most options and lowest | risk to themselves if they are unemployed, which highly | correlates with those who are the 'best'. | | Maybe, but some of these "best" people might just leave | after a round of layoffs anyway right? And now you're | even more short-staffed than you wanted to be. | lazide wrote: | Yup! | | Though the issue they are trying to solve appears to be | having too many staff (overall). | | Understaffing is almost always a local/team level | concern. | | As long as nothing important implodes after the cuts, | it's working as intended from their perspective. | | The line and middle managers are the ones who always get | really screwed in these situations, as they're the ones | responsible for figuring out how to keep who they need | and keep things running (and growing!) while having the | rug pulled out from under them staffing wise (and | probably in other ways too). | | This is when you figure out what (if any) power they | have, how well they can prioritize, and what their | personal character really is. | | Will they level with people, cut things that don't matter | (as much), even if it's a hard decision, give people | flexibility where it matters, go up to bat for folks who | it's important that be done? | | Or will they deflect, throw people under the bus to avoid | making hard calls, and emotionally manipulate who's left | to keep things afloat while burning them out and | underpaying them? | RRL wrote: | The layoff was leaked on Blind 24-48hrs ago | seabriez wrote: | There's an ongoing leak about layoffs just about for any | company on Blind at any given time whether it will happen | or not. Too much trolling to be ever reliable. | sharkweek wrote: | I have a number of friends who all work at Stripe and this | was definitely a secret circulating among the staff for at | least the last week or so, like well beyond the "I wonder if | we'll also have layoffs" rumors going around at almost every | tech co right now. | truncate wrote: | I have a friend who worked at Stripe unit last year. He | recently warned me that things are not going well, and he | has heard rumors and I should avoid interviewing there. So | I think they had some idea that something is going on. | freshfunk wrote: | When you want to do broad company-wide layoffs, you have to | adopt some broad strategies, otherwise it'll be way too much | work to find 15% of the company. It's like trying to do | surgery with a scalpel when you really need a saw to amputate | an arm. | | Imagine the mechanics if they involved every single low-level | manager in decision making. You'd never find 15%. Everyone | would justify where a person on their team or their team as a | whole deserves to be saved. So you apply broader rules (eg | certain products, certain types of jobs, performance based). | The upside is that you can avoid people-specific favoritism. | The downside is that you lose good people in those areas as | you're not distinguishing good from bad. | rootusrootus wrote: | My current company did a layoff, not quite 15%, but in that | ballpark. They went down as far as the directors and gave | them a number. I.e. pick X people to lose. This was in | addition to some specific cuts where they axed the entire | product and all teams associated with it. | | It definitely allowed management to cut a few people that | had been on their short list for a while. | dmurdoch wrote: | I work at a company that did layoffs recently as well, about | double this size. | | Our managers also had no idea until day of. The entire day | was spent watching co workers google calendars and slack | accounts. Once they got a meeting booked with HR, their | meeting titles all turned into "busy", so we would know who | is getting cut and who wasn't. It was a brutal day. | | In our case I don't think they were picking people based on | performance whatsoever. It seemed to just be about who was | paid the best and who in the org structure could have their | job removed and someone else take over. Really weird. | dboreham wrote: | Hmm. I think we were at the same place. | pc86 wrote: | Is it "really weird," though? Layoffs, especially when you | start talking about entire teams, divisions, products, etc. | is about revenue, profitability, and righting the ship (or | safeguarding the ship so you don't have to right it 6 | months from now). Whether Jim got "exceeds expectations" or | "greatly exceeds expectations" is irrelevant when an EVP | needs to trim $12M off their budget and Jim's department | lost $9M last year. | wongarsu wrote: | Assuming perfect information, Jim's skill being | transferable, and Jim's performance eval being objective, | you'd expect that the company would profit from | transferring Jim and other top performers to their | profitable products, and cutting the worst employees from | those projects (after all, even a department making | profit is likely to have some employees on the low end of | the performance bell curve). | | Of course that isn't as easy because of morale, team | cohesion, performance evals rarely being comparable | across teams, and people being not as fungible as the | above suggests. Not to mention all the work this takes, | in a time when you probably have other worries. So maybe | it's not "really weird", just "not immediately obvious" | imchillyb wrote: | JBlue42 wrote: | I feel like pc86 was just being straightforward about how | those decisions are made. They can speak for themselves | though. | | When I was part of a mass lay-off, it was big enough to | trigger CA state law where they had to detail everything. | You could clearly see that it was strictly based on who | was paid the most (below the managerial level). | | >The 'righting' came because of shitty financial | decisions made from top-down. The top should be fired | first and foremost. The company wouldn't be in the | position its in if management were doing their fucking | jobs. | | Should but rarely, if ever, happens. Some even get a | larger bonus when meeting next quarter targets or some | other short-term indicator. | pc86 wrote: | You are correct I was just saying what typically _does_ | happen, not what _should_ happen. | | And when someone responds with so much misguided anger | it's not even worth the effort to respond. | furbyhater wrote: | > it was strictly based on who was paid the most (below | the managerial level) | | The "(below the managerial level)" part is the problem | and the reason it is outrageous to people invested in a | company but not in a position of power (such as the | actual developers/engineers, even in a tech-centric | company, at least once it has grown to a given size). | pc86 wrote: | A lot of times what you'll see done is structured more as | a reorg than just a straight layoff, where if they need | to trim $xM from the budget, they'll start shrinking and | eliminating teams at the IC level until they reach .7-.8 | of that figure, then see how many "extra" managers they | have and start trimming there, typically just based on | seniority rather than pay. Rinse and repeat until you're | at .9-1.1x depending on how many people you think will | resign after the layoffs. | couchand wrote: | Yeah, and don't let anybody ask what compensation the EVP | is getting, there's definitely no fat to trim there... | jcadam wrote: | Hey if you don't pay top dollar for quality executive | talent, you might end up with people who run the company | into the ground slightly faster. | cragfar wrote: | A common sentiment you see on the internet (especially | from younger people who haven't experience a tough labor | market) is that only the low performers get laid off. So | I can see how they think it's really weird if managers | aren't involved. | throwaway16273 wrote: | I was part of lay offs some years ago. Managers didn't | know until the day of, and it wasn't based on | performance. All the performance reviews were already | done months before. Some people were even due for | promotions. | newsclues wrote: | If layoffs are occurring, companies or managers are going | to want to cut poor performers or trouble employees at | that time. | | So if younger employees are saying it's cutting low | performers, and the rest are left as the younger and | lower paid workers to pick up the slack, where senior | levels are cut indiscriminately or based on salary, | because they are higher paid and the goal is to cut | expensive workers. | ghshephard wrote: | Low performers _always_ 100% of the time get dropped | during layoffs. It 's the one window that companies can | mostly let go of employees without being sued. (Though, | if they lay off too many people in a protected class, | still can get sued). What's interesting about a lot of | the division or sector-downturn layoffs, that you end up | seeing solid performers, and, when you are dropping a | good portion of your division - _very good_ performers | let go. Most companies try to make a play for keeping | their 10x developers - but, I 've been in layoffs | (Browser Division, Netscape, 1997sh) - where just | absolutely everyone was dropped, regardless of | performance. | scarby2 wrote: | > Low performers always 100% of the time get dropped | during layoffs. | | This is totally not true. Usually they make jobs | redundant not people. If there's a pool of people doing | the same job and that headcount is reduced then it will | often be the lowest performers that go however some | places have done LIFO or cut the most expensive. | | However if you're doing layoffs and you reduce your | frontend team the it's likely low performers from the | backend team get to stick around. | okaram wrote: | Most layoffs will include _some_ low performers, but | almost never _only_ or _all_ low performers. | | If lucky and done right, performance will (inversely) | correlate with _probability_ of layoff. | yodsanklai wrote: | > if they lay off too many people in a protected class, | still can get sued | | That's interesting, but how would you know? suppose | you're in a protected class, and suspect some form of | discrimination. How would you fight it? | mik3y wrote: | Yes, it's normal for layoffs to be planned and executed by a | very small group, typically to avoid leaks or creating | hysteria ahead of decisions being finalized. This in turn | means less-than-perfect information is available, and so | less-than-scientific cuts are made. | | "Ideally", your layoff strategy dictates some cuts regardless | of performance: Say we're shutting down the self-driving car | division, folding up recruiting, or choosing to accept the | risk that comes with getting rid of the whole security team; | sadly, the performance of the individuals involved isn't | really considered. | | Tenure, seniority, and comp are also factors that can come | into play & are straightforward to establish without lower- | level involvement. | anyfoo wrote: | > Say we're shutting down the self-driving car division, | folding up recruiting, or choosing to accept the risk that | comes with getting rid of the whole security team. | | Did you intend this to be a spit take? The sentence read | about the same as "Say you're taking a stroll around town, | visit a few cafes, or decide to end the day by jumping into | an active volcano." | BayesianDice wrote: | I'm guessing a reference to Patreon in September this | year: https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/09/patreon-security- | layoffs/ | anyfoo wrote: | Wow, thanks for the link, I did not know. That's... bad. | isbjorn16 wrote: | bit like seeing someone jump into an active volcano, | really | [deleted] | mik3y wrote: | No, I didn't mean it that way or in reference to a | specific company - although I can see how it read that | way! Your comment made me laugh. | | The point was more that layoffs can take out big slugs of | staff without considering the individual, in a few | different ways: initiatives we can just cancel completely | (self driving cars); people we will likely need later but | less in the shorter term (recruiting); or places where we | consciously take on added risk (losing security). | | I do think that for the company that sacked their | security team, the executives may very well have had a | full understanding of the risks it created -- but | couldn't easily say so publicly ("we chose to 10x our | risk of a security incident, so we keep 1 more product | initiative staffed which might save us"). Just | speculation. Not a situation I think many of us would be | comfortable in. | taude wrote: | It's even more common to hire one of the big consulting | firms to do most of this. Every layoff at large companies | I've been involved with was done via a Bain, BCG, etc... | ffggvv wrote: | not at stripe but another similar company that recently had | layoffs. | | ones at my company were decided by the next level manager, | based on the most recent perf review | grammers wrote: | Best of luck to you, that's tough. | | It shouldn't be the case that people can be laid off just like | that - particularly if their work was obviously needed. | rockostrich wrote: | Sorry to hear that. My company went through a similar deep cut | in May 2020 and I also wasn't informed which of my direct | reports were getting laid off. After I was informed, I fought | for the new hire who joined a couple of weeks earlier who was | let go over one of the underperforming engineers (who has since | improved a lot after getting feedback and working with me on | their issues). The new hire was already contributing more and | it was clear they picked up on both technical and non-technical | concepts very quickly. | kollayolla wrote: | Tech workers need unions. This is becoming more clear by the day. | saos wrote: | > we're very sorry to be taking this step and John and I are | fully responsible for the decisions leading up to it. | | Fair enough but this seems to be common line every CEO is going | for the two years. | | The severance Stripe are offering is nice though. | break_the_bank wrote: | In addition to normal things that suck about layoffs another | thing I don't like about the layoffs from Lyft, Coinbase and | Stripe is their equity policy. All of them went from fixing the 4 | year grant on day one to a fixed yearly dollar value making the # | of units you get every year variable. Obviously this only applied | to ICs and not directors. Stock goes up you get fewer units, | stock goes down you get more units. They said this is to help the | employee during a downtime, but during downtimes they just end up | laying people off. | jonny_eh wrote: | > we'll be supporting transitions to non-employment visas | wherever we can. | | wtf is that even? | hinkley wrote: | Situations like this are part of my thesis on scaling employees | vertically. | | People get into growth mode and overhire and then have to lay off | when the bill comes due. Or permanent attrition which is also | stressful. | | Productivity improvement via expensive tools and training is | easier to pull back from when you get to the end. It slows the | headcount ramp, which resides the fishtailing at the end. | | Plus I just feel far better when I can say that the team can | produce more functionality per month today than six months ago. | Teams that slowly grind to a halt are one of my personal Hells. | SevenNation wrote: | > The world is now shifting again. We are facing stubborn | inflation, energy shocks, higher interest rates, reduced | investment budgets, and sparser startup funding. (Tech company | earnings last week provided lots of examples of changing | circumstances.) On Tuesday, a former Treasury Secretary said that | the US faces "as complex a set of macroeconomic challenges as at | any time in 75 years", and many parts of the developed world | appear to be headed for recession. We think that 2022 represents | the beginning of a different economic climate. | | To justify the move, Stripe is pointing in every direction except | their own operational situation. What's going on at Stripe? | | > ... We provide an important foundation to our customers and | Stripe is not a discretionary service that customers turn off if | budget is squeezed. ... | | Ok, so are you saying that business has taken such a dive so | quickly that you're trying to get in front of it? Or are there | more announcements like this on tap? | codegeek wrote: | A bit surprising considering they had 3x growth since 2020 | according to this post. THen why the need to cut ? THe only | answer could be "need higher returns for shareholders" because I | honestly doubt their growth is at risk. | | So is Stripe saying that they are cutting because they grew much | faster during Pandemic and now are not growing as fast so they | need to slash 14% of workforce to keep the same returns for | shareholders ? Would love to hear from Stripe CEO directly. | jchonphoenix wrote: | Stripe has barely trimmed their internal valuation. Their best | public comp, Square, has lost 80% of it's market cap since the | peak. Stripe on the other hand, has trimmed theirs 22%. The | people most hurt by this are employees at refresher and offer | time given their yearly vest schedule. | aliqot wrote: | Guys.. There's no Edwin on this post :( | rexreed wrote: | Stripe stresses me out. I really cringe worrying about having too | many financial eggs in the Stripe basket. But Paypal is no | alternative and traditional CC processors are awful. How does one | hedge their bets with Stripe? I worry one day we'll hit some | transaction "trigger" and then all our money will get locked up | in Stripe with no customer support recourse. | | I fear being "too successful" with no recourse if I depend on | Stripe too much. | onion2k wrote: | _How does one hedge their bets with Stripe?_ | | Build your business in a way that doesn't lock you into Stripe | where it's reasonable to, and accept that it'll be painful in | places where you can't. | | _...then all our money will get locked up in Stripe with no | customer support recourse._ | | Don't leave all your money in Stripe. | bombcar wrote: | Integrate Apple Pay and Google Pay and/or whatever Samsung is | doing these days. | | Add PayPal, too. | | Have established policies about draining the processor funds | into accounts, and work with your bank on how to set these up | properly. | | There is really no reason to have a single payment provider | these days. | throwaway2203 wrote: | What's wrong with PayPal? | seydor wrote: | How is PayPal no alternative? Stripe is the alternative to | Paypal. Or are things different in the US? | celestialcheese wrote: | Spread out transactions across multiple payment processors. | We've backloaded authorize.net and braintree behind stripe to | act as a failover and primary when the fees are cheaper. | rexreed wrote: | How do you deal with recurring revenue subscriptions? | celestialcheese wrote: | It depends on how you set up your billing and subscription | management. If you're locked into stripes subscription | management, this isn't really possible (which is one of the | reasons why Stripe built this :)) | | Otherwise, you can pin certain accounts to specific payment | processors. | | Or even better if you're dealing with larger enterprise | subscriptions, or even smaller subscriptions, move to | ACH/Wire/Invoice model with yearly billing. Saves money on | credit card fees and moves away from middlemen that can | hold your money hostage. | | I'm hopeful about FedNow as a strong competitor to these | middlemen and enabling instant, easy, low-fee payments.[1] | | 1 - https://www.pymnts.com/news/payment- | methods/2022/fednow-pilo... | arnvald wrote: | Been there with Braintree. One day they told us "your company | profile is too risky, we won't serve you unless you keep a | deposit of $x million with us. We couldn't afford that, so we | migrated to another provider and then diversified - we | integrated Stripe, Adyen and later a few local providers and we | were able to dynamically switch between them. It was a lot of | effort, but it made us more resilient and independent | neivin wrote: | Most large Stripe clients split traffic. It doesn't make | sense to have Stripe be a single point of failure if you're | processing enough volume. | rexreed wrote: | How do you do that when Stripe holds your subscription / | recurring revenue? Keep that recurring revenue base | independent of the CC processor? I used to use Recurly and | stuff like that but it seemed like I was paying double just | for the benefit of maintaining my own recurring charge | list, not to mention not integrated with many of the | payment features. | cj wrote: | Or, they'll raise their fees to increase revenue once they | decide to exploit their monopoly. | | This has already started happening with the introduction of | their Billing product which begins charging for basic features | that were previously free. | | We'll see a slow migration away from the flat 2.9% + 30 cents | --> much more complicated and expensive pricing models. | notatoad wrote: | doesn't stripe do daily payouts? i don't wat to say losing a | day of revenue would be fine, but it shouldn't be a real | existential risk to your business. | rexreed wrote: | Daily payouts isn't the issue. Of course we get the payouts | daily. But when they lock your account and you have $5M+ in | recurring revenue from subscriptions on recurring revenue | then you have a real problem. | robryan wrote: | Airwallex is another good choice now, their API/ sdks aren't as | mature as stripe but are catching up. If you are charging in | multicurrrncy can actually end up with a much better deal on | Airwallex. | dangerwill wrote: | There is Adyen over in Europe. I don't know/doubt they do as | much business as Stripe but they aren't insignificant | petrusnonius wrote: | That's a bit of an understatement | peanuty1 wrote: | Square is another option. | Vervious wrote: | Is it mostly engineering or other roles being laid off? | musha68k wrote: | Looking forward to the released creativity though. | | Remember: especially when getting laid off in tech - eventually | this will commonly be very good for personal growth. Lots of | opportunities in the coming downturn as in full tandem with ever- | ongoing neoliberal capitalism: software is still eating the | world. | | Don't be sad. Take the ticket - and maybe do something that's | more interesting / pressingly needed than... payment | processing... | | The world is literally on fire, you are smart and hard working | why not do something about that instead? | seanmcdirmid wrote: | > Remember: especially when getting laid off in tech - | eventually this will commonly be very good for personal growth. | Lots of opportunities in the coming downturn as in full tandem | with ever-ongoing neoliberal capitalism: software is still | eating the world. | | This is true when you don't have a family to support and/or | have a second more reliable income, but it is extremely | stressful if you don't have a decent cushion and have | responsibilities. I mean, you are partially right, but it | depends on the situation. | musha68k wrote: | It always does, I agree. Then again most people in that | cohort probably have the corresponding level of financial | means / literacy [to have a cushion]. Either way just read | above that in this case specifically the severance seems | generous enough. I'm not worried for the typical stripe | worker here. This will be good for them if they don't get | bogged down by shock / sadness. | seanmcdirmid wrote: | Even if you have a couple of years saved up, being out of | work can put a damper on your plans quickly. It means your | spouse's job is especially important for health insurance | (in the states), and that is assuming they have a job | already. If you were looking to buy a house soon, those | plans just got cancelled, and if you just spent a lot of | your cushion on a down payment (with the intention of | rebuilding your cushion), things could be tight for awhile. | This is true even for a FAANG or Stripe employee. | | Also, being laid off usually means being in a down economy | where not much hiring is going on, so recovery takes | longer. | musha68k wrote: | Agreed, I always forget about the Damocles sword that is | lack of basic health in the US. I'm now wondering if this | is by design... | | The other points do still strike me as more qualitative | though (for the cohort) but you convinced me with the | health coverage. Absolutely nobody should be in danger of | falling through the cracks on that side. | | So yeah this sucks, it's not great at all. Still would | say: don't give up folks - you'll be able to find a job | (better even, found a company?) even in a downturn. | Again, this is software. The big co-enabler of unhinged | capitalism. Here to stay. | arberx wrote: | So many BS roles at all these companies. I imagine we see a lot | more of this going into Q4 when next year's budgets are | finalized. | bogomipz wrote: | >"Earlier today, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison sent the following | note to Stripe employees." | | >"Today we're announcing the hardest change we have had to make | at Stripe to date. We're reducing the size of our team by around | 14% and saying goodbye to many talented Stripes in the process" | | We are "reducing the size of our team" and "saying goodbye"? I'm | of the opinion that words matter and more so when they are from | the company CEO. Is there some reason why a CEO who is | "announcing the hardest change we have had make" is unable to use | the language that reflects the reality? Can the person who is | paid the big bucks to make the big decisions really not bring | himself to use the word "layoff" in announcing layoffs? Is he | really that cowardly? A CEO is supposed to be a leader. It takes | him 8 paragraphs before he uses the actual word "layoff." | DogLover_ wrote: | Go to their job page: https://stripe.com/jobs/search | | Almost 700 open roles right now... | daxfohl wrote: | It says they laid off much of the recruiting team, so nobody is | left to remove the listings. | DogLover_ wrote: | My problem is that they signal that they hire until this | layoff. The responsible thing would be to not hire for the | last couple of months. | tasuki wrote: | I'm all for layoffs, but this is indeed extremely curious. | blahblah123456 wrote: | Is it? They probably just haven't had time to update it. Also | a lot of times online job listings mean nothing. They are | just left up even if they are not actively hiring. | csharpminor wrote: | I think it is. Firing is horrendously expensive, so most | companies will follow a progression of cuts before | resorting to layoffs. They'll typically start with perks | (e.g. travel / team entertainment / office space) and then | progress to a hiring freeze, and then move to layoffs. | | In Stripe's instance it seems like they went directly to | layoffs. I heard that they did institute a PIP process last | year but not sure what percent they cut. | StopHammoTime wrote: | How come CEOs never get fired during layoffs? Laying off this | much of the workforce is an indicator they have done their job | poorly (I.e. failed to adequately forecast industry trends and | demand). Any normal plebeian would be out the door in two minutes | if they did something similar. | friedman23 wrote: | When the CEO is the majority shareholder of a company it's a | different calculus. Shareholders and the board are the two | entities that can hold CEOs accountable. If they are one and | the same nobody can hold the CEO accountable except customers | via boycott. | anoojb wrote: | I wonder how many of those let go have options that need to get | exercised with some sort of tax consequences? | | Not only is it psychologically disorienting, but now it's | financially taxing...literally. Yikes | BhavdeepSethi wrote: | 14% translates to what number here? Anyone knows their | approximate headcount? | mritchie712 wrote: | 7k total after the cut, so ~1k people let go | [deleted] | lovelearning wrote: | > which will return us to our February headcount of almost | 7,000 people | | I guess about 8,150 employees and 1,150 are being laid-off. | e_commerce wrote: | bijection wrote: | We're hiring frontendy full stack engineers here at Farallon | capital, located in the SF Financial district. If you're | departing Stripe and looking for new opportunities drop me a line | at gw@farcap.com | newaccount2021 wrote: | AtNightWeCode wrote: | I guess Thursday is better than Friday but do things like this in | the beginning of the week. It's custom. | donmb wrote: | Just some pre IPO moves.. leading to more productivity and | revenues. | tschellenbach wrote: | Anyone else think that Meta will be next? | laweijfmvo wrote: | No, not next; "eventually," maybe. I think they are still | holding out hope that the ~15% they'd like to layoff will | "self-select," and I fully expect them to send those people a | message next perf cycle. | eganist wrote: | Hey pc, if you're around: | | > John and I are fully responsible for the decisions leading up | to it. | | What are the two of you doing to show accountability? Are you | slashing your own future stock grants, cutting your own salaries, | diluting your positions with stock grants to everyone else? | What's the consequence for this decision on your end that shows | you're accountable for what happened, not just responsible for | it? Since you have no intention of cashing out, the valuation cut | is ineffectual as a consequence to you, and the support/severance | package will probably have minimal impact on your own bottom line | since it's all largely been accounted for (payouts of planned | bonuses, existing unvested stock etc) | dgobaud wrote: | You think there should be negative consequences to the founders | for expertly managing the business...? | | To many it looked like covid, wfh, etc resulted in a new world | with a permanent step level increase in the internet economy | that caused Stripe's business to dramatically increase and thus | the founders grew the company to support the activity and | continue being the best and most innovative internet payment | service. | | It turns out unfortunately the growth was temporary, inflation | skyrocketed, and the world is probably heading into a recession | that will further decrease or slow the growth of the internet | economy and thus Stripe's business, so the founders are acting | quickly and responsibly to cut costs in order to maintain a | position of financial strength and continue growing the | business and being the best and most innovative internet | payment service. | | In time, if Stripe continues to succeed and have exceptional | business performance, the consequences to the founders should | be financial reward for taking quick and effective beneficial | action that grew the business. | strikelaserclaw wrote: | i hate this trend of ceos saying they take responsibility. | Reminds me of lord farquuad, "some of you may die, but that is | a price i'm willing to pay" | pbreit wrote: | What do you suggest? | tootie wrote: | I read it as "this was our decision" as opposed to "this is | our fault". Basically they are saying not to blame and middle | managers, investors, board members or whatever. | eganist wrote: | They know what accountability is. That's why they never use | the word. | | Yeah we know you're _responsible_ for it, but how are you | being held _accountable_ for it? | | No one will remember in two years time, but my hope is it'll | factor into candidates' decisions around whether to pursue a | career with Stripe. If I've got senior executives without | accountability, it's a distraction to my ability to deliver | the product as well as to lead my own teams supporting their | vision because it means I can't rely on them, and this | outcome with absolutely no accountability behind it is a good | enough reason for me to never want to join Stripe in the | future. | joegahona wrote: | Do you have an example handy of a CEO who has provided | acceptable accountability in a situation like this? | remify wrote: | Patagonia has an interesting story about this. | | After having to layoff a lot of their staff in the 90s, | Chouinard decided to switch his compagny values and | reason of being. | | This article sums it up I guess, | https://medium.com/@adamler/limiting-the-engines-of- | growth-a... | eganist wrote: | Good examples of self accountability? Sadly not. (Edit: | see huffmsa for a good example) | | Good examples of accountability to the board? All over. | But boards care (by mandate) only about profit unless | specified otherwise. There's no incentive for a board to | care about whether people are put out on the street | either; it's one of the major reasons for why unions | exist and are successful: they provide a mechanism for | accountability that ties adverse employee decisions back | to future revenue loss. | | Tl;Dr: nope, and that's sadly by design because why would | anyone be self-accountable when the consequences hit the | wallet? I was hoping for a ray of light to pierce the | dark. | shuckles wrote: | Unions have a range of outcomes for business success. | Yes, some may hold management accountable and ultimately | help companies; others screw over everyone besides long | tenured employees. Suppose Stripe was unionized and | somehow the union had convinced management to stop hiring | in February 2022 which is the level they're reducing | headcount to now. Would the laid off employees been | better off in that world without a year of Stripe | employment, income, and benefits? It's very unclear. | bumby wrote: | > _somehow the union had convinced management to stop | hiring in February 2022_ | | Why would the union do this? It seems like a contrived | example to prove a point. Unions would conceivably | benefit from more hires because they would have more | union membership. | | My anecdotal experience is that unions are a massive | benefit to laid-off employees. Laid off employees were | given 80% pay while they waited with a known re-hire | date. In other cases, they are given priority when the | company is looking to rehire with an unknown rehire date. | Unions have downsides, for sure, but I don't think your | example points them out here. | shuckles wrote: | There are plenty of unions that keep supply low. Nearly | every labor union in California, for example, has | underfunded apprenticeship programs for exactly this | reason. I'm surprised you aren't aware this is a | phenomenon. Unions answer to their current members, and | there's plenty of incentive to keep the current | membership smaller. | | And my example was simply continuing the original | poster's insinuation that a union could have helped | management avoid the over hiring mistake they were about | to make by making the consequences of that mistake | greater. | bumby wrote: | To be clear, I was technically a non-union employee in a | union shop so that may explain some of my ignorance. | (Most of the white collar employees were non-union. The | controls engineers were in a quasi-union status without | actually joining the union. It was a weird situation | because of some ongoing legal battles.) | | What you said does make sense though. The union | apprentiships were extremely competitive, possibly | because they were constrained to low numbers. | huffmsa wrote: | Satoru Iwata took a large pay cut when Nintendo was in a | downturn in 2014ish | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | That's actually not uncommon in Japan. CEOs are basically | married to their companies, and take their performance | quite personally. | | Also, Japanese execs are paid substantially less than | their US/UK counterparts. | | I doubt that it has happened in quite a while, but there | have been CEOs that have committed suicide, when their | companies failed. | | Doubt that will catch on, in the US. | rippercushions wrote: | The salaries of Japanese execs are indeed tiny by US | standards. However, as Kalzumeus says, instead of paying | money so you can buy status, Japanese companies give | status directly: company cars with drivers, company | villas, very generous expense accounts, etc etc. | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | Similar to the US entertainment industry. | | A lot of the nice stuff that musicians and actors have, | is actually owned by the company. | | Gilded cage, so to speak. | lucasyvas wrote: | Came here to say this one. | eganist wrote: | Good call. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-25941070 | thunky wrote: | The former CEO of Netflix, Patty McCord, who helped | create a culture of firing people "when it was time", was | fired as a result of said culture: | | https://www.fastcompany.com/3056662/she-created-netflixs- | cul... | | _Remember, "companies don't exist to make you happy. You | know that, right? The business doesn't exist to serve | you. The business exists to serve your customers," | reminds McCord._ | bumby wrote: | Not a CEO, but I'm reminded of the incident on a Navy | vessel that struck a fishing boat and resulted in a | number of fatalities. The captain was actually off the | vessel at the time and not in charge. He still resigned | because he was accountable to the decision on who he left | in charge. | | (Tbf, I'm sure he was told to resign. But that's largely | because the Navy has tried to institute a culture of | accountability, albeit imperfectly) | [deleted] | colechristensen wrote: | I think whatever a leader does which isn't ritual suicide | when announcing layoffs is going to get criticism. People in | power hired when expecting an uptick and fired when expecting | a downtick. | ryandrake wrote: | That's kind of the fundamental problem of megawealth: You | can't actually be held accountable for anything short of | "ritual suicide". When a senior exec or CxO screws up, what | conceivably could punish them? Lose their salary for a | year? Ineffective. The wealthy make more from interest on | their investments than they could ever need to live. What | else could punish them? Their stock value going down? | Oooh.. Mark Zuckerberg's _personally_ lost $76B in the last | 12 months, more than the entire shareholder value loss of | Enron 's collapse. Zucc still has so much money that an | uncountable number of generations of his offspring will | still never need to work again in their lives. | | Why do people keep working and earning more when they are | set for life--what actual practical purpose does megawealth | serve once you've guaranteed your standard of living for | you and your offspring? The purpose is lack of | accountability. Megawealth means you can spend every | remaining day of your life screwing up, and besides doing | something illegal that lands you in jail, you'll never | suffer a consequence. | cbreynoldson wrote: | > Why do people keep working and earning more when they | are set for life--what actual practical purpose does | megawealth serve once you've guaranteed your standard of | living for you and your offspring? | | I think this is the wrong question to ask -- "what end is | this a means to anymore". One of the largest challenges | in life is pursuit of meaning, and Zuck has, at least he | thinks, found it. He still has consequences, but they are | higher up on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. | | You could argue that those in charge should have enough | at stake to feel the burn of a layoff like this, but this | issue isn't dissimilar to biology. We often make local | (and temporary) sacrifices on behalf our own bodies, | knowing "we" will still be around afterwards to enjoy | life and the removed parts won't (removing limbs, wiping | out blood cells, organ removal, etc.). This isn't 1:1 | with Zuck, because Zuck is more than just his role in | Meta, but close enough. | SpicyLemonZest wrote: | People keep working and earning more because they | genuinely enjoy doing it. Would you really prefer the | traditional alternative, where rich people become full- | time idlers and look down their noses at those of us who | have jobs? | ryandrake wrote: | > Would you really prefer the traditional alternative, | where rich people become full-time idlers and look down | their noses at those of us who have jobs? | | Actually, yes, as it could open up career opportunities | for others further down the totem pole. At almost every | company I've ever worked, the CxO, SVP, VP roles were all | hogged up by already-set-for-life people (or people who | became set for life by working there a few years). They | just hang on to those very senior roles like barnacles, | while the rank and file fight each other their whole | careers for a few open Director or manager roles. | | If already-rich people could just admit they won the game | and gracefully resign to "spend more time with their | family" or "look down their noses" or whatever rich | people like to do, maybe some of those Directors could be | promoted to VPs and some of those managers could be | promoted to Director and so on. This would help refresh | the tree a little, cycle new blood through leadership, | and help even more people climb the ladder. | Apocryphon wrote: | They could always get into VC. | smcl wrote: | No, they're making a business decision and they should | simply treat it as such and avoid the whole "please | understand how hard this is for me, the guy who will | continue getting a very large paycheque" thing, that makes | it worse. | | If they just give it to you straight, there's no bullshit - | the people fired may be mad or upset but they'll be mad or | upset _regardless_ because being fired sucks. If they start | hand-wringing, talking about how painful it was for them | and how they take full responsibility people will ask "hang | on, how _exactly_ is this painful for you? how are you | taking responsibility, what are you doing about it?" | goodpoint wrote: | When companies stock value tanks CEOs quit... after giving | themselves some million-dollar exit bonuses. | | Is that ritual suicide? | candiddevmike wrote: | Layoff seppuku, if the CEO can't do it then the CFO must | decapitate them. It's in all the standard corporate by- | laws. | cko wrote: | "Today, effective immediately, I, Gavin Belson, founder and | CEO of Hooli, am forced to officially say goodbye to the | entire Nucleus division. All Nucleus personnel will be given | proper notice and terminated. But make no mistake. Though | they're the ones leaving, it is I who must remain and bear | the heavy burden of their failure." | gizmo wrote: | Why act like the founders have to grovel and beg for | forgiveness? They don't. If they had been extra cautious during | covid in expectation for the economy to take a dive would | stripe be in a better position today? Absolutely not. | l33t233372 wrote: | And even still, why act like taking responsibility is the | same as taking a punishment? | gizmo wrote: | They are taking responsibility by admitting their strategic | error. That's enough. They have not performed poorly as | executives they are not going to punish themselves in the | manner proposed by OP. | gryBrd1987 wrote: | My guess is something like this: https://youtu.be/15HTd4Um1m4 | shuckles wrote: | I don't understand responses like this. They are returning to | February headcount. The executive team also made the long term | planning decisions which gave those people jobs for the last 9 | months (and income for the next 3). Would the right thing to do | have been not choosing to give more people a living for 13 | months at least? Are companies to never speculatively invest in | growth? | SpicyLemonZest wrote: | A lot of people would genuinely prefer for companies to never | make risky investments in growth, yes. If you've ever | wondered how the Japanese norm of lifetime employment can be | sustained, this is why; many employees prefer it to a system | where they might discover one day that their job was | dependent on a speculative investment that didn't pan out. | shuckles wrote: | My understanding is that Japan is a really bad place to be | a worker. | SpicyLemonZest wrote: | In a lot of ways it is, and it's my understanding | (although I can't claim any personal knowledge of this | part) that in the past couple of years things have been | changing. But I've had conversations with people who | _know_ their job is worse than it would be at the Stripes | of the world - worse pay, worse office, worse benefits, | worse hours - and yet they 're still not interested in | applying elsewhere because they're confident they can | stay in their first job until retirement. Some people | really do value stability and job security above anything | else in their career. | pmoriarty wrote: | There are rarely if ever any serious consequences to top execs | screwing up wealthy companies. | | Such execs are usually already so wealthy that they never have | to work another day in their life, no matter what happens or | how much they screw up. | | They can always find other prestigious, high paid jobs, and | sometimes even get rewarded with huge amounts of money from the | very companies they screwed over. | wnolens wrote: | > sometimes even get rewarded with huge amounts of money from | the very companies they screwed over. | | This is the norm I've witnessed. They're rewarded for making | bold bets, whether or not they pay off. | RestlessMind wrote: | Isn't that how things should be in a society? We should | encourage people to make bold bets and start real companies | like Stripe which offer valuable services. I am happy that | they made a bold bet, just like I am happy people start | companies when they can easily join an established company | and have a comfortable life. | | Just to be sure, there is a big difference between a bold | bet based on your market or product insights vs putting | everything on black on the roulette table. | ThrowawayR2 wrote: | > " _They 're rewarded for making bold bets, whether or not | they pay off._" | | If leaders were rewarded for being conservative instead of | making bold bets, Linux and open source would never have | taken off, nor would most tech startups. | ericb wrote: | What did they screw up, though? | | Their psychic abilities failed? A coin flip came up tails but | they bet on heads? | Barrin92 wrote: | preparing for an eventual end to the free money rally | instead of over-hiring isn't exactly something I'd consider | to fall into the realm of psychic abilities. | | is "we're a fast growing business but this cannot last | indefinitely, let's not overexpand" 'really too much to ask | for? It's constantly happening to tech companies because of | their internal fantasies. | ericb wrote: | If they under-expand, people will similarly complain when | their stock languishes compared to other stocks and the | board will replace them with someone telling a growth | story. The only thing the stock market rewards is growth, | so is it really _their_ fantasy? | candiddevmike wrote: | In this case, stripe is private, so their stock | performance is mostly moot. | dehrmann wrote: | I'm not convinced free money is as much of an issue as | large consumer demand shifts after covid. Inflation- | adjusted, money is still free. | pmoriarty wrote: | _" Their psychic abilities failed? A coin flip came up | tails but they bet on heads?"_ | | Isn't it interesting how we want to absolve execs of all | blame when they bet wrong and get unlucky, but declare them | geniuses and masters of business when they bet right and | get lucky? | joenot443 wrote: | I don't think I've ever seen anyone here express the | sentiment that execs and CEOs are geniuses for leading a | profitable company. If anything, it seems like it's us | engineers who like to consider ourselves brilliant, and | that the simple-minded management should be so lucky to | have us. | scarface74 wrote: | Yes and we really should be crying for the software | developers who worked for slave wages and had no | opportunity to save. | pmoriarty wrote: | At least they did something useful and actually earned | their pay. | chasebank wrote: | Like creating a company that gives thousands of people | jobs? Or creating infrastructure to enable millions of | web based businesses the ability to mindlessly process | payments? God, I miss the old HN. This place is reddit | now. | idealmedtech wrote: | Another entry in the decades-long saga: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=149257 | pmoriarty wrote: | Who built the railroads? J. P. Morgan, or the millions of | people who worked for him? | | Not surprising to see execs and founders on here patting | each other on the back and trying to convince everyone | that they deserve their millions because of how | innovative they are all the "value" they create. Looks | like the old HN to me. | scarface74 wrote: | I'm neither an executive or a founder. I'm just self | aware enough to know that software engineers aren't | exactly starving. | dymk wrote: | It's easy to get something wrong, but it's hard to get it | right. | pmoriarty wrote: | A broken clock is right twice a day. | rm_-rf_slash wrote: | Bad metaphor. There are a million wrong decisions that | could be made any time at any day, and only a handful of | options. | dymk wrote: | You have to be right more than twice a day to lead a | company like Stripe. | gizmo wrote: | Of course the stripe founders are not absolved of blame. | They made the wrong call. | | But overall Stripe has A+ execution -- of which very | little was luck -- and the founders deserve credit for | that. | sharkweek wrote: | Yes, essentially. | | "Do you care to know why I'm in this chair with you all? I | mean, why I earn the big bucks? | | I'm here for one reason and one reason alone. I'm here to | guess what the music might do a week, a month, a year from | now. That's it. Nothing more. And standing here tonight, | I'm afraid that I don't hear - a - thing. Just... silence." | | -John Tuld, Margin Call | nobleach wrote: | Imagine that they DIDN'T hire more people when they grew | by 3x. See how much people complain about the grind at | AWS. People are extraordinarily overworked. We'd be | reading "Why I left Stripe" posts and calling out the | CEOs for not scaling up properly. | hirsin wrote: | Stripe was already known (in my circles at least) for | being a ~grinder~ long hours type place. Not neccesarily | because they're understaffed but because it was a work | work work culture. | clpm4j wrote: | That's what I've seen (from the outside, with some | friends who work at Stripe) as well - it's the old | investment banking / management consulting work culture, | i.e. your job is your life. | RestlessMind wrote: | > There are rarely if ever any serious consequences to top | execs screwing up wealthy companies. | | That is because any exec worth her salt would negotiate a | generous golden parachute even before starting the job. And | why is she able to do that? Because there are very few | competent candidates available in the market. If you think | the job is easy, just go and get one of those exec positions | and you will learn. | pmoriarty wrote: | _" Because there are very few competent candidates | available in the market"_ | | Just because you're hired for one of those positions | doesn't mean you're competent. | pastor_bob wrote: | boeingUH60 wrote: | More like 1,000-acre mega-mansion - | https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/stripe-co-founder- | joh... | orzig wrote: | I think the ball is in your court when launching an ad | hominem attack (before we even get to the question of whether | it is relevant) It seems like that should be easy enough to | provide some evidence for, if it's true. | | https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=meditating%20collison%. | .. Gives nothing at a glance. Do you have anything? | hintymad wrote: | I thought "fully responsible" means that the decisions were | theirs and came from them. It was not from some other | executives, nor from their investors or their board of | directors. If there's any consequence from the layoff, the | consequence will be on them. Given that layoff is not | necessarily evil as many perceive, their claim of taking full | responsibility seems fair. | ulfw wrote: | There's zero responsibility. Just empty words that frankly are | unnecessary in the situation. | nsxwolf wrote: | What would make it better in your eyes? A year's severance? 2 | years? | ulfw wrote: | What does severance have to do with it? | | I was talking about the alleged 'responsibility' by the | billionaire owners. Yet said responsibility doesn't lead to | job loss or anything. It's empty words. | groffee wrote: | It's not about the severance. | | It's about the empty platitudes they and all people like | them spew. "they take responsibility" what does that even | mean? It's meaningless. | | Are they taking a paycut themselves? Letting themselves go | instead of their employes? Cutting down on bonuses to keep | their people employed? | CosmicShadow wrote: | They have to live with it and feel like shit and still | run THEIR business. You make a mistake, you don't fire | yourself and give up everything you work for, you do the | best you can and move on. Don't like how they operate? | Build your own business and hire thousands of people and | then when you make a mistake fire yourself instead. | l33t233372 wrote: | Why is taking responsibility the same as taking a | punishment in your eyes? | andrekandre wrote: | because responsibility without consequences is pointless? | l33t233372 wrote: | Perhaps if you're raising a child. | tasuki wrote: | > "they take responsibility" what does that even mean? | It's meaningless. | | It means they're not blaming anyone else for this. The | opposite of taking responsibility is assigning blame. | They aren't assigning blame, they're taking | responsibility. | tikhonj wrote: | Personally, what I want out of "accountability"--in general, | not just here--is not consequences for their own sake (or for | punishment) but rather taking actions to address the problem | and bearing the natural costs of those actions. This should | include immediate as well as long-term actions: | | 1. Some way to help with the immediate layoff. Reasonable | severance/etc is about what I'd expect. | | 2. Concrete action to prevent the problem in the future. The | post identifies specific errors in judgement and at least pays | lip service to avoiding layoffs in the future. | | I'm not sure how serious they are about 2--given the structure | and incentives of large corporations, how serious they even | _could_ be about it--but at least they 're talking about it. I | would not be surprised to see growth pressure overwhelming any | strategic or cultural changes they make today if business | conditions pick up again, with the whole cycle repeating over | the next 5-10 years. | [deleted] | tempsy wrote: | I would honestly be more annoyed as an employee that the | company didn't go public at a $150B market cap when it had the | chance. | | I believe the company's revenue is heavily tied to Shopify | whose stock is down -75% ytd... | memish wrote: | That's in the email: | | Severance pay. We will pay 14 weeks of severance for all | departing employees, and more for those with longer tenure. | That is, those departing will be paid until at least February | 21st 2023. | | Bonus. We will pay our 2022 annual bonus for all departing | employees, regardless of their departure date. (It will be | prorated for people hired in 2022.) | | PTO. We'll pay for all unused PTO time (including in regions | where that's not legally required). | | Healthcare. We'll pay the cash equivalent of 6 months of | existing healthcare premiums or healthcare continuation. | | RSU vesting. We'll accelerate everyone who has already reached | their one-year vesting cliff to the February 2023 vesting date | (or longer, depending on departure date). For those who haven't | reached their vesting cliffs, we'll waive the cliff. | | Career support. We'll cover career support, and do our best to | connect departing employees with other companies. We're also | creating a new tier of extra large Stripe discounts for anyone | who decides to start a new business now or in the future. | | Immigration support. We know that this situation is | particularly tough if you're a visa holder. We have extensive | dedicated support lined up for those of you here on visas | (you'll receive an email setting up a consultation within a few | hours), and we'll be supporting transitions to non-employment | visas wherever we can. | eganist wrote: | That's how they're supporting their employees, but this | would've already been accounted for anyway (the vesting, | potential bonuses, pay through Feb 2023, etc), so this isn't | accountability so much as it's "we'll, we won't see the | immediate benefit until March" | | Would've been a different story for instance if pc/jc were | diluted with new grants to departing and existing employees. | lefstathiou wrote: | What more do you want? They are paying out millions in cash | ("out of the goodness in their heart"... ie they don't have | to and people shouldnt expect) which is directly reducing | the value of the equity, which impacts them more than | anyone else by a huge proportion. Handing out equity grants | makes no little sense to me and is unlikely what these | employees want... "hey you're fired, here's some stock at | our latest valuation pre correction". | oceanplexian wrote: | It's not out of the goodness of their heart. Stripe has | to retain its existing employees and still attract | talent, and the economic situation we're experiencing is | only temporary. If they screw people over as they are | leaving, they are shooting themselves in the foot. | eganist wrote: | I don't want anything; I have no intention of working for | stripe. | | But in the face of fundraising headwinds, a decision to | cut costs like this only improves (or stabilizes anyway) | their ability to raise at a valuation closer to what | they're looking for in this down market. The severance | package here only deferred the benefit to the bottom | line, but it wasn't a consequence for over-hiring and | potentially disrupting lives. | | In other words, the layoffs actually benefit the founders | directly, and it ends up becoming a perverse incentive to | over-hire and lay off again with the next boom/bust. | Successful accountability means people actually avoid | doing shitty things. | ProAm wrote: | > the layoffs actually benefit the founders directly, and | it ends up becoming a perverse incentive to over-hire and | lay off again with the next boom/bust. Successful | accountability means people actually avoid doing shitty | things. | | This is exactly how business works. You should not be | surprised. Their job is to ensure the company survives | and that is really it. Everyone is expendable. None of | these employees were guaranteed a long leisurely | employment at Stripe. | | Businesses change overnight. But it's always a cyclical | market. As the founders I would expect them to benefit | themselves. There doesn't have to be consequences, only | change and adaptation. It's just business, they aren't | your family. | lefstathiou wrote: | To add to this, the lack of commitment is reciprocal. | Employees can walk out the door any second... Stripe | pulled these hundreds of employees from somewhere (I | doubt they were all college grads). It's just business on | both sides. | seneca wrote: | > The severance package here only deferred the benefit to | the bottom line, but it wasn't a consequence for over- | hiring and potentially disrupting lives. In other words, | the layoffs actually benefit the founders directly... | | This is all complete nonsense. They're handing out | millions of dollars they have no obligation to pay. | Unlike cheap talk on the internet, this actually costs | them quite a lot. This is extremely generous. | [deleted] | mbesto wrote: | So what should they avoided doing? Hiring those people in | the first place..? | throwaway9191aa wrote: | For the sake of argument, let's just assume that all of | this is true and they are acting in self interest and | everyone is horrible all the time. | | I would still take the deal. I would work there if they | hired me. If there are enough people like me to continue | the business, then this thing turns out to not be shitty. | Only time will tell. | bumby wrote: | I think the issue comes from the idea that in tough | times, good leaders take their lumps before they expect | it from their team. There's lots of colloquialisms that | seem to fit this: | | "Leaders eat last" | | "We cut the fat starting at the top" | | "Leaders need to have endurance beyond their troops" | | I have no skin in the game either. The severance packages | are commendable, but I don't think it actually answers | the OP's question about accountability. I don't want to | speak for the other commenter, but I think what they're | looking for is some indication that the leadership has | personally sacrificed something equal to or exceeding | what they expected out of their subordinates. Giving out | millions in severance, while commendable, isn't a | personal sacrifice. | mbesto wrote: | > Giving out millions in severance, while commendable, | isn't a personal sacrifice. | | Do y'all expect them to cut their arm off? I'm not | defending pc but the OP's comment wreaks of corporate | SJW. | | > but I think what they're looking for is some indication | that the leadership has personally sacrificed something | equal to or exceeding what they expected out of their | subordinates | | Millions (and billions) come out of their valuation as a | result. It's not like they're getting whisked away on a | golden parachute. | eganist wrote: | > Millions (and billions) come out of their valuation as | a result. It's not like they're getting whisked away on a | golden parachute. | | It's the exact opposite. They're more likely to stem the | bloodletting of their valuation with layoffs extending | runway or boosting profitabiliy than see it get worse. | bumby wrote: | > _Do y 'all expect them to cut their arm off?_ | | That depends. Are they expecting their subordinates to | cut their arms off? | | I do think a lot of discussion seems to point to how we, | as a society, have adjusted our social norms about what's | expected out of leadership. | mbesto wrote: | > Are they expecting their subordinates to cut their arms | off? | | Do you expect company management and subordinates to have | symmetrical work obligations? | bumby wrote: | Not at all. But we seem okay with management having a | larger upside, given how the pay structure ratio has | continued to evolve over the last few decades. I think | it's only reasonable that, with outside rewards, | management expects to take on outsized risk. | | It feels like the social norms have shifted to accept one | but not the other. In other words, we're only supportive | of an asymmetrical risk:reward ratio that favors | management. | mbesto wrote: | > In other words, we're only supportive of an | asymmetrical risk:reward ratio that favors management. | | Actually we have, the risk:reward ratio is generally | consistent across founder/management vs IC. | | Are you simply saying that because CEO to IC pay ratio | has expanded drastically in recent years that it's not | accurately accounting for the risk? You realize that ~x% | cut in workforce includes managers right? In fact, often | times cheaper more productive ICs stay and expensive | middle management is first to go. Seems like that is | accounting for it no? | bumby wrote: | I thought this discussion was centered on the CEO pay. To | that extent CEO pay has ballooned and I see very little | evidence that their risk has been commensurate with that | growth. If anything, the structure of contracts seems to | indicate the opposite. | scarface74 wrote: | The company is not a charity. I expect no more from a | company than to pay me for every hour I work. I can leave | anytime I want and they can let me go anytime that the | relationship is not mutually beneficial. | | I keep a go to hell fund, an updated resume, an updated | career document, a strong network of former coworkers, | managers, and external recruiters and make sure my | skillset is in line with the market. | bumby wrote: | But I'm assuming you expect management to be good | leaders, no? | | I don't think "for profit" and "good leadership" are | mutually exclusive. | scarface74 wrote: | I _expect_ nothing from managers. When the pay /bullshit | ratio starts going in the wrong direction, I have just as | much agency to leave as they do to let me go. | bumby wrote: | > _I expect nothing from managers._ | | You don't expect them to pay you? Treat you with respect? | To observe labor laws? Surely, you expect something from | them. Being willing and able to walk away is not the same | thing as saying you have zero expectations. | scarface74 wrote: | 1. I expect to get paid for every hour I work. | | 2. I addressed the other one. When the pay/bullshit ratio | goes the wrong way, I leave. | eganist wrote: | Better phrased than what I could've done, thanks. | hinkley wrote: | No, the shareholders and the board are paying that out. | It's still dodging the original question. | | It's something a lot of us are sensitized to these days | because of all the narcissists who "take full | responsibility" which seems to mean to them that taking | the blame is a dire punishment and no other consequences | are necessary. | | Being the scapegoat is not a real consequence. Not | getting that villa you were talking to an agent about is | a consequence. Not getting your bonus at all is a | consequence. | sanjayio wrote: | This seems extremely generous to me. We don't have to | torture the founders because of economic conditions. It's | risky enough being a founder and this'll have a downwind | impact on them as well. For example, paying all these | benefits means fewer hires, means less output, means their | stock options might be worth less. | fredophile wrote: | If you're getting rid of 14% of your staff I expect you | to be making a lot fewer hires and having less output, as | a result of having less employees, is also not | surprising. Those are completely unrelated to the | severance they pay their employees. | | The general argument for high CEO pay is that it is a | reward for their skill in the job. By that argument, if | there is evidence that they're making mistakes that | negatively impact the company shouldn't that directly | impact them in terms of their compensation? | chrisdbanks wrote: | Maybe you need to reread the question. I think he's asking | how this will affect you personally, not what you're doing | for the people being layed of. This doesn't answer that | question at all or at least comes across as a politicians | answer. | fishywang wrote: | while this is certainly great (at least in the us standard), | it's still different from "John and I are fully responsible | for the decisions leading up to it."? | scarface74 wrote: | This is what I hate about the internet rage machine. No | research was done by people automatically assuming that the | company was just going to send the employees packing with | "thoughts and prayers". | | That's very generous severance and the company doing right by | its employees. | | I don't know how long the process is for non US citizens. But | in my over 25 year career, and changing jobs eight times as a | software developer, it has never taken me more than a month | from actively looking to having a couple of offers. 14 weeks | and bonus and paid out PTO is more than enough. | throwaway9191aa wrote: | I had "trouble" finding work over the summer. But the | actual details are that I was asking for $275k and $300k at | two companies. Both gave me a verbal offers, but hiring | froze. The third company, gasp, wanted me to come into | their office (20 minutes down the street). | | I also lived through 2001 and 2008. I think the last 12 | years of perpetual growth have created some amazing | expectations from people. I can only hope that, once I get | laid off, I'll have to "settle" for some $175k job in an | office after my 3 months of severance runs dry. | jesuscript wrote: | Listen, Software Developers should not give up whatever | we got so far. If we pushed for these salaries and | quality of life, hold on to it. Don't sit here and tell | the tribe "some of you want too much". | | Few professions earned this quality of life, doctors and | lawyers, and I can promise they aren't sitting around | going "maybe we're spoiled, maybe we oughtta curtail our | expectations". | | No, take the life you have and don't go backward. Most | people working aren't given an ounce from their | industries, many of them still fight for basic stuff to | this day. | | Tech should not be okay with these levels of lay offs and | still revere these companies. This is the stuff the car | industry did when they just offshored jobs, and collapsed | entire cities (Detroit). Why should we be okay with the | same playbook? | throwaway9191aa wrote: | > should not give up whatever we got so far. | | Absolutely! I declined multiple offers this summer | because they would have been pay cuts. We agree. | | > Few professions earned this quality of life | | Well that is a can of worms. I'm going to guess Doctors | deserve much better. I think the unfortunate reality is | that, maybe, tech workers haven't earned this quality of | life. Instead, we are the lucky recipients of decades of | growth. This is something that isn't even shared in | Canada or Europe, much less Asia, in terms of salary. | | > This is the stuff the car industry did when they just | offshored jobs, | | Agree, this is going to be bad. Now that we have shown | productivity with work from home, how tied are companies | to these high USA salaries? | | I'm not ok with it. But I also remember that when I'm | running around looking for a job, the people with that | job are making the demands. This is something that tech | workers haven't actually experienced for a decade, but | every other industry has. | | > okay with these levels of lay offs and still revere | these companies | | Revere these companies? Founders are taking risks to make | a LOT of money. They aren't here to make employees money. | I don't revere these companies, and I don't put any stock | in their Family Friendly or work life balance encouraged, | marketing nonsense. | scarface74 wrote: | > Absolutely! I declined multiple offers this summer | because they would have been pay cuts. We agree. | | This is financially nonsensical. Every month you delay | working you have to make more to get the same amount over | the course of the year. | | Just to make up a number, if your target was $120K and | they offered you $110K and it took you a month longer to | get $120K, you would need to make over $130K just to | reach $120K. | | I would take close to what I wanted and then change jobs | if something better came along. | hinkley wrote: | I have some health issues that started in the 2008 | recession. So every time they flare up I think about that | trauma. | | I kept my job through that but it was a very head-down | situation. Just put up with this shit until the market | recovers. Then the company had a good year and so a bunch | of us stayed to get the bonus. So February 2010 saw nine | of us who had quit in 8 weeks, sitting in a bar | celebrating our exodus. I asked if it was worth it | (staying for the bonus). | | One person said yes. Another said maybe. Seven people | regretted staying. The bonus amounted to less than 20% of | salary and we were under market at the time. | | We used to have coffee and discuss how much we hated our | boss Mike (not a pseudonym. Fuck you Mike, you brown | nosing ladder climber). My peer called our favorite table | the Conspiracy Table. | bumby wrote: | > _This is what I hate about the internet rage machine._ | | I think the issue (also related to how we interface with | the internet) is that most of these replies completely | dodged the question. The OP was asking about personal | accountability, not about "how are your going to make this | as palatable as possible?" | | Consider two scenarios: | | (1) A manager fires half their workforce, but gives them a | generous severance. In response, the manager gets a massive | bonus. | | (2) A manager fires half their workforce, but gives them a | generous severance. In response, the manager forgoes their | salary for a year for being the one making that decision. | | The second has personal accountability because they are | making a personal sacrifice beyond what they expect from | their subordinates, even though the employees are affected | equally. I'd be willing to bet one organization has more | institutional trust than the other. | hinkley wrote: | My ex worked in a tiny office, the company got into | trouble and her boss was asked to cut $###K from payroll. | He had to cut at least one person that they really | needed. It was bad. | | In theory he had to cut her too, because he was something | like $30K short of the goal and her salary as an office | admin would have more than covered that. But then he'd | have to do her job. His solution was to cut his own | salary enough to hit the target to the decimal point. | | They landed a new contract a handful of months later and | were eventually able to hire back one of the people they | lost. | | I think he may have even backdated some raises they | missed out on. He was her best boss. | scarface74 wrote: | Whether the manager does one or two doesn't have any | effect on my being able to pay my bills. | bumby wrote: | Does it not matter when you're deciding on employment | though? | | If the through-line wasn't obvious, it's that leadership | quality matters. Trust matters. When you decide to stay | with a company or invest in a company, you don't have the | privleged access to know that their actions "won't have | any effect" on your ability to pay your bills in the | future. In the context of uncertainty, leadership quality | matters. | | You bet on the jockey, not the horse. | scarface74 wrote: | No, any job is just a method to exchange labor for money. | I expect nothing from them but to keep their end of the | bargain. I keep myself in a position where I just need | _a_ job, not the specific job. | | A job is not a marriage. I've been through many | "uncertain times" in over 25 years. | | I depend on my savings, network, skillset, updated resume | and updated career document, not "trusting" a for profit | company. | bumby wrote: | How far does this attitude extend? | | Do you not expect anything out of your teammates? Do you | have no expectations from customers? From politicians? | | At a certain point, how you manage interpersonal | relationships can limit your path. Sure, you can just | devolve everything down to a transaction (even a | marriage) and maybe that works for you. And you can | create a life free from any obligations or commitments, | outside what you want for the aesthetic life of your | choosing.* But it doesn't seem like it would be the type | of existence many people envy. | | * David Brooks book _" The Second Mountain"_ does a good | job explaining the downsides of this approach. | Test0129 wrote: | That is a remarkably generous severance package. My COVID | severance when my company's local office went under was 2 | weeks pay for 8 years of service. Healthcare terminated at | the end of the month and they were sure to lay me off in the | middle of the last week of the month. | | Well done stripe. Maybe others can follow your example. | uncletammy wrote: | Brutal | buscoquadnary wrote: | Dude that is a freaking sick severance. Hell that is the kind | of situation where is want to get laid off. | dboreham wrote: | Even better in the UK where you don't pay tax on severance | (at least, the first 30K). | imnotreallynew wrote: | Goodness, I'd voluntarily take that deal anyday. 3.5 months | of paid vacation at the salaries Stripe pays? Yes please. | | I just read the rest. On top of 3.5 months pay, they get | accelerated vesting, cash payment for healthcare benefits, | all unused PTO paid, and more. That's incredible. | fredophile wrote: | This is better than standard in the US but I'm not sure I'd | be happy if I was one of the laid off employees. | | That 3.5 months and healthcare buys them some time to start | interviewing and line up new work. However, they're | competing with everyone else that's been laid off recently. | There's another article on HN right now about Lyft laying | off staff. Meta is getting pummeled in the stock market | right now and Google has recently had hiring freezes. I'm | not sure now is a good time to be looking for tech work in | SF. | | Unused PTO should be paid out. That was already earned by | the employees. | | Accelerated vesting is only good if you can afford to use | it. How long do they have to exercise their options? What's | the secondary market like right now for Stripe stock? Are | they allowed to sell stock currently or required to hold | it? In a worst case scenario, people could be unable to | exercise their options because they don't have the savings | to cover the tax bill and want to hold onto cash because | they're unemployed and need the liquidity. | | As for healthcare benefits, that's a result of a very | broken system in the US and not something that should be | celebrated. | antihero wrote: | Isn't it mandatory to pay holiday accrued? Because it's | been, well, accrued... | shaftoe wrote: | No. It can say otherwise in your employee handbook. | ehnto wrote: | It should be in your contract, which means it was up for | negotiation. Unless that's what you mean. While there's | such high demand for tech workers, I would expect to see | people being smarter with their contracts and picking up | on things like that, start setting precedents. | | At the moment the precedents are still heavily employee | biased, but you ask for whatever you want in your | contract during negotiations. Negotiate your sick pay, | negotiate your PTO, negotiate your vesting schedules and | exit terms, negotiate your hours and time in lieu | policies. Negotiate your Intellectual Property terms. | That one is super common to see lopsided toward the | employer. We don't have unions or award rates, so we also | miss out on some of those protections, hence why we need | to make sure it's in the contract. | | Even the nicest, fairest business owners I've worked for | will start with industry standard contracts that do their | best to shaft you, because it's industry standard and | they don't see it as lopsided. But I've never had trouble | negotiating for this stuff to be made clearer and fairer. | 0x0000000 wrote: | > It should be in your contract, which means it was up | for negotiation. | | Generally, employees in America do not have contracts. | While plenty of things are open for negotiation during | the offer/hiring process, I doubt you'll get an exception | to a corporate policy on paying out on PTO if it's not | something they already do. | | That said, IME, accrued PTO has always been paid on | departure (voluntary or not). For this reason, most of | the places I've worked heavily encourage (or even | require) taking PTO, because it's a liability on their | books. | ehnto wrote: | > Generally, employees in America do not have contracts. | | Is that true? The company surely has terms for you, like | expected working hours, terms about your sick leave, | performance and health terms, out of office expectations, | intellectual property disclosures and NDAs? Non-compete | clauses? When does all that become binding if not through | a contract? | khuey wrote: | A typical American tech worker's "contract" covers IP | assignment and NDA. None of the other stuff is legally | binding, and either side is free to change it or walk at | any time. | ehnto wrote: | I wonder if this is partly why upper-end salaries get so | sky-high when compared to other country's tech sectors. | It might be accounting for a level of risk that you could | be cut off at any moment, especially in at-will states. | sgtnoodle wrote: | It seems common in the tech world, though? Amusingly, my | current contract is from when the company was small, and | explicitly guarantees provided lunch. | deelowe wrote: | > It should be in your contract, which means it was up | for negotiation | | I've never seen this in the US. The only things typically | up for negotiation is the sign on bonus/equity and base | pay. If you start trying to negotiate vacations and | holidays, you're going to look pretty silly. | ehnto wrote: | I'm doing my best to understand this and be empathetic. | Best of my brief research you haven't got any law bound | entitlements so whatever the "status quo" is has been set | by employers. So what I'm understanding here is that it's | not even an agreement, it's just an understanding? Trying | my best not to be inflammatory, as I understand this is a | cultural thing for the US. But in a country with so | little workers rights and entitlements, that high end | workers are not even able to protect themselves with | contracts seems silly. | | > The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) does not require | payment for time not worked, such as vacations, sick | leave or federal or other holidays. These benefits are | matters of agreement between an employer and an employee | (or the employee's representative). | | https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/workhours/vacation_leav | e | differentview97 wrote: | I think the concept is, you protect yourself with the | cash you earn. Similarly to SW contractors in EU. | lotsofpulp wrote: | > The only things typically up for negotiation is the | sign on bonus/equity and base pay. If you start trying to | negotiate vacations and holidays, you're going to look | pretty silly. | | Everything is up for negotiation. Just depends whether or | not you have options. I have seen PTO negotiated in the | US. | jaywalk wrote: | What? Negotiating PTO is pretty standard in my (US) view. | I know plenty of people who've done it. | brianwawok wrote: | Not silly, happens all the time. | | Everything is negotiable. That said, the bigger the | company, the harder it can be. | | F500 company and you want a line out of your mid-level | developer contract? Their legal likely doesn't have time | and they will just hire someone else. | | Startup? Literally write your own contract. | sgtnoodle wrote: | I vaguely recall striking out some sentences I didn't | like, and initialing it. My current employer didn't mind. | [deleted] | zrail wrote: | That's true in less than half of US states. | antihero wrote: | scarface74 wrote: | And on top of that we have to suffer in the tech industry | with twice or more the average salary of non Americans. | The horror! | | In any major city in the US, a software engineer is | probably making in the top 10% of area and there is | little excuse to not have 3-6 months savings. | pedrosorio wrote: | Having no rights is awesome as long as you're at the top | percentiles of income (i.e. SWE), for the rest of the | workers in the economy, not so much. And that's clearly | reflected in the misery one can witness daily in American | society, even in the richest cities. | pb7 wrote: | I witness plenty of misery every time I visit Europe. It | reminds me that most places are about the same averaged | out. | | Reminder that the US has the highest median disposable | income in the world, not just the highest top | percentiles. | scarface74 wrote: | We are specifically talking about Stripe workers. But | yes, I've chosen a contract job with even less rights | than a full time employee at certain times in my life for | more pay. | lotsofpulp wrote: | Should I be expected to care about the plight of those in | percentiles below me? | [deleted] | Tesl wrote: | Yes | zeroonetwothree wrote: | We've got free speech though. So at least we can complain | about it. | cercatrova wrote: | On average US software engineers make much more money so | even after any deficiencies like not paying holiday pay | we still come out ahead. And even then, most companies | will pay out holiday pay anyway regardless of state law, | just as a matter of company policy. | solardev wrote: | What are you talking about?! Americans have SO many | rights... the right to work, the right to bear arms, the | right to bend over... what else do you need? | shagie wrote: | It varies based on state. | https://www.paycor.com/resource-center/articles/pto- | payout-l... | | In California, accrued vacation is part of wages and must | be paid out as part of wages. _However_ , unlimited PTO | policies typically don't accrue vacation. | | In Washington, it's "read your contract." If your | contract doesn't say that they pay out accrued PTO upon | separation, they don't. | chamblin wrote: | For what it's worth, Stripe is the only place I've ever | worked that did not pay out accrued PTO. It does so only | in jurisdictions where it is legally required. | brantonb wrote: | My company switched from PTO to "unlimited time away" to | avoid paying out accrued PTO upon departure. Their | original home state didn't require it, so they didn't. | But then they acquired some companies in states that did | require it and also let us all work remotely. It was | cheaper for them to drop formal PTO and replace it with | hand-wavy "time away". | stephen_g wrote: | Wow. Can't do that here (Australia) - I think to have an | unlimited leave policy, you'd still have all employees | accrue annual leave (PTO) at the legal rate, and then | just let employees take free leave once their annual | leave balance reached zero. Any balance you have when you | leave (or are made redundant) then has to be paid out. | bombcar wrote: | It depends and some places go to "unlimited" for this | reason, or combine sick and PTO and other stuff. | | The smart businesses would just actually bank the dollar | amounts and not worry about it, but those are rare. | jeffbee wrote: | This is exactly why companies go to unlimited PTO. They | don't want the accrual on their balance sheets. | patch_cable wrote: | It is not in most of the US. | tempsy wrote: | Not sure if frantically interviewing for a new job during | the holidays when lots of tech companies are also laying | people off can be considered a vacation. | joenot443 wrote: | They have 3.5mos. I find it unlikely someone's market | value dropped enough that they could once be a Stripe | employee but they're now unemployable. | tempsy wrote: | that's not what i'm referring to. these layoffs are macro | driven so you're competing against a lot of people. and | it's harder to schedule interviews around the holidays so | on average you need more time. | Ancapistani wrote: | Agreed. | | In my experience, if you're job hunting and don't have an | offer in hand by November 1st, you're probably not going | to get one until mid-January. | | The "normal" interview process takes 4-6 weeks in my | experience from application to offer/rejection. That is | doubled between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. | joenot443 wrote: | That's a good point, I hadn't considered it that way. | kodah wrote: | It took me three months to go through tech interviews. | I'd say that's cutting it close. | roflyear wrote: | Yeah. You need six months of emergency fund, minimum. I | would say close to 1yr honestly, depending on your risk | tolerance, for senior tech roles, unless you're willing | to take a real shit job while you look for something | else. | randomdata wrote: | Maybe if you're the janitor, but based on the quip about | the salaries Stripe pays, the parent is presumably | looking at this from a developer's perspective. That's a | payout of around $73,000. | | If you are handed $73,000 and still need to frantically | look for a new job, something strange is going on. | [deleted] | mparkms wrote: | You do if you're on a work visa and don't want to leave | the US. | randomdata wrote: | You're not wrong that it is strange that we would force | one to be completely uprooted from their home only | because they didn't have a job for a few months. | georgeburdell wrote: | Not to be cold, but some visas like H1B are non-immigrant | visas and so it is not correct to call the U.S. "home" | randomdata wrote: | Home refers to the place where one lives. If one does not | live in the U.S. to have to leave, what's the urgency? | tempsy wrote: | i'm not referring to running out of money, just the idea | that it's harder to interview during the time around the | holidays and immediately after, and we are in a period | where these layoffs are macro driven so lots of people | are competing against you for the same roles | | also all the income and benefits are taxable | PragmaticPulp wrote: | > i'm not referring to running out of money, just the | idea that it's harder to interview during the time around | the holidays and immediately after | | Keep in mind that this is interviewing without a job | taking 40 hours (or maybe more) of their time every week. | | Interviewing is much, much easier when it replaces your | job and you're still collecting paychecks for several | months. | randomdata wrote: | If you're not out of money, why the frantic search? It | isn't going to sustain you forever, but if it takes you | six months to find a new job... oh well? | PuppyTailWags wrote: | It's pretty frantic if you're holding certain visas. | theGnuMe wrote: | You've got taxes on that so 40% and then health insurance | at Cobra rates. Granted it looks like they said they will | pay that for 6 months. Not sure if that is taxable as | well also not sure what the individual contributions are. | shagie wrote: | > and then health insurance at Cobra rates | | You can get health insurance from healthcare.gov | | Granted not California, but the federal bit is the same - | https://oci.wi.gov/Documents/Consumers/HealthInsuranceLos | tCo... | | > I thought the open enrollment period was already over | for HealthCare.gov. Can I still enroll? | | > Yes, if you have just lost your health insurance, you | are eligible for a 60-day special enrollment period. You | can work with an enrollment assister, an insurance agent, | or use HealthCare.gov to enroll in a new insurance plan. | You may also qualify for a special enrollment period if | you have experienced a life event such as moving, getting | married, having a baby, or adopting a child. | theGnuMe wrote: | True, you'd have to run the numbers to see if it makes | sense on a case by case basis. | Manuel_D wrote: | > You've got taxes on that so 40% and then health | insurance at Cobra rates. | | Your taxes would only be 40% (actually 47%) if you make | beyond $500k a year. Cobra rates are quite affordable. I | was on Cobra when I was laid off due to covid, and it was | $550 a month for top tier healthcare. | iterati wrote: | > Cobra rates are quite affordable. I was on Cobra when I | was laid off due to covid, and it was $550 a month for | top tier healthcare. | | Those two statements are in odds with one another. $550 | is quite a large sum of money to put out each month, | particularly when you don't have an income. | ghaff wrote: | Basically Cobra is whatever you were already paying plus | whatever the employer contribution was. | | Obviously family plans etc. will be considerably higher. | lotsofpulp wrote: | Yes, you should have quite a bit of cash as an emergency | fund. There are government subsidies available for health | insurance, but they phase out if you earn more. | | https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/premium-tax-credit | | Generally, decent insurance costs anywhere from $400 to | $1,200 per month, depending on age of insured, plus up to | $9k out of pocket maximum for individual and $18k for | families, per calendar year. | | So to adequate insure one's self for healthcare expenses, | you would need $18k or $36k for out of pocket expenses | (since things can happen at end of calendar year), plus | $400 to $1,200 per person per month minus any premium tax | credits. For a young family, I would guesstimate $24k to | $30k per year in premiums minus any tax credits. | | Basically, be poor enough to qualify for free healthcare, | or earn enough to be able to spend a few tens of | thousands of dollars for a healthcare emergency, but try | not to be inbetween. | theGnuMe wrote: | Try making your coffee at home. That'll help. | lotsofpulp wrote: | I had to cut down to just tap water. | | (I actually do not have any compulsion to drink coffee, | or anything much other than tap water). | | On a serious note, I cannot blame many young people for | eschewing forming families of having kids when faced with | the numbers I quoted. | lotsofpulp wrote: | The tax rate is only that high for amount earned after | $500k too. And only for those in a few states like | California. | | $550 for gold level insurance is expected for someone | young, which I guess you are. | | You can ballpark almost anyone's premiums based on the | figures in link below. I would use Omnia Gold or Omnia | Silver HSA numbers, and plus or minus 20% for your state. | | https://www.state.nj.us/dobi/division_insurance/ihcseh/ih | cra... | mosburger wrote: | If it's a one time payout (to be clear, I'm not that will | be the case here? It was for me the only time that I was | laid off), I think the withholding would be calculated as | though that single payment were a regular salary | extrapolated to the entire year. This is similar to what | happens if you receive a bonus; to compute the | withholding they assume your annual salary is $BONUS * | $PAY_PERIOD. So you'd likely be taxed at a much higher | rate on that single payment than you would be amortized | over a year like a salary is. | | You'd get that withheld money back after filing taxes, | but most people who are laid off would prefer to have | that money now. | | If Stripe is making regular salary-like payments instead | of one lump sum, then the taxes would be pretty much the | same as always. | L_Rahman wrote: | Stripe is paying for health insurance over that time too. | colinmhayes wrote: | Why not just collect the paycheck and chill with some | open source work for a bit while casually interviewing? | If you have expenses that don't let you do that fine, but | the stripe severance is more than my yearly spend. | idiotsecant wrote: | Compare that to the average experience of the vast | majority of people who _aren 't_ a software engineer and | a person might be forgiven for thinking it looks like an | incredibly privileged vacation. | bluGill wrote: | There are lots of tech companies hiring too. The hard | part is finding them, and convincing them you are the | one. Most of the resumes I see for a "senior" programmer | don't have the experience. | lowercased wrote: | Yet... we still see ageism in hiring too. I'm continually | surprised at people advertising for 'senior' positions | that require 3 years of 'foo' experience. If that's how | you label 'senior'... don't be surprised when people with | little experience apply for senior positions. | | Not poking at you directly. I've got 25 years of | experience. I was on a team a few years ago with people | with... 2-4 years experience. We were both labelled to | the end client (contracting company) as 'senior | developers'. It's just weird all around. When everyone is | 'senior', it loses any useful meaning. | bluGill wrote: | Although 3 years is a little low, I work with plenty of | people with 5 years of experience who are just as good as | the best programmers with 25 years. The early years | experience matters a lot, but the difference between 5 | and 25 years is insignificant. | | The levels are fresh out of school, have learned enough | to not need hand holding, and able to make good decisions | about code. You cover them very fast. There is a staff | level about that, but most people don't reach that level. | There just isn't need for too many of them. | [deleted] | mrweasel wrote: | > PTO. We'll pay for all unused PTO time (including in | regions where that's not legally required). | | I'm sorry, but the wording rather funny. That sort of | suggests that it was somehow an option to not pay for used | PTO, even if they are legally required to. | [deleted] | nsxwolf wrote: | The last time I got laid off, my severance was basically | enough to buy a bus ticket to the unemployment office. What | they're doing here is incredible. (Almost felt compelled to | name names here but took a breath) | zjaffee wrote: | They're only paying this much severance because 90 percent | of it is legally obligated by the state of California, | where the vast majority of their employees work. | | 60 work days must be paid out, which is 12 weeks of work. | So essentially they're giving people only an extra 2 weeks | of severance to sign away their right to a wrongful | termination lawsuit. | gaws wrote: | > (Almost felt compelled to name names here but took a | breath) | | You should still do it. | nsxwolf wrote: | I _probably_ signed a non-disparagement agreement to get | the little bit I got. | roflyear wrote: | Yeah this is pretty good. Would make me feel good about | getting a job at Stripe for sure. My current company I'm | sure would pay NOTHING and we don't get bonuses anyway, | so...! | esel2k wrote: | As a European the severance for a large company doesn't | sound all to different to what I am used to. Normally you | have 3 months by contract plus some add a month per year | tenure. Healthcare costs, career support etc is normal for | larger/successful companies. Then certain countries (not | the company) will pay 80percent of your salary for 2 years | to find a new job. | | Happy that some companies also start to do this in the US, | but yeah it sounds that this is not a given. It will | generate a better transition and avoid serious mental | problems/personal issues. | bastardoperator wrote: | I worked with a person that was laid off with 6 months | severance that was not reported to the state. They | immediately filed for unemployment, and then the company | hired them back as a contractor 4 or 5 weeks later. We | labelled him the triple dipper and he said getting laid | off was the best thing that ever happened to him and that | he's basically rolling around in money coupled with a one | month paid sabbatical. | anon14132 wrote: | In Texas, severance pay has no bearing on unemployment | insurance. I did same thing but told unemployment office | about severance pay, since I was too worried about | breaking any rules. | | They told me I could win jackpot but they would still | legally owe me unemployment pay. It is all about actually | woking. If you work and then get paid for that work, | that's when you cannot claim unemployment pay. | | So, technically, if you do contract work and still claim | unemployment, then you are breaking the law. | bastardoperator wrote: | Yes, I believe he was technically breaking the law by | under reporting. My limited understanding was that he was | able to avoid issues by billing as an LLC versus an | individual and didn't draw a paycheck from his LLC while | on unemployment, he just let the money stack. | apohn wrote: | >As a European the severance for a large company doesn't | sound all to different to what I am used to. | | IME 14 weeks minimum is really generous in the US. | | I've been at 2 companies where it was 1 week per year of | employment. At one company they added on 1 month of | severance during a really large layoff. The tenure at | tech companies in the US tends to be quite short, so | getting 14 weeks probably unusual at typical tech | company. | coredog64 wrote: | WARN Act requires 60 days (8-9 weeks) notice or 60 days | on payroll if they walk you out the day of. | apohn wrote: | How does this work at companies that are very distributed | geographically? The WARN act talks about "mass layoff | affecting 50 or more employees at a single site of | employment." | | I'm genuinely asking this question - I'm not trying to be | a smart ass. | | I worked at a tech company (~3500 worldwide) that had an | office in almost every major US city area (e.g. Bay Area, | NYC, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, and a bunch of Tier 2 | cities as well (Atlanta, Raleigh, Houston, etc), and | remote workers (e.g. sales) as well. | | They had a big layoff and in theory they could laid off | 500/15% people worldwide without laying off 50 people at | each site. Would that still trigger the WARN act? | roflyear wrote: | I would wager that most companies in the US give NO | severance. You get unemployment benefits, I guess. | lotsofpulp wrote: | > You get unemployment benefits, I guess. | | Depending on the political environment of the state one | is in. It could be capped at a useless amount, or the | unemployment department minimally staffed. I know someone | in NJ that has a pending status for 2 years with no | response or ability to contact the state, and they have 8 | years of W-2 showing they paid unemployment insurance. | roflyear wrote: | Odd, NJ is usually pretty good with that stuff. Special | situation, maybe? | lotsofpulp wrote: | No, you can see tons of Reddit posts about people not | being able to speak to anyone at NJ unemployment. You can | try calling at anytime of day and the machine will say | (after 130 seconds of automated prompts) that all agents | are too busy and to call back the next business day. | | In the event you do get through, you reach a line level | agent, and they say a supervisor has to look at the case, | and to wait 6 to 8 weeks before calling back. That's it, | nothing else. | | I assume many people just give up. | yamazakiwi wrote: | This is true in my experience | lovich wrote: | In the silver league of US tech, which is broader than | most people seem to think, the standard severance pay is | a nice cool 0. Usually the only conversation is about all | the agreements they try to convince you that you have to | sign for no compensation as they're escorting you out the | door. | rconti wrote: | What does "silver league" mean in this context? Can you | give examples? | | Is silver like "second place" or like "middle-aged" | companies? | lovich wrote: | In my social circles we roughly categorize the tech | industry into faang, gold tier, silver tier, and wood | tier. | | Faangs are obvious, good tier is up and coming businesses | who pay and act like faangs. Examples are brex, stripe, | Uber(at least back in the day, no idea what they've been | up to the past year. | | Silver tier are the places that still pay well above | average jobs but don't go into the mega compensation and | suffer a talent drought as a result. Places where they're | paying 120k total comp for a senior engineer and won't | part with any equity because the leadership can't | emotionally handle the investment needed to compete for | engineering talent for reasons that I could go on for | hours about. | | Wood tier are the companies that need tech but still try | to pay <80k because they'd never pay high wages to any | employee or still think they don't need software and end | up with some real shit engineering | rootusrootus wrote: | > some companies also start to do this in the US | | This is pretty normal in my experience. Having | experienced layoffs (never as a target, always from the | side) for the last 25 years. There are probably edge | cases, but some amount of severance (based on time with | the company, typicall), healthcare coverage, bonus | acceleration, etc, is all completely normal. | | On HN, of course, you're mostly only going to see the | edge cases posting, so it's easy to get a distorted view | of normal. | anon14132 wrote: | Yeah I have been laid off once, at Fortune 15 company. We | got, at least, 2 month of severance pay. And 2 weeks | extra for each year with company after first 4 years. It | wasn't a tech company, so I always assumed that this is | pretty common in mass lay offs. | disgruntledphd2 wrote: | > As a European the severance for a large company doesn't | sound all to different to what I am used to | | Note that Europe is a big place, and laws are not | standard for layoffs/redundancy. I got laid off this | year, and basically got one week's severance pay, plus my | two weeks notice. | | In Ireland, I believe the standard amongst larger | companies is one month per year served, but the cap is | very low so generally tech companies will make much of | the payout conditional on an NDA. | thatwasunusual wrote: | For Norway it's usually three months both ways. For | bigger layoffs it can be "anything" from three months and | up. I was outsourceed once, and got nine months pay from | day 1. | | So I got doubly paid as soon as I found a new job. Good | times. :) | adamsmith143 wrote: | I find it interesting that they're saying they're doing so | bad financially they need to cut 14% of their workforce but | are also doing well enough they can pay 14% of their | payroll for 3.5 months of no work + Bonuses + PTO + Stock + | 6 Months of Healthcare? Doesn't seem to add up | dragonwriter wrote: | Much of the severance is legally mandated pay in lieu of | notice for a mass layoff, the rest is (usually, and | presumably in this case) an inducement for a release of | any potential claims and to sign non-disparagement | agreements. | | Of course, its presented as largesse to the recipients, | but its very much not. | tehwebguy wrote: | Morale for the remaining employees would drop and | attrition would jump if they all watched their fellow | employees get kicked to the curb by their current | employer. | admax88qqq wrote: | How much do you think 14% of their workforce costs to | keep employed for another year vs 3.5 months + bonuses + | pto + stock + 6 months healthcare? | | Do you think their doing it for shits and giggles? Or do | you think that they've actually done the math? | lostlogin wrote: | Tone aside, asking if op thinks Stripe have done the | maths is an interesting question. | | How did Stripe end up with expenses they need to reduce | if they did the maths? Yes, their world changed, but at | some point they made choices that were incorrect. | ghaff wrote: | They take the hit but the payouts eventually end. What's | described would not have been that uncommon for big | companies back in the day. They take a financial in a | quarter and they hope they can move on with a lower cost | structure. Often doesn't play out well of course. | allisdust wrote: | That's the most generous package I have seen in a while. | Stripe seems to be nice even during layoffs. | chasd00 wrote: | if you walk out on Friday and start a new job on Monday does | the severance still apply? This setup is incredibly generous | in my mind to the point where there's a lot of incentive to | get laid off. If you got another job in a couple days and | severance was still paid by Stripe then that+PTO+RSU+typical | signing bonus is one hell of a payday. | Someone1234 wrote: | > if you walk out on Friday and start a new job on Monday | does the severance still apply? | | If you "walk out" i.e. quit, then severance doesn't apply. | Severance is for people they're laying off. But, yes, if | you get let go on Friday, you can work elsewhere on Monday, | unless Stripe has specific non-competes in place (which | aren't legal a lot of places). | | > This setup is incredibly generous in my mind to the point | where there's a lot of incentive to get laid off. If you | got another job in a couple days | | When we're in an economic downturn, and a lot of other | companies are conducting layoffs or hiring freezes that is | easier said than done. Definitely was a rough experience in | 2007/08 during the last big one. | zeroonetwothree wrote: | The unemployment rate is at historic lows. Hard to | compare to 2008 | bombcar wrote: | Severance is usually one large lump sum, but I suppose you | could set it up that paychecks keep coming even though | you're no longer at work. Depends how they set it up. | | But either way, they should still come even if you get | hired immediately (except I guess hired back at Stripe). | nathanappere wrote: | How does this answer the parent comment at all?! | cashsterling wrote: | I want to say the same thing... this is a very generous | severance package. | | At one startup... I got called into the HR office on Monday | morning, laid off with no advanced notice, and was only | offered two weeks severance provided I signed a non- | disclosure agreement that banned me from saying anything | negative about the company for two years (and there was a lot | I could've said). | | That company also lied big time about their financials to get | me to join in first place. So I learned some valuable life- | lessons... | time_to_smile wrote: | To parent's point: no actual consequences for the people | _making_ the decision despite the claims that they are | "fully responsible". | | "Feeling super bad about this" is not actually a consequence. | | I worked at a company that had massive layoffs, leadership | claimed it was the hardest day of their life, two weeks later | they were literally laughing about the people they laid off | when they realized they already had to rehire for some of the | positions. | | Saying "we take full responsible" here doesn't translate to | accountability, it means they want to start the conversation | by absolving themselves of any guilt. | hinkley wrote: | My feeling is that in a narcissist's head admission of | mistakes is a fate worse than death. | | So I start suspecting anyone who talks like this if | narcissism. The orange toddler talked like this too. | wbharding wrote: | As has often been Stripe's way as a company, they are setting | the bar for what other companies should strive toward. Has | there ever been a more generous severance package posted to | HN? | | As the owner of a (much, much) smaller company, I'm inspired | by how the Collisons run their business, especially under | adverse circumstances. Yes, they fucked up in estimating the | future market, but they are in good company among CEOs and | non-CEOs lately. | allarm wrote: | > Immigration support | | I was in a somewhat similar situation - got laid off in 2020, | with a great severance pay etc. I was on a working visa which | got canceled within a couple of weeks (not sure how it works | in the US, I was working in a different part of the world). | The market was low so it was difficult to find something | quickly to get another job visa. On top of that I couldn't | get back to my home country, since the borders were closed | due to COVVID. I had to live for several months on short-term | visitor visas and had to renew the visas constantly - it was | a separate bueracratic hell. Eventually I found a job and got | a permanent visa, but these months cost me and my family a | lot. | | So here's the question - would it be (legally?) possible to | put the visa holders on garden leave and pay them i.e. $1/m | until they found a new job? Or at least do it temporary, for | like 3 months or so. Because honestly, I didn't care at all | about the money and stuff, the visa problem was absolute | hell. | ISL wrote: | The 14 weeks of severance alone is probably worth ~$60 M [1] | | Scrounging on the web suggests that Stripe may be EBITDA- | profitable but not GAAP-profitable. $60M (perhaps double that | with all the other benefits laid out here) is easily enough | to delay GAAP profitability by a quarter or two. That may not | seem like much, but it has a huge impact on investor | sentiment. | | [1] 0.14 _8000_ 200000*14/52 | pbreit wrote: | No it doesn't. Especially with a 14% reduction in by far | the largest expenditure. | fredophile wrote: | How does this delay GAAP profitability? They paid out 3.5 | months severance and their full 2022 bonuses. If they | hadn't laid these people off then in the next 3 months (1 | quarter) they would have paid them 3 months salary and | their full 2022 bonuses. | ISL wrote: | It delays profitability relative to simply laying | employees off with more-traditional severance. | ar_lan wrote: | Jeez. This is an _incredible_ severance package. | greenthrow wrote: | That's not the founders taking personal responsibility unless | they are paying for those benefits themselves. That's the | company taking care of the employees, which is great. What GP | was asking is how are the founders demonstrating | accountability. | woodruffw wrote: | I have no horse in this race, but an observation: the | extraordinary value of this severance package is _not_ a | response to the GP 's question. They asked how Stripe's | leadership is _personally_ demonstrating accountability, not | what the corporation is doing to soften the blow. | zug_zug wrote: | > Are you slashing your own future stock grants, cutting your | own salaries, diluting your positions with stock grants to | everyone else? | | This sounds a bit emotional to me. Layoffs can be an emotional | topic, but let's reflect for a moment. | | I guess the thrust of the remark is to put some sort of public | "shame" on companies that perform layoffs (especially such fast | ones) for the major inconvenience they cause for thousands of | people. I suppose the fear is that without any "Shame" these | companies will hire and fire spuriously without repercussion? | | Relatively speaking I think Stripe handled this well. Yes it | was a mistake to hire these people, but now that you're here it | would be a bigger mistake to keep people you don't need. | | I wonder if every company would be so forthright about this or | whether many would just "cut" "low performers" at an | accelerated rate over a year with no severance. | YPCrumble wrote: | > the thrust of the remark is to put some sort of public | "shame" on companies that perform layoffs | | I don't think that's what he meant. He is asking whether the | CEO is just blowing hot air when they say "we take full | responsibility..." or whether there are consequences to their | bad decisions, i.e., responsibility for those decisions. | tasuki wrote: | I'm not a native speaker, but I think taking responsibility | does not necessarily imply consequences. The opposite of | taking responsibility is assigning blame (eg "our | underlings hired too many people it was their mistake"). | delaynomore wrote: | >taking responsibility does not necessarily imply | consequences | | I guess that's the problem? These days leaders have no | problem "taking responsibility" to make themselves look | good when there's no consequence("hey I did what all good | leaders do"). | YPCrumble wrote: | That's probably true, and likely why the commenter finds | that a CEO "taking responsibility" is so obnoxious. | | Either the CEO is implying that they aren't always | responsible, which is bogus, or they are stating an | obvious fact as an empty platitude, which is most likely | the case, or perhaps they're implying that to them | "responsibility" means more than just "taking the blame" | which is probably not the case here. | jacobyoder wrote: | not even necessarily CEOs... just the phrase "taking | responsibility" seems to have been diluted to usually | mean nothing in most corporate settings. | | software dev here - was working with a client, and a pm | was pushing some not-great idea. I pushed back - "this is | not core, not important, shouldn't be a focus, other | things are more important, and already decided". | | Pushback from them: "no no no, this is vital. Look... if | there's a problem, I'll take responsbility". | | 6 months later, there's a lot of complications that I'd | foreseen (and documented) earlier which were summarily | ignored at the time. The "I'll take responsibility" | person isn't on the project any more - they left. I'm | fielding a bunch of "why was this done? this wasn't | agreed on - what were you thinking?" | | Well... when I _don 't_ do what they ask for, I'm | stubborn/obstinate/roadblocking/etc. When I do it... it's | wrong. Even if that original person was still around, _I_ | would be the one fixing all the bad data, having to | reverse out the changes, revert to earlier state while | keeping newer code in place. The "I'll take | responsibility" is _essentially_ meaningless in many | situations. And I called _that_ out too at the time and | was told I 'm too negative/cynical. It's just experience. | | Lest this be seem like doom and gloom, I've experienced | the opposite situation from above, where 'ownership' and | 'responsibility' and whatnot were more enforced and | honored across an organization, but it's been very rare | in my experience over the last 20 years, and seems to be | getting even less common. Having seen both situations, | it's easier to tell the difference. | | More and more folks having shorter tenures makes it | harder for any org/team ethos to 'stick' for any | meaningful impact, and absent that, it takes a lot more | organizational effort to keep a commitment to stated | corporate values. Not impossible, just hard to do, and | often slips... | blululu wrote: | This is being obtuse and trying to deflect the concern. The | concern is that if a company's leadership is allowed to make | mistakes without suffering any personal consequences then | they will continue making bad decisions. | | The op question is not emotional in the slightest. The | executive leadership made a series of mistake. People are | left in the lurch and the business has suffered because of | these mistakes. Asking if the incentives are aligned here is | a strict matter of rational business calculus. | 55555 wrote: | > What are the two of you doing to show accountability? Are you | slashing your own future stock grants, cutting your own | salaries, diluting your positions with stock grants to everyone | else? ... | | They don't owe you anything. Not an action. Not even an | explanation. The world doesn't owe you anything either. | gunapologist99 wrote: | Why are any of those things necessary? Are those people unable | to get other jobs or go launch their own startup (putting that | massive severance package to good use)? | | These risks come with the territory; there's a whole rest of | the world outside of Silicon Valley where things move a lot | slower; beyond that, there's still another rest of the world | where people are literally struggling to put food in their | mouths. | | Working in a startup and getting big salaries and stock | options, but possibly losing said options, are all part of the | risk of doing a startup, and the people who took the initial | risks will always deserve a bigger piece of the pie. | chasd00 wrote: | Given the labor market you could even argue those getting | laid off are coming out ahead of those they're keeping. | Getting laid off into a super tight labor market with that | kind of severance package is almost like winning the lottery. | | I want to make it clear that i'm 100% supportive of what | Stripe is doing though. It's exceptionally generous and | unorthodox to do this for your (soon to be former) employees. | czbond wrote: | Ya know.... Founders and CEO's are responsible every day. They | created the business for people to have jobs, they have to deal | with it when the business cannot support the jobs. When things | in the macro economy change, sometimes the business can't | operate at the same level it was before. | | People like to <poop> on CEO's & leaders in good times, but | employees often forget that while the employee can just go get | another job, the leaders have to keep hundreds, thousands, of | people employed while also retaining customers and dealing with | investors. They have to deal with keeping those | hundreds/thousands employed every...single... day. | time_to_smile wrote: | > They created the business for people to have jobs | | No, the created the business in attempt to get wildly wealthy | and unfortunately they can't do this without also having to | hire a bunch of people. They certainly don't create the | _business_ for the sake of employing people. | | > People like to <poop> on CEO's & leaders in good times | | In my experience the opposite is true, in good times people | can't help but <polish the nob> of CEO's & leaders, since | easy employment and good pay make the fundamentally | exploitative nature of their relationship less visible. | | > employees often forget that while the employee can just go | get another job, the leaders have to keep hundreds, | thousands... | | of thousands of dollars in their account even when they | "fail". | | The key difference is that if _I_ don 't get another job, I | lose my house and ultimately the ability to feed myself. If I | don't play the game I quite literally am sentenced to death. | The CEO of that lays off thousands can very easily spend the | rest of their days in comfortable retirement at any given | point. | | I need to sell my labor to live, CEOs need my labor to get | richer. | eganist wrote: | Responsibility and accountability are different things. | caskstrength wrote: | > employees often forget that while the employee can just go | get another job, the leaders... | | ...can usually afford to never work again! | TomBombadildoze wrote: | Please. Stripe is privately held so let's look at a market | comp, SQ. | | SQ 2021 Revenue: $17B | | SQ 2021 cash and short term investments: $5.3B | | Stripe 2021 Revenue: $12B | | Similar businesses, operating in the same market, with the | nearly the same number of employees (about 8000). Barring | exceptional circumstances, we would expect their financial | health to be roughly similar. | | You said it yourself: | | > the leaders have to... [deal] with investors | | The economy is contracting and their share price is falling. | They could afford to dip into cash and keep everyone on board | but their investors are more concerned about propping up the | valuation. They don't have two shits to give about the people | they're letting go. | ceres wrote: | > They could afford to dip into cash and keep everyone on | board but their investors are more concerned about propping | up the valuation | | This an example of how bullshit jobs are created. Why keep | people on a payroll if you have no use for them anymore? | topaz0 wrote: | Suddenly realizing that 14% of your employees are not | necessary for your business seems like a sign that | something is wrong... | ceres wrote: | Yes, and? Businesses take risks and make mistakes all the | time. Why should it be any different when it comes to | hiring? | tomnipotent wrote: | How can the share price of a private company be falling? | | > They could afford to dip into cash | | Why should they risk cash reserves with an uncertain | future? So that they can layoff 30% later on if things get | worse? | TomBombadildoze wrote: | Their own internal price target, the FMV they assign to | shares. | | https://www.wsj.com/articles/stripe-cuts-internal- | valuation-... | czbond wrote: | Disagree. A CEO does not cut employees during a time when | others are laying off unless business doesn't need / can't | support/ not prudent to retain those employees. | | Why? Because periods like now is the absolute best time to | steal market share from established companies - which would | grow the team and business. Startups (competitors) begin to | post less risk because they'll be hard to find financing. | | So - if growing the business is a CEO's top | responsibility...if the leadership felt they could steal | business from others that experience attrition - they | would. My guess is they don't seem to feel that way about | the current moment. | conductr wrote: | > The economy is contracting and their share price is | falling. They could afford to dip into cash and keep | everyone on board but their investors are more concerned | about propping up the valuation. | | They're worried about surviving the contraction, nobody | knows how long it will last and that cash only goes so far. | floren wrote: | I'm glad somebody is looking out for those poor Stripe | founders! | diebeforei485 wrote: | Stripe is large enough that the founders/CEO can retire | anytime. | | It's not like startup founders who haven't been taking a | salary (or been taking a below-market salary). | l33t233372 wrote: | You ask what they did to take accountability but then list ways | they could take an arbitrary punishment. That doesn't make | sense. | | They took responsibility by responsibly doing well by their | former employees. | Simon_O_Rourke wrote: | Unless you're new to this game, you quickly realize that with | statements like that, consequences are things that happen to | other people. | tschellenbach wrote: | You could have made billions on the stock market by accurately | predicting this. | | It's good to see leaderships take responsibility and change | course in the best possible way. But the whole this is our | fault, we should have seen this coming story is a bit nonsense. | They are just being nice about the messy situation and taking | responsibility even though its outside their control. | Kairinz wrote: | They were honest and that goes a long way. Sad to read about | this, but still what they do for the people they lay off is | pretty impressive. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-11-03 23:00 UTC)