[HN Gopher] The layoffs at Klarna
___________________________________________________________________
The layoffs at Klarna
Author : lauluz
Score : 286 points
Date : 2022-08-14 16:04 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.pragmaticengineer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.pragmaticengineer.com)
| justin66 wrote:
| > The CEO said employees at Klarna are superstars, and superstars
| don't want unions negotiating for them.
|
| _Actual_ superstars are happy to take advantage of what the
| Screen Actor 's Guild does for them, just as the crew working on
| their shows are also happy to have their union, the writers are
| happy to have their union, and so on.
| m8s wrote:
| Buy now pay later schemes are usually really terrible ideas.
| Companies like Klarna and Afterpay should be avoided at all
| costs. Often the loan repayment schedules are intentionally
| confusing and predatory.
|
| Here's a relevant You Need A Budget podcast episode for those
| looking for more on this topic:
| https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Z9NQoseq5nvutAInURR2r
| Cornelius267 wrote:
| The Venn diagram of C-levels who are willing to work at a
| company with an inherently predatory business model, and those
| who will lay people off and screw them over is basically a
| circle.
|
| It is impossible for someone who leads a company like that to
| be a good person. Why would anyone be surprised at them being
| heartless to their employees?
| lupire wrote:
| throwaway859383 wrote:
| I still currently work at Klarna.
|
| The article is a very good write up of what happened. I'm going
| to talk about what the current internal situation is and how
| people are feeling based on what I'm seeing.
|
| Since the layoffs there has been a noticeable shift in
| atmosphere. Previously quite a few people would regularly come to
| the offices, now not so much. Some still do come but
| significantly less. Performance has gone from people often going
| beyond what was expected to "I'll do enough to keep my job". A
| colleague who was previously very keen working for Klarna and
| would often work a good 11 hours+ is now "disenchanted" and
| doesn't quite know what to do with themself.
|
| Job satisfaction and overall happiness has rapidly declined and
| is still going down. Some departments do internal anonymous
| surveys where people outright get asked if they are happy at
| work. From the ones I saw, every single one had a drop of at
| least 20%, some significantly more. Participation rate of those
| surveys has also declined. Most people I spoke to outright said
| they're not participating anymore because they're on the way out.
|
| A good 50% of the people I asked, outright said they are looking
| for a new job. I expect some are not sharing because they want to
| keep it a secret. I'm expecting my team to loose about 40% of its
| members within the next 5 months. As far as I know, there is only
| replacement hiring, no active hiring.
|
| One of my very talented colleagues that I have been working with
| for 3 years got laid off. During a chat with our direct
| supervisor I asked them if they could tell me the reason. Trying
| to reassure me, they said I had nothing to worry about and that
| my colleague wasn't fired for poor performance but other internal
| reason. I knew this colleagues salary so I also know they weren't
| let go because of their high salary. Since then my team has an
| open position that is hiring for this exact role. Make of that
| what you will.
|
| As you might have read from the article, communication was
| absolutely horrendous. One of the key things I'd like to mention
| is that Klarna always promoted open and frequent communication.
| Only this was never practiced by the C-Level. This was incredible
| apparent during the layoffs. Many people had questions but
| C-Level was dead silent and let HR people "manage" the fallout.
| My colleague had their meeting at the start of the working day on
| Tuesday (layoffs were announced the day before). My supervisor
| got told of the layoff 15 minutes before my colleagues meeting.
| Informing my supervisor was done through a 3 sentence slack
| message.
|
| 2 weeks after the announcement, quite a few pregnant women came
| forward that they also received an offer. Additionally, a lot of
| people on long term sick leave were contacted. Since the layoff
| decisions weren't made centrally, I doubt these groups we're
| specifically targeted but Klarna is, in comparison to the average
| Swedish company, quite international. I know of at least one case
| from a decision maker (not C-Level) that a woman was laid off
| because she was 8-months pregnant and due to go on her maternity
| leave. I'm not going to speculate on what, if any, legal actions
| are following from this.
| akudha wrote:
| One of my ex-colleagues simply quit one day - no emails, no
| notice...nothing.
|
| Another one of my ex-colleagues told me he was doing two jobs,
| but only working 8 hours in total per day, if that.
|
| Then COVID layoffs happened. In the first case, the company
| simply turned off the logins - it was their way of laying
| people off (one laid off guy had been with the company for 15
| years, another one had health issues and needed the insurance).
| In the second guy's case, they told him one Friday afternoon
| that it was his last day. We were in different teams at the
| time, but neither of us had any work, despite asking our
| respective managers for work daily. He got frustrated with
| having no work and took another job. Also, it took them three
| more months to give us the last two paychecks (for two months).
|
| Both times, I thought my colleagues were nuts and were
| unethical - doing second job, not giving notice etc just felt
| ugly. Now I feel different. If employers treat employees like
| crap, why should any employee show any loyalty? When my
| colleague was laid off, he didn't care, as he was already had
| another job. I on the other hand, spent the next month looking
| for one.
|
| In every contract job I worked, the first thing they say is
| "you can (and should) work more than 40 hours if we need you
| to, but you can only bill us for 40 hours".
|
| If this is the treatment in a sophisticated, (relatively) high
| paid industry like software, I wonder how people are treated in
| service industries, retail etc. No wonder so many workers are
| striking and trying to unionize... Maybe it is time for
| software developers to unionize too
| tialaramex wrote:
| In Europe (I work in the UK) it's usual to require that both
| sides commit to the employment on a rolling basis. My
| contracts have for over a decade now required roughly 90
| days, but it's common to see 30 days in most jobs.
|
| That means if I want to leave I need to give 90 days notice
| and if they don't want me any more I get 90 days notice of
| that _or_ I get 90 days pay immediately.
|
| This also leads to "Garden leave":
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_leave
|
| As I understand it Garden Leave is not uncommon in the US...
| for executive level jobs. The guy cleaning the hallways is
| lucky if they remember to tell him not to come in tomorrow
| rather than just locking the doors and not paying him any
| more.
| SahAssar wrote:
| > the company simply turned off the logins - it was their way
| of laying people off
|
| In a lot of countries this is illegal, you need to prove a
| cause for firing anyone. One of the reasons klarnas firings
| in Sweden have been controversial and complicated is that
| they specifically tried to sidestep that by "firing people"
| by getting them to resign and accept a deal. They would not
| be able to just outright fire people without negotiating the
| terms, and those terms are usually based on a LIFO queue.
|
| > One of my ex-colleagues simply quit one day - no emails, no
| notice...nothing.
|
| Some people don't want to leave with fanfare, but notice is
| basically required in sweden (again, using sweden as a
| comparison since the thread is about klarna).
|
| > Another one of my ex-colleagues told me he was doing two
| jobs, but only working 8 hours in total per day, if that.
|
| If they were dishonest about that then that does not look
| great IMO. If they weren't and both companies were fine with
| it then it seems OK.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I left a company at the beginning of covid that jumped at the
| opportunity to reduces everyone's pay... except the executives.
| marsven_422 wrote:
| ygram wrote:
| I have never understood why health ensurance is handled by the
| employer in the US, why don't people buy private health insurance
| instead? It feels insane to put yourself in that kind of
| dependency on your employer.
| dudul wrote:
| It is indeed a stupid system. Private insurance is very
| expensive compared to the premium you usually pay when you're
| covered by your employer's plan. Employers can negotiate better
| prices because they bring a pool of insured to the insurance
| carrier. An individual doesn't have the same leverage.
| petsormeat wrote:
| Private health insurance can be extremely expensive, especially
| if you have a chronic illness, or are over age 40. I buy my own
| as a freelancer; the monthly premiums for even a basic plan are
| extortionate. There are government subsidies for lower income
| people, but many tech freelancers earn too much to qualify.
| Izkata wrote:
| Around the Great Depression, in an effort to get control of
| inflation, the 1942 Stabilization Act was passed. Because
| employers could no longer attract new employees by offering
| higher pay, they started offering other things like health
| insurance. Since it was payed directly by the employer it
| wasn't taxable income and didn't fall under control of the
| Stabilization Act, and since then it just stuck.
| lumost wrote:
| Note: 1942 is the middle of ww2, not the great depression.
| The war effort dramatically reduced labor availability. (back
| of the napkin math says roughly 12% of the US population
| served in the military, disregarding the massive labor pool
| required to support the military industrial complex)
| drdec wrote:
| If I am not mistaken, WWII was a bigger driver for that
| legislation than the Great Depression.
| tryptophan wrote:
| If EMPLOYER pays you 10k and you want to buy a plan for 5k, you
| first have to pay taxes on the 10k, lets say 20%, so you have
| 8k - 5k = 3k left over.
|
| OR
|
| The employer can just buy the 5k plan for you tax free, and pay
| you 5k instead. This means you have 4k left over after tax!
| This is because healthcare plans are not taxed if provided by
| the employer.
|
| Incredibly retarded, yes, it is.
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| Employers also often get better pricing on insurance for
| their employees because the pool is less risky overall. Those
| buying health insurance on the private market are more likely
| to have health problems and need it. Lots of healthy, young
| employees with limited health problems at tech companies.
| lumost wrote:
| Why isn't this just tax deductible?
| rullelito wrote:
| Then a lot more poor people could get insurance, not very
| 'merican.
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| When McCain ran for President against Obama in 2008, there
| was talk about making employer provided health insurance
| taxable as a way to even this playing field. The idea was
| more employees would refuse employer coverage and buy their
| own for cheaper.
| kolanos wrote:
| Most employers subsidize, in part or in whole, employee health
| insurance as a part of their benefits. Private health insurance
| is very expensive. [0]
|
| [0]: https://www.ehealthinsurance.com/resources/individual-and-
| fa...
| eschneider wrote:
| It started that way because it got around WWII-era wage caps
| and it remains advantageous because it gets paid for with pre-
| tax dollars. (Which isn't, I know, carved in stone. But that's
| the way it is atm.)
| whichdan wrote:
| Employers cover a majority of the cost of insurance. In Boston,
| I pay maybe $70 every 2 weeks for health insurance, but on the
| private market I'd be paying 5-10x as much for worse coverage.
| ygram wrote:
| Do people ever try to negotiate higher salary instead of
| health endurance from employer and then have a private one
| instead?
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| I've never heard of that, it would cost you more than it
| would cost the employer since you first have to pay taxes
| on your income, and employers can often get better rates.
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| A law called ERISA makes this unlikely. Companies must
| offer benefits like health insurance and retirement savings
| plans on the same terms to similarly situated employees.
| drc500free wrote:
| Private insurance can be thousands of dollars a month, so
| before Obamacare it was a pretty niche thing. It still kind of
| is, because for professional jobs the expectation is a
| massively subsidized health plan. Voluntarily paying an extra
| $1500/month for the independence of not relying on your
| employer is not a choice most people would make.
| ec109685 wrote:
| I'm not sure who the audience of all 5000 words of that article.
|
| Obviously it caused me to click the link, but it seems like a lot
| of excruciating detail about internal company process.
|
| I guess its useful for potential future Klarna recruits.
|
| And there's an even longer extended version behind a paywall!
| https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/layoffs-at-klarna
| brtkdotse wrote:
| Oh, come on. Everybody likes a good, juicy airing of dirty
| laundry.
| dom96 wrote:
| Adjacent to the topic of this article but I really love Gergely's
| reporting. It's great that he is shining a light at how poorly
| these companies are handling layoffs. Hopeful that this will
| change our industry for the better.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > Klarna made a major mistake in not letting the majority of
| employees know if they were safe from layoffs or not, for a whole
| night.
|
| I worked for a company that didn't let people know if they where
| safe, for a week. A friend worked for a company that didn't let
| people know for 3 months. It's beyond stupid, people becomes
| nervous and starts looking elsewhere and it's always the best
| people who leave first.
|
| That being said: Why does Klarna have 7500 people employed? I
| feel bad for the people who will be losing/have lost their job,
| but they also won't be the last in tech. Klarna have done what
| Google, Twitter and other have done, hired people they didn't
| need, so now productivity per employee is too low.
|
| 15 years ago I worked for a company that used Klara for payment,
| right when they started to expand beyond Sweden. The experience
| was interesting to say the least. They where completely naive
| about fraud. They didn't understand the markets they where trying
| to expand to. If everything else failed, payback the customers
| and let the retailers deal with any loses.
|
| While I'm sure they improved, based last my experience with them
| in 2016, I don't see how they could be ready to enter the US
| market.
| GordonS wrote:
| I've worked for (non-tech) companies that didn't let employees
| know they were safe for _months_ - and they did it almost
| every.single.year... and _always_ just before Christmas, like
| they planned to hurt people as much as possible. Utterly
| despicable.
|
| Thinking about it, I guess they hoped to make people jump ship
| before they were pushed, but it destroyed any semblance of a
| good relationship between employees and management/HR.
| jks wrote:
| > I worked for a company that didn't let people know if they
| where safe, for a week. A friend worked for a company that
| didn't let people know for 3 months.
|
| Finland has in some respects even more stringent employment
| laws than Sweden. If a company is laying off people, it needs
| to "negotiate" with employee representatives for a set amount
| of time. For small companies or small layoffs, the time is two
| weeks, but if there are at least 30 employees and the layoff
| affects at least 10 of them, the negotiation time is six weeks.
| Companies typically say at the outset which employee groups are
| affected but delay the decisions about individual employees to
| the end. I don't know if this is by law, but I suppose that
| saying sooner would be an opening for a union to claim that the
| negotiations were not done in good faith, and possibly sue the
| company.
|
| Having been a potentially affected employee on two occasions
| and an employee representative on one of them, let me say that
| waiting six weeks for the decision is not fun for anyone.
| lumost wrote:
| For the last 7 years I noticed a strange trend in tech. The
| skill of management was not getting the people you needed, but
| instead turning down people you didn't.
|
| Whenever ive been a manager for the last 7 years its the same.
| One day you get a ping for "can you onboard X". It doesn't
| matter if you had work for one more person or not, thus
| projects are created for them to do something.
| rsanek wrote:
| > productivity per employee is too low
|
| When referring to productivity, what do you mean in this case?
| For Google, their profit per employee is still very high (about
| $300k [0]). Of the top 10 biggest employers in that list, they
| are 3rd-highest-earning per capita.
|
| [0] https://tipalti.com/profit-per-employee/
| Maro wrote:
| I feel for the people who were layed off, esp. ones who just left
| their previous jobs and/or relocated. One thing as an employer I
| would never do (if it were my call) was to lay off somebody who
| just recently joined/relocated [unless there are already
| performance problems]. That's just a shitty thing to do, at a
| human level.
|
| Putting that aside (since all tech companies will lay off new
| joiners), I don't think this story points to any (cultural)
| problems at Klarna.
|
| Layoffs are always tough and people will be unhappy. Based on the
| timelines presented in the article, everybody knew within 1-2
| days whether they are affected or not, and affected people got a
| good severance package. By "good" I mean more than Klarna had to
| pay based on the law, based on the article.
|
| It's important to remember that 99% of working people in the
| world would not get this deal in a layoff.
|
| I think we (tech workers) need to stop expecting to always be
| treated as unicorn snowflakes (esp. in the current market
| conditions).
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| I've been through several tech layoffs. I can't think of any
| case where new joiners were targeted. It was always some
| combination of performance and cost (either personal pay or an
| entire group being less profitable).
| Maro wrote:
| Based on my reading of the article, Klarna didn't _target_
| new joiners, they were just part of the unfortunate mix.
| jarym wrote:
| > this approach was the fairest option for all
|
| I have heard this line a few times for HR recently and it makes
| me cringe every time. Putting everyone in the same shitty boat is
| never fair. Takes me back to George Orwell's Animal Farm every
| time!
| jedberg wrote:
| Wow, that sounds so poorly handled. Not figuring out a way to
| tell everyone affected at (nearly) the same time is probably the
| worst sin.
|
| Best layoff I ever went through was when my boss came to our team
| and said, "look, don't tell anyone, but we have a layoff coming
| in a few days. I have to let one of the three of you go. Do you
| want me to decide or do you want to decide amongst yourselves?".
| She knew we were good friends outside of work and would probably
| make a better choice than her.
|
| I ended up volunteering because one other guy had just bought a
| house and had a baby and the other guy had debts to pay off and I
| didn't. Ended up working with both those guys again. One of them
| ended up leaving and getting a new job, then he pulled me in
| after 1.5 years of unemployment, and then we pulled the last guy
| in after he eventually got let go.
| blantonl wrote:
| 99 out of 100 times this would have been 3 spidermen pointing
| at each other.
|
| Glad your manager was able to recognize your team could handle
| this decision themselves. But, wow.
| matrix_overload wrote:
| Yeah, so the company ended up losing the most
| confident/competent person (since they have the highest chance
| of quickly getting another job).
| ergocoder wrote:
| This sounds like a worse way of doing a layoff. It specifically
| worked for you in your situation. I doubt it would work for
| anyone else.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Just wanted to say, that's a great story, and you should tell
| it often.
| yibg wrote:
| Yea but try doing that with 700 people.
| rospaya wrote:
| Wow, that sounds awful for me. Being a boss means making hard
| decision, he just dumped that on the three of you. Glad it
| worked out for you, but I can't imagine this working in most
| situations.
| nr2x wrote:
| *she
| literallyWTF wrote:
| How was that the "best layoff"?
|
| Instead of being an actual fucking leader and making a
| difficult decision, your boss just said "lol so who wants to
| leave."
|
| I swear sometimes the shit I read here makes me go insane.
| babyshake wrote:
| Sometimes people are planning to leave anyways, and wouldn't
| mind a potentially generous severance package.
| puchatek wrote:
| By quoting her wrongly you missed precisely the reason why
| her's was considered a good approach to communicating this.
| jedberg wrote:
| She was a great leader. She recognized that our team was
| cohesive and could make a better decision than she could. She
| was one of the best managers I ever had.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| she is supposed to be part of the team and have the same
| knowledge and thus be able to make an equally or more
| informed decision
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Sometimes there is no good decision, and empowering the
| underlings to make it is best term for everyone.
| literallyWTF wrote:
| Don't bother man. These people will bend over backwards
| to justify inane decisions like "who wants to lay
| themselves off".
| compiler-guy wrote:
| The reports were all good friends, she knew that, and
| gave them the option for her to decide or them. She
| apparently didn't know the personal lives of the reports
| as well as they did themselves.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| Context and relationships matter. Apparently this manager had
| a relationship with her reports where that would work. It's
| obviously not going to work in nearly any other situation,
| but kudos to her for figuring out what would work in this
| situation.
|
| Bottom line is that all of the reports involved were
| reasonably ok with the outcome--no one is ever happy about
| getting laid off--and that is far better than the situation
| in most layoffs.
| ronnier wrote:
| > I ended up volunteering
|
| You are a good person.
| curiousllama wrote:
| > Best layoff I ever went through was when my boss came to our
| team and said, "look, don't tell anyone, but we have a layoff
| coming in a few days. I have to let one of the three of you go.
| Do you want me to decide or do you want to decide amongst
| yourselves?"
|
| Judging from your reaction, it sounds like yall had a great
| work environment, and that this was a good way to handle the
| layoff for your team. It sounds like it went smoothly, which is
| 100%, A+, great.
|
| But HOOO BOY, that was a HIGH RISK move by your boss. I
| sincerely can't imagine the clusterf** that would've resulted
| from that at some of the places I've worked. Good GOD. This is
| an invitation for a lawsuit on a silver platter, holy
| guacamole.
| babyshake wrote:
| What would the grounds of the lawsuit be? I can think of
| reasons to not announce a layoff in advance, but I can't
| think of why what the boss did was illegal.
| curiousllama wrote:
| Person X argues they only volunteered because Y is
| pregnant. 'If I had stayed, I would've been the subject of
| retaliation because I'd look like a bad person.'
|
| In discovery, it's found that person Z pinged a friend and
| said 'yea, we totally couldn't let C be laid off. What kind
| of person would fire a pregnant woman?!"
|
| That's pretty strong proof that membership in a protected
| class factored directly into a retention/compensation
| decision.
|
| This is why managers are (/should be) trained to handle
| this with lawyers involved.
| jedberg wrote:
| Oh yeah for sure. The only reason she could do it is because
| we all got along.
|
| I would not recommend this approach for most managers. :)
| nvarsj wrote:
| Maybe she had just watched The Hunger Games and was feeling
| inspired.
| YPCrumble wrote:
| Why would this invite a lawsuit? Layoffs are part of
| business.
| stormbrew wrote:
| Fwiw there is a more normalized practice that resembles this
| and is, afaik, not a massive hr risk: openly offering a
| voluntary severance with defined benefits.
|
| Obviously it's not a great signal to those who don't take it
| about the health of the company, and you might lose a bunch
| of people you'd rather not, but I think allowing some level
| of self-selection is good when it's possible.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| The issue with voluntary severance, is that the strongest
| employees tend to be the most likely to take it.
| dento wrote:
| I find it rather rare that a relatively compentent dev
| couldn't get approximately equal compensation working for
| some other company. So if offered $X for volutary
| severance, where $X at least N months total compensation,
| most devs who can get a similar job in less than N months
| will leave. This leaves you with least capable people,
| which is (usually) not what's wanted when doing layoffs.
| (This is of course assuming that interview performance is
| correlated with work performance, which is not necessarily
| a great assumption to do)
| stormbrew wrote:
| I think there are two problems with this in practice:
|
| 1) In the end those people will leave anyways once it's
| obvious the ship is sinking, so I think you wind up with
| a double whammy of attrition.
|
| 2) Mass layoffs don't usually allow for a particularly
| good perspective on who is a high preformer because it's
| hard to vet decisions on that scale. Also this assumes
| that performance is the primary axis, and not cost or
| tenure. You will likely lose high performers along with
| low and medium in a top down layoff.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| I think you need to consider that we're in the context of
| a job market that has been hoovering up devs for the last
| 10 years. There are 30 year olds who graduated into a
| fairly good market who are now expeirenced developers who
| have never seen a really difficult job market. It's all
| fun and games if you're a fungible 20 something who can
| go off to be another cog in another machine. But if the
| market dries up - as is starting to happen with all the
| big names slowing, it's a very difficult situation to be
| in, and long term unemployment isn't just a financial
| burden, it can be a massive emotional burden as well. One
| thing that has always troubled me in my career is that I
| look around and I don't see many 50+ or 60+ year old
| engineers, and partly it's that our industry is still
| emerging and 60 year old engineers pre-dated the
| industry. But some of it could well be that at some point
| attrition pushes people permanently out of the industry.
| ml_basics wrote:
| What are reasonable ranges for N in a typical severance
| package?
| xmonkee wrote:
| I know right, what a firecracker.
| orzig wrote:
| That is awesome for a cohesive, high functioning team. I worked
| at a company with some obvious (to everyone else) under
| performers, and as much as I wish they had not been a layoff, I
| would have been pissed if some of the nicer members of the team
| had volunteered to take the bullet.
|
| That said, the standard layoff protocol only got rid of one of
| them, and the other only left after reacting badly to the
| slight uptick in performance feedback (suggesting his lack of
| self awareness)
| jupp0r wrote:
| Seems like a poorly executed layoff. I've seen a few of those in
| my previous job. Things like an SVP of Product congratulating the
| machine learning team for an awesome alpha demo and asking when
| we would be ready to ship this to customers. The answer he got
| was that it would never get to customers because he laid off the
| whole team the day before.
| xkbarkar wrote:
| Almost reads like a detective story as if not only mass layoffs,
| but poorly managed ones are unique to Klarna. Feels like the
| author has not really understood how incredibly common mass
| layffs as a tool for keeping profit margins really are.
|
| Layoffs sucks no doubt but I cant say I feel as "outraged" as the
| author seems to intend. My current employer cut 10% of the
| workforce about 3 years ago (1800 ppl).My preevious one did that
| twice (about 3500 people in total). Another former employer would
| cut 2-3% every other month or so. Then go on a hiring spree, and
| then cut again.
|
| Laying off 5% every year Microsoft style because of a crazy in
| house performance review system, now thats a news worthy evil
| story. This is just standard bad management vs profit margin not
| really interesting.
|
| Yea Sweden, it happened to you too. Welcome to the club.
| jyriand wrote:
| Why do startups(tech companies) need so many employees? My first
| thought is that because of the rapid growth startups are plugging
| inefficient holes with more brains.
| literallyWTF wrote:
| Lol wow. What a complete shit show. Gotta love when a billionaire
| also shits on unions.
|
| And still people in this industry will forever think that unions
| are a waste of time.
| brycewray wrote:
| Re item "The pay cut of 2020 which became permanent": the Day Job
| I had in 2008 used that year's onset of the Great Recession to
| stop annual raises and *never* brought them back -- at least, not
| while I was still there, which was until early 2015.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| Wow, what kept you there so long?
| brycewray wrote:
| No other opportunities to speak of; inertia; I was in my
| mid-50s at the time (59 by the time the final cut came for
| me) and didn't think a massive recession was a good time to
| look. Take your pick. :-)
|
| [Plus, I really liked the company. Had been there longer than
| in any other job, and it was where I wanted to be when
| retirement came. Wasn't to be, however.]
| drakonka wrote:
| I was actually surprised to read that the Swedish CEO "took a dab
| at unions". Sure, relationships with unions can be complicated,
| but I've never heard an employer talk negatively about them here
| (maybe I'm just sheltered?). I am used to seeing union reps come
| to the office a few times a year for Q&As and feedback sessions,
| and taking about union membership was normal in internal
| channels. Never heard of anyone in leadership batting an eye
| (heck, they were likely also union members). Being hostile to
| unions seems like a normal thing for some other parts of the
| world, but seeing a Swedish employer talk like this about union
| membership here immediately leaves a bad taste in my mouth about
| the company. It's a red flag.
|
| Unfortunately it can take a while for employees who have
| relocated to Sweden to consider joining a union. It took me about
| a year or two after moving here to realize it was a thing, and
| such a normal thing at that. I can imagine that Unionen et al
| would have gotten more than a few phone calls from Klarna
| employees asking for advice during/after this whole thing.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > I was actually surprised to read that the Swedish CEO "took a
| dab at unions"
|
| My impression is that he wants to be like the cool kids on the
| other side of the Atlantic. Meanwhile the Engineering union and
| Bankers guild are suing Klarna for the way the layoffs are
| being done. Maybe they are pissed. Dunno.
| Ekaros wrote:
| At least in Finland the tech unions are mostly toothless. They
| might help you with a lawyer if it is certain that employer
| screwed up. And any actions taken are very light, in lines of
| we recommend you not to work overtime... And maybe day or two
| of walking out... And then finally capitulate for minimal pay
| increase...
| drakonka wrote:
| Swedish unions aren't perfect for sure, but so far I've only
| had positive experiences myself. I've luckily never had an
| actual conflict at work to bring my union in over though, so
| the extent of my experience has been calling them for general
| advice and getting an extra week of vacation as part of a
| collective agreement. I've also heard a few stories of
| coworkers bringing in union reps when they felt they were
| being pushed out on unfair terms and negotiating much better
| severance packages.
| Kiro wrote:
| From my experience, it's not very common in tech companies in
| Sweden. They often lack collective agreements and in the last
| company I worked at I never heard anyone talk about it or say
| they were a member.
| drakonka wrote:
| The only companies I've worked for in Sweden have been tech
| companies, and union membership was very common. At EA we had
| a collective agreement, along with some other larger games
| companies here iirc. Many people are members but don't
| mention it unless it gets specifically brought up since it's
| such a non-event.
|
| Edit: Was curious to find some numbers about this. I don't
| read Swedish fluently yet so having to use Google Translate,
| but one report I found from 2020 says that "Information and
| communication" (which I suspect IT/software engineering might
| fall into) has 69% membership [0]. It seems to say white
| collar workers actually have a higher membership rate than
| others at >70% overall; will look some more and add any other
| numbers I can find.
|
| [0] - (page 13) https://www.lo.se/home/lo/res.nsf/vRes/lo_fak
| ta_136602747878...
| Kiro wrote:
| EA seems to be an exception, as confirmed by this article:
| https://kollega.se/avtal/fa-kollektivavtal-i-
| dataspelsbransc...
|
| The gaming industry is notorious for not having collective
| agreements (as per the article, only 1% of the companies
| has it). So I'm not sure your experience is representative.
| drakonka wrote:
| Having a collective agreement is not a prerequisite for
| being a union member. It is common to be part of a union
| even if the company does not have a collective agreement
| (such as the games company I worked for after EA; no
| collective agreement, but still plenty of union members).
| jdasdf wrote:
| Have you considered that this:
|
| >Being hostile to unions seems like a normal thing for some
| other parts of the world, but seeing a Swedish employer talk
| like this about union membership here immediately leaves a bad
| taste in my mouth about the company. It's a red flag.
|
| is the reason for this:
|
| >I was actually surprised to read that the Swedish CEO "took a
| dab at unions". Sure, relationships with unions can be
| complicated, but I've never heard an employer talk negatively
| about them here (maybe I'm just sheltered?).
| ImPleadThe5th wrote:
| I heard some horror stories from some managers that have since
| left.
|
| They were not told that there would be any layoffs, and when
| their employees came and asked them what it was all about there
| was no support from the top so they had to just tell everyone "I
| don't know". What an awful position to put people in.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Klarna is another one of these businesses like affirm which
| should not exist. Propped up using VC money, it will all come
| crumbling down. What a disaster. Shopify also got caught up in
| this mess by investing in all this. A lot of Shopify's revenue
| came when Klarna went public instead of product and merchant
| revenue. Everything burning down.
| kqr wrote:
| Since this is presented as a voluntary separation agreement for
| the Swedish staff -- does anyone have information about what
| happened to those who went, "thanks but no thanks"? I assume they
| have to be let go in LIFO order, which ought to give them more
| time to get their affairs in order.
| redleggedfrog wrote:
| Well, that's some seriously incompetent management. Thing is,
| when these reports get out and later I'm assessing tech to
| potentially use I go back in my head "Oh yeah Klarna -
| incompetence. Moving on."
| status200 wrote:
| It is unfortunate that people lost their jobs, but is anyone else
| not upset that a "buy now, pay later" company is struggling? They
| are exacerbating consumer's reliance on credit and causing some
| reckless spending, I personally believe they do more harm than
| good.
| rvz wrote:
| I mean the warning signs of the overvaluation and hype around
| Klarna was there ever since a private early investor unloaded
| their shares on to retail via an online investment [0] [1]
| platform at $45B, last year December. [2]
|
| Those 6,000+ retail investors who FOMOed and bought in are now
| down more than 80% of their investment due to the down-rounds,
| with the private early investor escaping and banking $8 million.
| So it is no surprise that the layoffs had to happen especially
| with the recent rate hikes which are accelerating the costs at
| Klarna.
|
| [0] https://www.crowdcube.com/cubex/klarna
|
| [1] https://milled.com/navia/klarna-pitch-is-launching-
| tomorrow-...
|
| [2] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/online-investment-
| platfor...
| rconti wrote:
| > Garden leave is when an employer requests that an employee,
| upon submitting their notice, need not return to the office. This
| is a type of absence where an employee is asked not to work
| during their notice period, in anticipation of their departure,
| while still being kept on the payroll.
|
| https://www.personio.com/hr-lexicon/garden-leave-uk/
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| Usually they kill your VPN/email/AD access as soon as you hand
| in your notice.
|
| You can also be put on gardening leave when you are fired, if
| there's a notice period there.
| rightbyte wrote:
| So ... handovers is not a thing at Klarna?
| esel2k wrote:
| Isn't garden leave agreeing that you won't work for the
| competition? Or is it even saying not working at all, not even
| in an unrelated job?
|
| If I had a job the next day I might just enjoy two salaries.
| Would this be blocked by a garden leave agreement?
| koinedad wrote:
| Clear communication is not easy...
| no_wizard wrote:
| I don't understand why companies do these scale up things. Hoard
| your cash and wait it out a stint before making major moves.
| Don't hire fast hire smart.
|
| If you are in a money problem environment maybe start with
| transparency and freezing of things like hiring? There just seems
| to be 100 better ways to approach this
| Areading314 wrote:
| Klarna generated $1.42 billion revenue in 2021, a 32 percent
| year-on-year increase. A majority of Klarna's income comes from
| interchange, processing and merchant fees.
|
| As Klarna has expanded its BNPL offering, its losses have
| increased. It reported a net loss of $730 million in 2021, a 337
| percent increase on its 2020 loss.
|
| I would say its surprising that this company is still in business
| at all with numbers like this.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I recently left an 8,000 person company that's been on a 2
| decade loop of private money to publicly traded and back a
| couple times now. It occurred to me that in 25ish years (about
| 10 of which I worked there) that it might never have made any
| money - I can't remember a profitable year ever; we were always
| seeking growth above all else. I now work at a small SaaS
| company of around 50 people and it's only ever made money.
|
| Every day I feel like I live the Homer Simpson quote, "I don't
| know how the economy works".
| drc500free wrote:
| > Every day I feel like I live the Homer Simpson quote, "I
| don't know how the economy works".
|
| This was my attempt to explain this phenomenon.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32453161
| allenu wrote:
| > I recently left an 8,000 person company that's been on a 2
| decade loop of private money to publicly traded and back a
| couple times now. It occurred to me that in 25ish years
| (about 10 of which I worked there) that it might never have
| made any money
|
| That is crazy if true. My fear is that there are a ton of
| tech companies like that, just chasing future profits or an
| acquisition, but not actually creating anything of value (at
| least in terms of profit).
|
| I don't know. It just doesn't sit well with me knowing that a
| lot of products we build don't actually make any money. We're
| all just part of some weird system of money re-allocation and
| the software is just there as a signal that money should
| change hands.
| blantonl wrote:
| Rackspace?
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Well spotted ;)
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Software as the chips in the stock market casino.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I actually worked providing infrastructure to tech
| companies; from large enterprises to startups. I think I
| realized starting in the early to mid 10's that all the
| startups I was working with were just about taking VC money
| to provide the founders with hip, well paying jobs - the
| stated goal of the company was mostly immaterial and the
| "change the world" talk was virtue signaling to the rank
| and file so they don't feel so bad about their place in it.
| I wasn't all that thrilled but I've got to eat too and I'm
| not built for retail or labor, so what was I going to do?
|
| Might be worth noting that I tend towards the depressed
| side already so my point of view might be a bit skewed. But
| when I watch Office Space or other works by Mike Judge, I
| realize I'm not exactly alone at least.
|
| And keep in mind that this article is about a Buy Now, Pay
| Later (BNPL) type business - what about that is all that
| revolutionary? I'm sure the leadership wrapped it up as
| "empowering people to purchase goods they need today" or
| something else, but everyone knows they're selling people
| baubles like TVs with predatory lending, right?
| erenyeager wrote:
| Buy Now Pay Later actually has a really good use case,
| it's for people who may be wary of credit cards,
| interest, and or low credit scores. For example, many
| people who wouldn't take out credit cards will use BNPL.
| Also, usury is prohibited in the major Abrahamic
| religions, so BNPL can also work for client avoiding
| interest loans.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| So before I worked at the last job, I worked for a camera
| store back in the last days where those were still
| generally a thing (2004-2010 - it wasn't too bad of a job
| for a kid in school). We offered by now, pay later back
| then, and I don't think we invented it either. Of course
| it was basically just a credit card application, and
| there was no requirement to pay it off within a set
| amount of time, but if you didn't, then they'd hit you
| with all the interest that had quietly been accruing
| during their "introductory period" or whatever they
| called it. Which is to say that it was scummy and
| deceptive, but not much more so than other American
| business practices and certainly less than others, and
| hey they had to make money and eat too.
|
| Perhaps Klarna really is better, but then again maybe
| that's why they're hemorrhaging money at such an
| impressive rate.
| geysersam wrote:
| > what about that is all that revolutionary?
|
| Exactly. I've seen a lot of media coverage on Klarna (I'm
| Swedish), often with the angle "wow, innovation". The
| question I've too often wished journalist had asked is
| "Why?", what's the benefit of what you do? Except being
| more shiny.
|
| Lot of waste in the tech sector. Sad how many skilled
| people work endlessly on more effective ways of pushing
| ads and loans, to make us desire and buy things we don't
| need with money we don't have.
| apurtbapurt wrote:
| Revolutionary is of course an extreme stretch, but they
| do add unique convenience to the checkout process.
|
| No user account creation, no entering of address and
| credit card number. Just click purchase and confirm with
| BankID. I also like that they retain neatly organized
| purchase history across all vendors, including permanent
| storage of the product images.
|
| I prefer klarna so much, that I occassionally simply go
| to another etailer if there is no Klarna checkout option
| in the first place I try to buy something.
| ww520 wrote:
| Story time. I was looking to buy a 911 in the past. Found
| one at a dealership. The car was 3 years old, just off
| lease, in good condition, and with no accidents shown in
| Carfax.
|
| I searched the VIN number in the state's DMV car
| registration database. Well well. The car had an expired
| tag and had high thousands of dollars of unpaid taxes,
| fees and penalties against it. The owner had never
| bothered to pay any taxes and fees over the years. I
| would have to pay all those when doing the car transfer
| at DMV.
|
| I was kind of pissed and disgusted. I then searched the
| VIN number on the web. Found the VIN in a post in a car
| forum for an attempt to sell the car. It had a phone
| number!
|
| I searched the phone number. Got the name of the guy and
| his company. He was the founder and CEO of a startup.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > I would have to pay all those when doing the car
| transfer at DMV.
|
| ...why are these are on the car and not on the person?
| ww520 wrote:
| DMV doesn't care who pays it. They won't process the
| title transfer of the car as long as there're unpaid
| taxes or fines. Imagine I've already paid the money to
| make the purchase, and later going to DMV to transfer the
| car title but find out I couldn't due to unpaid fines.
| What could I do? Either paid the outstanding fines or
| sued the owner to revert the sale. Headaches all around.
| I didn't go through with the purchase at the end.
|
| I talked to another car dealer and asked him about it. He
| said this kind of car was usually sold to people in
| another states, where their DMV won't enforce
| California's taxes and fines.
|
| The lesson here is be sure to check for a clear title on
| the car, including DMV fees and fines, before making a
| purchase.
| hef19898 wrote:
| That is the Amazon way, baby! Not.
|
| If a company doesn't make money, cash flow and / or profits
| (preferably both), it is just under cutting the competition
| (if smart) or on its way into bancrupcy (if not so smart)
| or both.
| allenu wrote:
| I agree that many are just trying to undercut the
| competition. My pet theory is this is having an effect on
| consumers' expectations for tech-based products.
| Specifically, nobody thinks anything is worth paying for,
| or at least only want to pay a small price. That leads to
| only big companies being able to compete in markets since
| they can subsidize products for a long time.
| djmips wrote:
| Sounds like the old old SNL skit about banking.
|
| Wikipedia- "First CityWide Change Bank - Two ads promote a
| financial institution whose only service is providing change
| (e.g. "you come to us with 16 quarters, 8 dimes, and 4
| nickels, we can give you a 5 dollar bill"). How does First
| CityWide make money doing this? As one service rep says it,
| "The answer is simple: Volume"."
| nr2x wrote:
| So good, stands the test of time!
|
| https://youtu.be/CXDxNCzUspM https://youtu.be/KodqIPMbyUg
| Animats wrote:
| That's Coinstar's business model.
|
| They charge a commission now, but originally, they didn't.
| They pitched the system to stores as a way of freeing up
| cashier time wasted counting coins.
| lumost wrote:
| For transaction processing, wouldn't a 1-3% margin be about the
| maximum achievable? That would translate to about 15 million
| dollars in potential profit against a 730 million loss.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Per https://www.klarna.com/international/regulatory-
| news/klarna-... their volume was $80B last year, 1.4B was
| their cut (1-3%) aka revenue, and the profit would depend on
| bunch of things such as their marketing/sales spend, wages,
| debt servicing, etc and most likely has been negative.
|
| Edit: not "most likely" - apparently they lost to the tune of
| $700M
| peyton wrote:
| Visa's margins are like 50-60%.
| treis wrote:
| 1-3% of the transaction volume. That percentage is the 1.4
| billion Klarna takes as revenue. The margins of that can be
| very high.
| [deleted]
| yobbo wrote:
| > That percentage is the 1.4 billion Klarna takes as
| revenue.
|
| Implying that transaction volume is on the order of $200
| billion? No.
|
| For perspective, Amazon's 2018 revenue is $230 billion.
| lumost wrote:
| Are we sure that that's true? As a private company klarna
| can choose any metric they so desire as revenue...
| christophilus wrote:
| What? Isn't revenue kind of ... revenue? What else can it
| be?
| lumost wrote:
| To my knowledge, there isn't any reason klarna can't
| describe their transaction volume as revenue. Then
| declare their margin 3%.
|
| As a private tech company I would assume that they are
| using the broadest possible definition of revenue.
| naturalauction wrote:
| I think Klarna can charge slightly higher fees to merchants
| (it looks like they charge up to 6%) as sales increase with
| buy now pay later. Also they probably think they can make
| money off of servicing the debt (late fees, interest on
| balances).
| throwaway859383 wrote:
| Up until a massive expansion push some years ago, Klarna used
| to be a profitable company. It expanded from 3200 employees in
| 2019 to the 7000 that are there now. They also started spending
| money on experiments that had not much to do with the core
| business.
| indymike wrote:
| Employee count may be the worst business metric of all time.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| money raised is better (worse)
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| depends, for what?
|
| it is a good metric for number of employees you employ :)
| RandomLensman wrote:
| From the outside, I find it difficult to judge as management
| might have been focused on top line growth (given investors
| preferences in recent years). A (possibly) changed focus could
| now mean a very different profit profile will develop.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Uber
| logifail wrote:
| > As Klarna has expanded its BNPL offering, its losses have
| increased. It reported a net loss of $730 million in 2021, a
| 337 percent increase on its 2020 loss
|
| Yet the tone from the acticle is that employees appeared to
| think the company was successful?
| foepys wrote:
| Since Uber seems to be a benchmark for VC start-ups (Uber for
| X) and Uber is still losing money in the tens or hundreds of
| millions per year, I am not surprised that employees think
| that Klarna is a success.
| PheonixPharts wrote:
| At least in tech there are people who have had decade+ long
| careers where it was very feasible to _never_ work for a
| company that actually made more money than it spent. I 've
| been at multiple startups that had VCs pressure leadership
| _not_ to make profit because that would hurt growth of some
| other KPI of interest (users, revenue etc).
|
| In the last few year many of these people have seen these
| companies go public, and their imaginary Options/RSUs
| suddenly turn to liquid assets. Company hasn't started making
| profits, P/E is negative, but TC has gone up by 50%-200%.
| That certainly feels like success.
|
| Looking back at my own career the companies that made the
| least profit (including negative) are the ones that have paid
| me the most.
|
| I'm old enough to remember the pre-dotcom bust chats of "new
| economy" and "things are different now", and how all of the
| stuffy old finance people who thought businesses should make
| more than they spend where ultimately proven correct.
|
| For many people, even in their late 30s, the ability for a
| company to actually make more than it spends has been an
| academic curiosity, hardly relevant to the success of a
| company.
| orzig wrote:
| Agreed, and the opposite is true: I started at a small
| public company which had stopped growing and become
| profitable. It was targeted for a hostile takeover by PE
| who thought it could grow more.
|
| To their credit it did, and (to the extent your willing to
| believe unaudited financials) again became profitable.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The stock and exuberance are the product.
| logifail wrote:
| > The stock and exuberance are the product.
|
| I've worked at places where the slide decks were always
| full of exuberance. At one of them they were exuberant
| right up until the moment the staff found themselves
| locked out of the offices after being told that a
| liquidator was in charge.
|
| It's not pretty.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Same!
| [deleted]
| hef19898 wrote:
| It truely shocking how little employees can care about their
| employers finacials.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| The company I used to work for got acquired by a listed
| company. At the same time, I was doing finance module at the
| university. One assignment was to analyse a company's
| financial reports and come up with a conclusion. So I
| analysed the company I worked for and the outcome was that I
| need to get out. At the same time the company was sending
| communication as it's about to discover time travel and
| unicorn milk.
| logifail wrote:
| > At the same time, I was doing finance module at the
| university. One assignment was to analyse a company's
| financial reports and come up with a conclusion. So I
| analysed the company I worked for and the outcome was that
| I need to get out.
|
| That's interesting. My OH is almost half way through her
| MBA and for one recent module, she chose to analyse her
| current employer's financial reports and come up with a
| conclusion. Her conclusion is also that she needs to get
| out.
|
| I wonder how many tech employees can actually read a
| financial report, though?
| dthul wrote:
| Any good resources for a tech employee to learn about
| these things without having studied it?
| cosmodisk wrote:
| The Economist Guide To Analysing Companies is a good
| start. Others would be corporate finance books or intro
| books to accounting.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| > Her conclusion is also that she needs to get out.
|
| It depends. I haven't been RIF'd before but would take a
| package if they were layoffs if I had the opportunity.
| I'd also use as much of unemployment as I could for as
| long as I could. Basically I'd be looking to maximize the
| amount of time I can go before I'd need another job.
|
| Just because a company appears to be running out of cash
| doesn't necessarily mean you need to leave immediately if
| they do downsizing.
| hef19898 wrote:
| To my surprise hardly anybody outside, and even some
| inside, of finance can. Not that I'm an expert, but I
| understand a balance sheet, can interpret the expebse
| lines, understand a cash flow sheet and can read (after
| having been to a couole of audits) the SOX relevant audit
| statements of public US companies. And yes, those tell
| you an aweful lot about your employer. And yes, part of
| me came to the same conclusion as your OH and the OP.
| bombcar wrote:
| Employees base company success on internal metrics and how
| they're being paid, few employees bother looking at publicly
| available numbers lest they "jinx" it.
|
| (Or the ones that do see the writing on the wall and bail, or
| decide to ride it out as long as they can).
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| That's insane -what's the magic event people believe will turn
| those losses around?
| mrweasel wrote:
| It's kinda fascinating really. We had a client that had only
| ever lost money. Their idea was pretty good, they had what
| I'd call a working prototype and paying customers. Our CEO
| happened to know one of the investors, and chatted with him
| about the investment and the numbers we did on a whiteboard.
| Even if they grew their business with 10 times the number of
| customers, and each customer ramped up their usage 10 times
| it would take 10 - 12 years to make back the money that had
| already been spend. That was assuming no new investments and
| zero cost in those 10 to 12 years. The idea that this may not
| have been the best investment in history was more or less
| brushed, as the stock price would surely rise.
|
| VC funding is weird.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| It depends on the exit strategy. The technology will
| sometimes be scooped up by a big fish and take the key
| employees with it. When folk invest VC cash then they are
| sprinkling it amongst many projects that will have most
| typically fail. A Couple making it will give them the VC
| investment reward.
| runnerup wrote:
| Even if the already-invested money can't be recouped,
| marginal additional investment could theoretically be with
| favorable (LIFO) terms offered typically offered to later
| investment.
|
| So sure, acknowledge a bad $300 million bet, but then throw
| your next $50 million at the same bet if it looks like the
| best place to put a marginal $50 million.
|
| I don't always think investors are doing this rationally -
| sunk cost fallacy / gamblers paradox / greater fool theory
| / FOMO all play a part, but also recognize that lots of
| these super large investments are led by a small team using
| lots of other peoples money so there are ways for the
| decision-makers to come out closer to breakeven if much of
| the pot is lost.
|
| Also with potential IPO's and sky high rate of valuation
| growth over the past decade, the "greater fool theory"
| isn't necessarily an irrational motivation to invest.
|
| Not all smart investments are value-based.
| lumost wrote:
| A company built to operate as a 100 billion dollar
| behemoth can rarely transition to a 1 billion dollar
| success without lots of pain.
|
| To make this transition, your going to need to crush a
| lot of dreams and projects. Why would the result not be a
| hollowed out hulk of a company?
| kzrdude wrote:
| Monopolizing it's market? It looked they were nearly there
| for payment processing in swedish online shopping.
| vadym909 wrote:
| Most point to Amazon as the example of it will turn around
| once they start to dominate their space
| VLM wrote:
| A classic argument is future sales are equivalent enough to
| be an asset. So as long as your balance sheet including
| future sales is growing faster than your income sheet is
| shrinking, its "OK".
|
| There's a lot of assuming spherical cows going on. If the
| bean counters like the result when the average customer is
| milked for six years until having to replace them, that's
| great, unless customer service is so awful the average
| customer is gone in six months, or a competitor comes along
| in two years and wipes you out, market changes evaporate the
| revenue stream in five years, etc.
|
| BTW this is the housing bubble in a nutshell. Lets say you
| buy a shack for half a mil at 6% for 30 years which from
| memory is almost exactly $3K/month. Not because you would,
| but because these are engineering estimates with very round
| numbers that are easy to memorize. Anyway, you'll spend 30
| years in a row with a negative income statement of losing
| $36K per year on that shack. Actually you'll lose a ton more
| money due to maint, taxes, insurance, PMI, remodeling,
| appliances, whatever else. But who cares about the income
| statement, because if the total losses over 30 years are a
| bit over a million, if on the balance sheet the asset goes up
| to five million because interest rates only go down and real
| estate only goes up (until it doesn't, LOL) over the same
| time frame you can cash out for four million net gain? Of
| course if the shack only goes up to a million because its not
| in a bubble area like Arizona or whatever, you've not quite
| broken even, or god forbid if it only goes up to 3/4 of a mil
| you've lost quite a large life changing sum of money.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| For the past decade money has been effectively free to borrow
| with interest rates at zero. All the companies that immediately
| went bankrupt, into layoffs, etc. when interest rates were
| raised this year were coasting on these financial fumes.
| killSp4m wrote:
| Powell wants to keep wages tethered to his preferred reality
| of 2% inflation versus the actual reality people live on. The
| real issue with inflation is it devalues the public
| hallucination; fiat money:
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/transcript-fed-chief-powells-
| po...
|
| Fear mongering over employment security is a favorite tactic:
| https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/27/business/job-
| insecurity-o...
|
| The reality is "people need to eat", will trade as they must
| to do so. We don't actually rely on government officials to
| do the work; we placate the die hards by speaking in the
| traditions. They're yanking on the leash they have.
|
| Big tech looking to axe senior talent and big pay days for
| cheaper Gen Z grads; a quiet wealth redistribution plan. Some
| of the rich senior tech people would move on to cheaper
| locales and perhaps build businesses.
|
| We're in the ML era and a lot of senior folks are from the
| "manually program a machine" era; that's a way over valued
| skill set now; it's everywhere.
|
| Cheaper talent with the latest collegiate training not the
| old ways baked in, could offset the expense of moonshots,
| hoping to boost an ML-backed cloud economy post generic
| server backed cloud.
|
| Google's Eric Schmidt has been in DC lobbying for AI
| investment:
| https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/6/9/23160588/eric-schmidt-
| am...
|
| Picking the winners right away to avoid the last decades
| shotgun approach.
| treis wrote:
| In a lot of ways internet businesses are like buying bonds. You
| pay some cost to acquire a customer and will get revenue from
| them over time. You can calculate a present value for that
| customer based on that future revenue. As long as that value is
| more than what you paid to acquire the customer you're making
| money.
|
| And if your numbers are right then you, more or less, want to
| spend as much money as you can buying customers. So that's how
| companies with numbers like this continue to operate.
|
| To put it simply, Klarna is spending a billion dollars to buy
| customers that will generate more than a billion dollars in
| revenue. The catch is that you have to pay now for later
| revenue. So your numbers look like crap until your existing
| customers far outnumber your new ones.
| yuliyp wrote:
| They're much riskier bonds. The market can change, or
| competitors can try to win customers over, or anything else
| to throw out those lifetime value calculations.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| This is a very, very dangerous business to be in unless your
| numbers are rock solid and you make sure your models reflect
| reality.
| deltree7 wrote:
| all businesses are risky. that's why we have capitalism and
| there are bunch of people who are willing to take the risk
| and rewarded for taking that risk
| geysersam wrote:
| Rewarded for luring people into consumption loan debt?
| Great system.
| deltree7 wrote:
| debt is a fantastic instrument that solves a production /
| consumption mismatch of both individuals and humanity.
|
| A 55 year old is the most productive member of a society,
| but that is also the age where you start to consume very
| little.
|
| Imagine if you had to 'save' to get your college
| education, your home, a laptop, or starting a business.
| There is a reason we don't ask babies to 'pay up' for
| milk or shelter.
|
| Imagine if Larry Page or Sergey Brin had to work and save
| to start Google.
|
| Imagine if government had to save trillions of dollars
| before investing in Carbon Capture and renewable energy
| generations.
|
| Yes, all good things can be abused. But you can't prevent
| good things for 95% society because a 5% of the society
| abuses it
| geysersam wrote:
| Never said debt is intrinsically harmful.
|
| I do however think _consumption_ debt, for goods such as
| clothes or the next iphone, is harmful.
|
| They're not investments, like an education or a car.
|
| It's a tax on people who don't have money in the bank to
| buy such things up front.
|
| Usually such loan "services" are marketed in a way that
| hides the effective cost of the loan to the customer.
| Especially problematic for young people less experienced
| handling money.
|
| > But you can't prevent good things for 95% society
| because a 5% of the society abuses it
|
| Sounds like you thought I suggested prohibiting debt in
| general. That's a misunderstanding. It's definitely
| possible to prohibit predatory lending strategies.
| deltree7 wrote:
| I would challenge that notion too.
|
| I rather travel the world, eat great food, take tennis
| lessons, dance into the night when I'm in 20's and 30's
| where I get the most enjoyment rather than in my 60s
| where my body is not in good physical shape to do any of
| those things.
|
| The fact that I travelled the world in my 20s may also
| enhance my own future productivity.
|
| I would even further claim that not enough people go into
| debt. There are plenty of young people (70% or more) in
| developing countries who can get into travel, education,
| iPhone/Samsung, great food debt and their country (and
| the rest of the world) will benefit immensely from it in
| the long run.
| geysersam wrote:
| This is delusional and besides the point.
|
| You can't loan for consumption in your 20-30s, planning
| to pay it back in your 40s and 50s. Klarna does not even
| offer loans beyond 36 months, and month 1 to 36 you have
| 20% interest rate! If you skip a payment there are steep
| fees.
|
| Klarna is for short term loans. Like, half a month.
|
| Klarna is definitely not offering their service to poor
| people in developing nations. Even if they did, how would
| a 20% interest loan for an Iphone help anyone escape
| poverty?
| deltree7 wrote:
| I never mentioned anything about Klarna. I merely
| commented on capitalism and debt
| speedgoose wrote:
| I'm surprised to read that Klarna had 7500 employees. It seems to
| be a lot for an online payment company offering consumer loans.
|
| What were the people doing?
| VLM wrote:
| The problem with a secret sauce is the market needs more than
| sauce.
|
| So even if they could proactively leverage their synergies
| using mobile apps or whatever their secret sauce was,
| activities like, I donno, collections maybe, still scales up
| linear with size like legacy companies.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I understand them being somewhat big with customer support and
| all the debt collection they are likely involved with. But
| still 7500 is a lot.
| mrweasel wrote:
| My understanding was that, at least in Scandinavia, their
| debt collection was a separate company. I may have gotten
| that wrong, but we had a few customers who paid us using
| Klarna. When Klarna didn't get their money after some period
| of time they'd normally let some 3rd. party handle debt
| collection. In some cases they just reverse the charges and
| leave us to eat the lose arguing that: The customer claim to
| have never received the item, or straight up let us know that
| they weren't about to lose money on this transaction, reverse
| the charge on us, the retailer, and leave debt collection to
| us.
| throwaway859383 wrote:
| Lots of experimental things that had nothing to do with its
| core business such as Blockchain currency. Klarna massively
| expanded in the last 3 years. In 2019 there were about 3200.
| akmarinov wrote:
| > Klarna's "Super App" was an area getting lots of investment
| in 2021. This investment was a step away from the core offering
| of the handling of payments. The vision of this app was to
| create an experience where people could do all their shopping
| within a Klarna super-app.
|
| However, this super app never launched as planned. Internally,
| confusion arose when it emerged the super app would use scraped
| data from customers who were already partners of Klarna. The
| super app efforts are still progressing slower than originally
| planned, and some employees think the company is spending too
| much on this area for too little return.
|
| Trying to come up with something out of nothing it seems
| enviclash wrote:
| I might be just an ignorant user in Europe, but this super-
| app thing could scare me out of Klarna and let me find an
| alternative, I got uncomfortable with the app when they
| required unnecessary data for a payment.
| speedgoose wrote:
| But can you keep thousands of people busy on such a project?
| djbusby wrote:
| A technique I learned from possibly the worst
| project/product manager ever was to have loads of meetings.
| And over schedule them. And show up late. It makes
| everything so slow, and you have to have more people so
| that somehow, in between meetings a line of code could be
| written.
| bombcar wrote:
| Apparently every "payment" app/startup is valued as if it
| will somehow magically replace Amazon instantly.
|
| I don't understand it myself, but that's what happens.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| > What were the people doing?
|
| Right? If they are even somewhat productive, there should be
| enormous output created by them.
| jon-wood wrote:
| This is the death spiral all large organisations go into,
| they hire more people so that they can do more things, but
| then they spend increasing amounts of time in meetings or
| trying to work out how some other team's system works, so
| productivity goes down, so more people are hired to
| counteract that.
| xBK wrote:
| With Klarna's valuation spiralling downwards, those bonuses in
| RSU's couldn't have been timed worst for the workers.
| bombcar wrote:
| A 'deal' forced on you is almost always not to your benefit (or
| it wouldn't have to be forced).
| travisgriggs wrote:
| I admit that I was barely aware of this apparently largish
| company? I'd heard the name Klarna before, but knew nothing of
| it.
|
| And yet, I found myself reading this in a riveted fashion. Why is
| that? Is it just the macabre nature of humans to slow down when
| passing accidents? My anxiety about how the little guys world can
| suddenly be turned upside down? I'm honestly intrigued why I
| couldn't quit reading this.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Should be noted that employment in Sweden is as far from "at
| will" as you can get. There is basically no legal difference
| between a union worker at a paper mill and a software developer
| at a startup (once it reaches a certain size). The law basically
| says that the last one in must be first out, and sidestepping
| this order requires negotiating severance with unions (yes also
| for white collar tech workers). So if you need to reduce
| headcount by 10% it's going to be cheap if you fire the 10% most
| recent hires. If you want yo choose the 10% to cull it's going to
| be expensive. The compensations in the article don't look very
| generous at all.
| rsanek wrote:
| It seems like the article is saying that the fact that there
| isn't a union is actually a big help in the ability to do this
| kind of lay-off.
|
| > Swedish companies must negotiate with unions before layoffs.
| However, this was not the case at Klarna, nor is it the case at
| most Swedish tech companies. Klarna does not have a collective
| bargaining agreement (called "kollektivavtal" in Swedish) in
| place. This means that Klarna as an employer is not forced to
| negotiate layoffs with a union. Instead, Klarna is entitled to
| negotiate directly with each affected employee, which they are
| doing.
|
| Klarna is also pretty big (7500 employees according to the
| article) so I imagine it doesn't have to do with the company
| size.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Yes exactly, If there is no collective agreement then it's
| simpler: the law applies. It's the law that says you fire the
| last hire first.
|
| To sidestep it then just requires bargaining with the
| individual rather than a union.
| mongol wrote:
| I never heard this before. I thought unions were always
| involved, regardless of kollektivavtal or not. Would like to
| hear from a Swedish expert on this.
| rnd33 wrote:
| Yes, if unions exist at the company (which they did at
| Klarna), a company is required by law to negotiate with ALL
| employee organisations present at the company. This is one
| of the reasons large companies adopt kollektivavtal, it
| allows them to only have to negotiate with one union for
| employment changes.
|
| Source (Swedish law): https://lagen.nu/1976:580#P13S2
|
| Google translated:
|
| > If the employer is not bound by any collective agreement
| at all, the employer is obliged to negotiate in accordance
| with SS 11 with all relevant employee organizations in
| matters relating to dismissal due to a lack of work [...]
| Moru wrote:
| In Sweden the Unions actually makes it easier for both
| the workers and the company. This is a big surprise for
| most foreign leaders coming in unprepared for swedish
| culture :-)
| Moru wrote:
| I'm no expert but how I under stand it is the company can
| offer x months of pay if you leave by your self. This does
| not need to be negotiated with the union. If this makes
| enough people leave, there will be no negotiation. If
| however they want more to leave they have to negotiate with
| the Union that the workers are connected to, it does not
| matter if the company have a contract with them or not.
|
| Also, they have to give six months notice to the
| unemployment agency if they plan to fire more than 100
| people.
| dymk wrote:
| The article makes it sound like this is a suggestion, not a
| requirement, for layoffs
| Kiro wrote:
| "Last in, first out" is stipulated in law but you can still
| negotiate, which means the employee themselves quit and get
| compensated for it.
| throwaway36756 wrote:
| I worked at Klarna between 2011-2013 as a software engineer and
| later as a team manager. I was laid off in a very similar fashion
| at the same time a bunch of others also got the same surprising
| news.
|
| When it happened to us there was no announcement from the CEO.
| Sebastian had actually just gone on parental leave and one of the
| co-founders, Niklas Adalberth had taken the reigns.
|
| At the time, my suspicion was that it was because Niklas
| Adalberth was getting rid of people he didn't like and that the
| main reason my firing in the way it was done.
|
| I was invited to an external meeting room at 17:00 in the
| Stockholm office with my boss and my boss's boss, where they
| proceeded to tell me "we think we need someone else in your
| position".
|
| My boss looked helpless and sat quietly the whole time. My boss's
| boss did all the talking and seemed just like someone following
| orders.
|
| Reading this now it's sad to see how nothing has changed at
| Klarna and makes me think that even if Niklas did had something
| to do with my firing that it couldn't have happened without
| Sebastian's knowledge and approval.
|
| My experience of Sebastian was that he was a talented product
| guy, but unfortunately seems to leave a lot to be desired as CEO.
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| What happened to you is not a lay off. You got fired!
| Aradalf wrote:
| It sounds like you were fired, not laid off.
| dudul wrote:
| Doesn't sound like a lay off to me, you were just terminated
| and let go. When you lay people off you don't replace them, you
| eliminate the position.
| enviclash wrote:
| I am a user. Annecdotically, since a few weeks ago the app
| started working slow and not as perfect as before, when it was
| flawless for years.
| chrsig wrote:
| > The culture of "we are awesome" has dominated most internal
| communications for the last couple of years, including in 2022.
| We all believed that we were awesome and would continue growing
| and winning.
|
| This is the big thing that drives me _nuts_.
|
| I don't know if it's a fragility of ego thing or what the cause
| may be, but it results in a corporate inability to critically
| self-evaluate at the highest levels. If you can't say where your
| weak areas are, you're not improving.
|
| One of the experiences that untreated ADHD blessed me with was
| routinely failing classes. That repeated exposure to undeniable
| failure (and the consequences of it) really helped me accept that
| failure is the default. If you're not constantly fighting against
| failure, you're failing. You can't pretend that something didn't
| work out, or stop thinking about it because it hurts.
|
| The self congratulatory back-patting (even if it's just
| "everything is fine, we're doing great") is treating success like
| an achievement. Success requires vigilance. Excellence is not an
| achievement, it's an activity.
|
| We need more leaders that talk about the things we could be doing
| better, and doing so inspirationally, not derogatorily. It's ok
| that you're not the best at something. Very few are. That doesn't
| mean you can't or shouldn't do better.
|
| Try internalizing that if you're not constantly struggling to do
| better, _you 're not living up to your potential_.
| datalopers wrote:
| > The self congratulatory back-patting
|
| HN is guilty of this constantly. Everyone who posts here is
| implicitly in the right and users unequivocally back that
| attitude, even when it realistically is a scenario of "maybe
| you were a shit employee and were fired for it and your
| employer isnt in the wrong?" or "your Show HN really isn't that
| impressive". We're not allowed to say anything critical of
| other HN users without being downvoted or reprimanded by dang.
|
| So why is it any surprise that every startup company has
| precisely the same back-patting culture?
| vorpalhex wrote:
| There's a difference between being introspective and just
| being a jerk.
| blueflow wrote:
| Did you just prove their point?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| If their point is that they get mad because people would
| downvote "Your Show HN isn't really that impressive",
| then I guess so. I would certainly downvote that kind of
| comment, because it's pretty much by definition a jerky
| comment.
|
| But I have seen _tons_ of reactions to Show HNs that are
| "How is your product different from XYZ?" or "How will
| you address problem Foo?" Those comments actually bring
| something helpful to the discussion. I've also seen, in
| cases where the Show HN isn't something the community
| generally appreciates, get fair comments along the lines
| of "Your product just appears to make it easier to spam
| people. Why should we like this?"
|
| Offering critical commentary without a point isn't
| something that adds to the value of the site.
| mk89 wrote:
| No. You can provide constructive criticism without BS or
| say things in a meaningful way without diminishing
| people.
|
| I wonder why so many people in this thread seem to see
| this topic either black or white.
| chrsig wrote:
| You're complaining that you can't shit on other people. I'm
| complaining that people don't shit on themselves.
| datalopers wrote:
| It's the same problem. People are afraid to face reality,
| internally or externally.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| The context is somewhat different on an anonymous online
| forum such as HN. Giving feedback as a stranger can be
| fraught with insufficient information. Criticism can
| easily spiral into negative flamefests full of
| assumptions of the receiving party. Thus, mods try to
| dampen it from getting too negative and toxic.
|
| > So why is it any surprise that every startup company
| has precisely the same back-patting culture?
|
| They are different because presumably coworkers are
| people you at least personally know in passing, and are
| not anonymous usernames.
|
| We should be gracious to strangers but more critical to
| those whom we do know.
| zionic wrote:
| You're doing the same thing now.
|
| Valid, level-headed criticism isn't "shitting on someone".
| chrsig wrote:
| > You're doing the same thing now.
|
| My wife does call me her favorite hypocrite :)
|
| My statement was certainly an oversimplified assessment.
|
| > Valid, level-headed criticism
|
| This is a good clarification to make, thank you.
| Ultimately this is what I'm longing for more of in the
| world. "shitting on" either yourself or someone else
| isn't helpful.
| tshaddox wrote:
| There's a big difference between the people in control of a
| company back-patting everyone when employees' livelihoods are
| actually in danger, and back-patting an individual for
| sharing their personal projects and experiences in good faith
| even if they have a lot of room for improvement.
| [deleted]
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| > "maybe you were a shit employee and were fired for it and
| your employer isnt in the wrong?" or "your Show HN really
| isn't that impressive". We're not allowed to say anything
| critical of other HN users without being downvoted or
| reprimanded by dang.
|
| These things absolutely can be said on HN, _if_ you list some
| points that make you think so. If OTOH your comment ist
| literally just that one sentence then I don 't see why it
| shouldn't get downvoted and flagged. This is not the YouTube
| comment section.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > These things absolutely can be said on HN, if you list
| some points that make you think so.
|
| Only if what you say doesn't oppose the current zeitgeist
| of the thread. I've seen some of the most well thought out
| and level headed comments get flagged to death while some
| insult floats to the top.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| HN cannot escape the group dynamics that are universal to
| all gatherings of human beings, this is likely to have
| been true throughout the history of this site, even if to
| different extents.
| mk89 wrote:
| I don't know if this was the meaning of the OP's message, but
| the way I read it tells me that he dislikes the "everything
| is fine" BS that some companies keep on doing, not the fact
| you still need to criticise constructively, which "your show
| hn isn't that impressive" clearly doesn't do.
|
| Realistic, yes, but you don't have to be an ass, that's kind
| of how I interpret it.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I would not say that HN does this _constantly_ or agree with
| much of what you write. In general I think written /upvoted
| comments tend to be biased towards being critical[1] and
| disagreeing with the comment/article being responded to.
|
| In general, the guideline is for comments to be curious and
| "maybe you were a shit employee" or "your Show HN really
| isn't that impressive" do not sound to me like they are
| curious. However I realise it is hard to describe in general
| comments that would surely contain specific things.
|
| An alternative strategy to the former general comment might
| be to try to get curious about the details more. For example
| one might discover that the likely cause was a breakdown in
| communication leaving the employee unable to understand what
| was actually wanted and being fired for failing to read minds
| to meet expectations. However I think it can be hard to
| actually be curious here rather than applying some kind of
| smug-Socratic method[2] asking innocent-seeming questions
| where the answers lead to one's unwritten hypothesis, though
| perhaps the answers can give an opportunity to update. I
| think it can be doubly hard to do these things in a kind way,
| especially when, like in the general examples, the topics are
| personal to one participant rather than a typical internet
| discussion where parties may pretend to be disinterested.
|
| [1] There are two common meanings of 'critical'. One is
| related to 'critical thinking' or critiquing: looking
| specifically and carefully at the faults or merits of
| something. The other meaning is similar to 'disapproving'.
| Generally the former kind is accepted here and the latter is
| less accepted, though I think comments which are negative and
| not particularly thoughtful or curious often do better than I
| would hope. Further, the acceptance of the former kind of
| critical discourse may sometimes be hidden behind for
| comments that perhaps fit into the latter sense (when they
| don't fit I would say it is because they are too mean to
| really deserve to be called critical).
|
| [2] I think this roughly corresponds to what the guidelines
| call cross-examining.
| huijzer wrote:
| Ben Horowitz talks about this somewhere near the start of his
| book "The Hard Thing about Hard Things". If I remember
| correctly, he said that it was very difficult for him as a CEO
| to load the problems he had onto his employees because handing
| the burden over felt bad. He was responsible for the burden. It
| makes some sense if you think about it like that. Later he did
| turn things around and share his worries and to his surprise
| the employees weren't to worried and actually started to solve
| some of the problems.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| I think a lot of this is that nobody has long term incentives
| and plenty of people believe "we are awesome" is truth.
|
| As a developer, if I paper over problems and claim to have
| resolved them, people will love me, trust me, and give me bonus
| pay. If I bring up problems, people consider me a trouble
| maker.
|
| And when the bill comes due, I will just jump to another
| company.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _experiences that untreated ADHD blessed me with was
| routinely failing classes. That repeated exposure to undeniable
| failure_
|
| Huh. Never thought of this. In a balanced culture, this offers
| no advantage. But in one still recovering from the self esteem
| days, when even games were encouraged not to produce any
| losers, I see how that awareness is competitive.
| chrsig wrote:
| I used the word _blessed_ somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I 'm not
| sure I would call it an advantage, rather just a different
| set of experiences than a large majority of the tech world.
| zdragnar wrote:
| I suspect most standup comedians are in a similar boat, so
| to speak. You keep failing until you succeed. You can't
| keep your audiences recycling only the same old jokes over
| and over, you need to keep writing new ones, tuning them
| over and over at small gigs so that you've got enough
| material that works for the bigger shows.
|
| More than just failing, though, I think the lesson is
| learning to tolerate failure, and learning from it so that
| you can try again.
| chrsig wrote:
| > More than just failing, though, I think the lesson is
| learning to tolerate failure, and learning from it so
| that you can try again.
|
| This is the real trick.
|
| From my own personal experience: I went through a period
| of intolerance to failure -- "failure can't happen
| again". hypervigiliance[0] is just as problematic as
| negligence.
|
| Accepting that failure will happen has allowed me to
| unwind quite a bit, aided in finding more empathy for
| others, and changed my focus to managing failure and
| risk. Somewahat oddly I'd come to that spot in regards to
| managing software in production earlier than I had been
| able to apply it to my own psyche.
|
| In a way, accepting that failure happens is an
| optimization technique. It affords the room for curiosity
| and forgiveness that is required in practice to have the
| greatest reduction in incidents or impacts of failure
| over time.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervigilance
| caminante wrote:
| _> From my own personal experience: I went through a
| period of intolerance to failure..._
|
| tl;dr: "Perfection is the enemy of good."
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| It is going sound odd, but I mildly disagree. Long time ago
| I listened a lecture of a Harvard professor, which went
| something along the lines of and I am paraphrasing:
|
| >> We did so well to get here and maybe we just have not
| failed enough.
|
| This really stuck with me, because in my eyes failing and
| having to earn each 'win' is what gets job done. Yeah,
| there is always someone smarter, but there are few people,
| who can stick to something until it is solved. I am
| actually saying ADHD may have been a blessing in disguise
| since it forced you to work harder for things others take
| for granted.
|
| And that is apart from being able to see things in ways
| majority of population does not.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| I think people in an organisation are constantly confronted
| with the problems and downsides. Engineers always know where
| the problems in the code and architecture are. Sales people and
| support always see the complaints from customers. CEOs see how
| high-valur prospects always find new issues to lower the
| negotiated prices and how features are delivered late. And so
| on.
|
| My interpretation is that the overly positive view aims to
| drive the positive points forward and remind everybody about
| the positive things and how well things work on a macro view.
| If you stick small negatives in the message to cover "reality"
| this is what sticks.
|
| I can't stand these motivational speech, but I also don't see a
| good speech for high level talks and not saying anything is bad
| as well and for some kind of people that seems to give them a
| push.
| alecbz wrote:
| Stripe had a few "official" principles that I really liked
| along these lines: "We haven't won yet", "macro-optimism but
| micro-pessimism".
|
| They're no longer official principles though, and I'm not 100%
| sure how much they were actually acted upon while they were (at
| least during my tenure).
| dsomers wrote:
| > "macro-optimism but micro-pessimism"
|
| This is an interesting idea, I have I feeling I know the what
| they're getting at, but if you have any examples of how they
| put that into practice I'd love to hear it.
| deltree7 wrote:
| AI will solve all humanity problems (Macro Optimism)
|
| AI is currently shit (too resource intensive, too biased,
| lots of details still to be worked on) (Micro Pessimism)
|
| So, let's work on addressing each of this
| Buttons840 wrote:
| I like the book Crucial Conversations, which tells us to
| avoid the "fool's choice" and be 100% honest and 100%
| respectful at the same time. The fool's choice is when a fool
| thinks something like "I can either tell the truth and be
| fired, or keep my mouth shut". The book teaches that with
| some thought you can find a way to tell the truth without
| being fired, etc. This is advice for an individual, but not
| an entire organization.
|
| For organizations, they could at least hire a consultant /
| speaker to do a presentation every year on how people can
| effectively give negative feedback. The speaker could say
| "you all see bad things happening at the company, things you
| aren't happy about but don't want to risk speaking about,
| here's how you can speak about those issues without any
| risk". Teach people things like, studies have shown that
| proposing a solution along with your complaint makes it more
| likely to be accepted, etc. For the price of a speaker or
| two, you could train your company to effectively deliver and
| act on negative feedback. Too many people don't know how to
| effectively express their problems.
|
| If someone wants to start a consultants / speaking tour you
| can have this idea.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Part of me is imagining 'tell the truth and not be fired'
| to involve some kind of _Yes Minister_ strategy like the
| Rhodesia solution.
|
| But more realistically, most modern tech companies are
| going to want to not fire people for telling the truth or
| more generally speaking their minds, and individuals can
| often have a bigger impact than they would imagine. It
| doesn't really make sense for a reasonably well run company
| to ignore such things from employees they clearly think are
| valuable.
|
| That said, there are still exceptions, e.g. labour activism
| in the US is probably a good way to get fired (with a nice
| big severance), and if you work at Boeing and write some
| email like 'this plane is designed by clowns and I won't
| let my family fly in it' (or perhaps even just reasonable
| concerns) that is also bad (because that email will show up
| in court if there's an accident and you can't say 'we want
| to have a workplace where all engineers can raise concerns
| about the safety of our planes' - better to just not do it
| over email, which is a bit of a silly incentive)
| Buttons840 wrote:
| > most modern tech companies are going to want to not
| fire people for telling the truth
|
| I agree. I gave that as an extreme example of "the fool's
| choice". More realistic examples include "I can tell the
| scrum master he talks to much in retrospectives and he
| will dislike me, or I can be quiet about it". Truth is
| you can probably find a good time and way to tell him
| that will not hurt his opinion of you.
|
| As for raising safety concerns at Boeing (for example),
| maybe that's not a "fool's choice", but simply a choice.
| Are you going to do the right thing or not? Sometimes the
| "if I speak up, bad things will happen" mindset is the
| unfortunate truth, but not as often as many think.
| infinite8s wrote:
| What if you don't have a solution to the complaint?
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Still make the complaint, I never said it was required.
| In fact, I heard of a company where management said not
| to complain unless you had a solution and it really
| bothered me; sometimes you don't know the solution, but
| the complaint still needs to be made.
|
| You can still do something like offer to help or
| proposing a meeting as the "solution", or at least the
| start of a solution.
| pas wrote:
| leave?
|
| also, the complaint can be perfectly valid and important
| without having any solutions for it. many times employees
| don't have the knowledge needed to know what are the
| possible solutions.
|
| but individually their solution is to go where their
| needs are met (as much as possible of course)
| hbrn wrote:
| It's still on their website, not sure if it's public though:
| https://stripe.com/jobs/culture
| pjot wrote:
| I like the saying, "strong opinions, loosely held" which I
| feel hits in the same vein.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| I really think this just comes from the fact that most startups
| are either:
|
| 1) from California
|
| and/or 2) have founders that worked in California
|
| and/or 3) raised money from VCs in California
|
| I'm all on-board with it being better to be an optimist than a
| pessimist, and also on-board that destructive criticism doesn't
| really "serve" anyone.
|
| But there's just this rampant over-optimism like nowhere I've
| experienced.
|
| The culture of "we are awesome" to me - is culture of
| California.
|
| I prefer California culture over doom and gloom and pessimism -
| but a little more reality, I think, is welcome.
|
| The thing that rubbed off on me about California that I'm
| really grateful for is to always start with the positive. I'm
| definitely a happier person from getting absorbed into that
| culture.
|
| But I think when you get to the point where you just completely
| ignore or don't speak about the negatives, it's not really
| helpful anymore. It's just delusion.
| drstewart wrote:
| I like how you mention California 6 times but somehow fail to
| realize this company was founded and based in Sweden
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Wonder how similar Sweden is to the North American west
| coast, culturally speaking. It is the center of
| Scandinavia's tech scene, after all, and has birthed many
| companies.
| avarun wrote:
| Not at all similar.
| morelisp wrote:
| It's a Swedish company but it's definitely one of the most
| hardcore California Ideological companies in Europe.
| Animats wrote:
| A comment from when I knew theater and film people in SF: "In
| New York, they tell you when you suck. In Hollywood, they
| don't call you back when you suck. In San Francisco, they
| don't tell you that you suck. So you can suck forever."
|
| (Yes, SF once had a film scene. Mostly because there was
| cheap warehouse space South of Market usable for production.)
| georgeecollins wrote:
| Interesting point, but the example here is HQ'd in Ohio. I
| think some of what you talk about in California is true but
| you could say that about New York, or once upon a time Hong
| Kong. Places where ambitious people come to breed a certain
| mindset. California is a big state and very rural parts
| California arre like Idaho (I'm not talking exurbs).
| aledalgrande wrote:
| Nah the Vancouver scene is the same. Maybe it's a West coast
| thing?
| garrickvanburen wrote:
| > failure is the default. If you're not constantly fighting
| against failure, you're failing.
|
| This. Any success, let alone wild success is highly unlikely.
| Just assume you'll work on interesting problems and at some
| point you'll realize either you or the problem will change in a
| way that makes disengaging the right answer.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| > The self congratulatory back-patting (even if it's just
| "everything is fine, we're doing great") is treating success
| like an achievement. Success requires vigilance. Excellence is
| not an achievement, it's an activity.
|
| I used to wonder why friends of mine would get gifts for things
| like graduating elementary school or even high school. I asked
| my father for something because I was graduating highschool on
| the honour roll, and he told me completely stoned faced "i am
| not going to reward you for things that you are just simply
| expected to do". That sticks with me 20 years later and I apply
| that to everything I do in life, especially work.
|
| If you aren't succeeding, you are failing - and I was expected
| and taught to succeed by default.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| It comes from a time when it was not so mundane. My
| grandfather on one side was the first in his family to truly
| read and write well enough to have a job involving it.
|
| That is a big deal and far from a default.
|
| Yes, now graduating high school is not an achievement, but it
| used to be quite one, especially for the average person.
| djmips wrote:
| I feel sorry for you that your father never got you that gift
| for graduating high school. My father got me an HP calculator
| and it's still one of my treasured possessions. It has had no
| negative impact on my success.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| You can still get gifts but that comes from love, not as
| reward for something mundane.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| My father has gotten me plenty of gifts, for a variety of
| reasons and sometimes for no reason at all. Don't get me
| wrong, I love my dad very much and he is a very generous
| man :)
| msie wrote:
| > If you aren't succeeding, you are failing - and I was
| expected and taught to succeed by default.
|
| That sounds messed up too. Maybe you need a break now and
| then from trying to succeed all the time.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| I work 9-5 and have 6 weeks of vacations on top of
| government mandated holidays, I do pretty good :)
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| > If you aren't succeeding, you are failing - and I was
| expected and taught to succeed by default.
|
| Nitpicking, but you were expected to succeed by default, and
| also taught to strive for success by default (and presumably
| also taught the tools and approach to maximize likelihood of
| success). People cannot be taught to "succeed by default",
| anymore than someone could be taught to "win the world series
| by default".
|
| And then that unpacks the challenge of this particular world
| view (and points at why the 'self-esteem thing' is a thing),
| is that learning to strive for success, and learning the
| tools and methods to achieve success does not mean you will
| actually reach success (this would just be a variant of the
| just-world fallacy). The challenge is how do you create the
| motivating factors and structure for as many people as
| possible (hopefully everyone) in your society/culture to
| earnestly strive for success, but not crack apart when they
| encounter continued failures.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| I've had my fair share of failures that's for sure. I'm do
| not expecting to actually succeed every single time, but I
| am putting in the best effort to at least try to succeed
| instead of just trying to coast along or shrug it off being
| like "meh, just wasn't in the cards". I also don't expect
| massive celebrations when I actually do succeed - success
| is what is expected. If I'm supposed to make the big sale,
| I don't get a party after I just move on to the next big
| sale. It's what is expected, not exceptional.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| That's fair. And to be honest, I have a very similar
| mindset - so I'm super not judging.
|
| Just making an observation that scaling this up to a
| population level is tricky. Easy to mangle up the nuances
| when trying to impart this to children. I suspect you
| need a relatively stable environment for this to really
| take hold as well. And finally, you do actually need to
| be able to feed the child some degree of external success
| to get them to actually buy into this.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| that's bleak
|
| why not have some joy?
|
| you might say you do have joy, but I'll say it doesn't
| look like it and so to bring it back I wouldn't want to
| work for you
|
| This is why companies are always pushing the "winning"
| narrative.
|
| to be clear I'm only commenting on how your philosophy is
| perceived vs how it actually feels, since I can't know
| that.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| Maybe I'm not articulating myself correctly because I
| certainly do not want to imply or say that there is no
| joy in my life. I guess the "joy" in my life is just
| intrinsic rather than extrinsic? I get immense
| satisfaction out of my work itself and "succeeding" in
| and of itself is motivating. I also find
| mentoring/helping others succeed to also be extremely
| rewarding. The greatest joy I get in life is seeing how
| my actions have improved the lives of others in some way.
|
| I also feel very fulfilled from my personal
| relationships, family and lifestyle that my "success"
| affords me.
| puchatek wrote:
| I hope that your definition of success is healthier than your
| definition of failure.
| mhuffman wrote:
| >We all believed that we were awesome and would continue
| growing and winning.
|
| Hilarious since Klarna has one of the worst customer service
| experiences I have ever witnessed.
|
| Their real monetization strategy seems to be to get your mobile
| information. It is not necessary to micro-finance through them,
| just to do anything at all after that!
|
| They actually have a website, which you might think would be an
| alternative way to manage your account, however it also
| requires your verified mobile device (not a phone number) to
| access.
|
| Now, they never tell you any of this and none of the people
| that work there seem to know that this is policy and are
| shocked that you can't do things like check your balance, pay
| off your balance, basically anything you might want to do.
| hulitu wrote:
| If it works for Google, shall work also for them.
| humaniania wrote:
| Do they get a tracking pixel or something on all the checkout
| pages where they are a payment option? They get to embed
| code?
| CharlesW wrote:
| I worked for a company where the C-suite used the phrase
| "drinking our own champagne" instead of "eating our own dog
| food". To me, this just oozed insecurity about the product and
| the company.
| highwaylights wrote:
| "Drinking our own champagne"
|
| I feel like I need to take a shower because of how vomit-
| inducing that statement is.
| parkerhiggins wrote:
| sure let's replace a daily life sustaining activity with a
| celebratory product
|
| total disconnection and bastardization of the point of the
| phrase
|
| rare level of yuck here
| elvis10ten wrote:
| Why did we (as an industry) go with "eat your dog food"
| instead of just "eat your own food"? I find the former
| disgusting each time I hear it.
| blantonl wrote:
| I think this term started in the enterprise software
| space, and was probably coined because subconsciously,
| enterprise software sales and management people realized
| that their products were on par with dog food - ground up
| mystery stuff that is just barely edible except for
| animals that will practically eat anything. But package
| it up in nice marketing and sales efforts, and away we
| go!
|
| This is coming from someone who spent WAY too much time
| in the Enterprise software space.
| scrollaway wrote:
| Why make something up when the answer is a googlensearch
| away?
|
| https://www.centercode.com/blog/dogfooding-101
|
| The sibling comment got it right, it started with a dog
| food company. Which makes more sense than a company
| deciding their product is shit, no?
| jsty wrote:
| IIRC there was an ad involving a dog food manufacturer
| feeding their own dogs the food they made. "Dogfooding"
| then became synonymous with using your own product.
| polote wrote:
| Nothing matters as long as a company is growing. You don't have
| to improve or have the best tech or the best sales or do
| everything right or have the best culture. The only thing that
| matter for a company is to grow.
| peyton wrote:
| Clearly something did matter since Klarna grew a lot and will
| probably continue growing. What matters is access to capital.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Ah, those nasty cash flow questions. Who would have thought
| that positive net cash flow excluding outside investment
| would actually be important.
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| I'd say it even goes beyond that to how you treat employees.
| Poor raises? Long, demanding hours? Unethical practices?
| Burning people out?
|
| If the business keeps growing and the stock keeps going up,
| it papers over a lot of those problems.
|
| Of course, when the growth stops suddenly, all the skeletons
| fall out of the closet.
| duxup wrote:
| I worked at a place where the executives constantly sent out
| company wide congratulations emails, to each other.
|
| The HR director wrote "why it is a great time to work at X part
| 1" and then we did some layoffs... and part 2 was sent out the
| next day without missing a beat.
|
| That company eventually stumbled and failed largely because
| they wouldn't cancel a product that was clearly deficient (a
| far superior product was available but wasn't invented by the
| established engineering manager, so they killed that product
| instead ).
| jiggywiggy wrote:
| I dealt with Klarna once, made a mistake. Gmail filtered out
| all their invoices & reminders, had to pay reasonable extra
| sum. No leniency, fine, but nothing special or awesome about
| them, they are just a regular credit company. No special tech
| or whatever, no special awesomeness, no special kindness.
|
| Gmail filtering out invoices has been a big issue for my btw,
| Im forcing the government to send me invoice in print, even
| though they don't want to.
| testing7787 wrote:
| autophagian wrote:
| Inability to focus when reading is often a symptom of
| untreated ADHD.
| aledalgrande wrote:
| I think social media today makes you think you have many
| conditions, when in fact you just have normal behaviors.
| You don't need to have ADHD to get distracted, especially
| if your brain is trained to pay attention to a thing for 15
| seconds max by said social media.
|
| Try reading paper books, or focusing your eyes on a candle
| for 5 mins a day, your attention will improve.
| Arcanum-XIII wrote:
| No, it's not. Your focus will probably take a sharp turn to
| another thing, but because you're not entertained. Here...
| it's probably because ADHD doesn't mean you'll fail, even
| if untreated.
| chrsig wrote:
| if you started replying there, you might have untreated ADHD
| [deleted]
| mise_en_place wrote:
| These articles are a good reminder that everyone is expendable at
| a company. Plan accordingly and remember that income is way more
| important than net worth.
| greenwithenvy wrote:
| There's a reason why recruiters at Spotify jokingly referred to
| Klarna as "our relocation agency". Klarna would relocate folks to
| Stockholm who'd then leave within 6 months to a year once they
| realised the shitshow they signed up for.
|
| This was in 2015. They didn't value people back then or care to
| treat folks with the tiniest amount of decency. Seems not much
| has changed.
| dcminter wrote:
| There was a corresponding joke at Klarna that Spotify was part
| of the natural promotion path.
| d-trieu wrote:
| Not just at Spotify, at both of my previous jobs we were joking
| about picking up Klarna employees that has managed to
| disconnect from the Matrix.
| smashah wrote:
| I tried to get a big-ticket item using Klarna. Had the money in
| the bank, just thought I'd give it a go. It failed multiple times
| without any sort of meaningful error message. Apparently each of
| those failed attempts hit my credit score. I told them to close
| my account multiple times through multiple channels
| (chat/email/etc.) and reverse any damage done to my credit score.
|
| Till this day I get monthly balance/statement emails from them
| even though I have yet to use a single penny of their credit
| facility. Too bad they don't use all that marketing budget on
| competent customer experience/service.
| antupis wrote:
| Yup funny how big they growth becouse they pretty much dont add
| anything to consumer experience and they are well know issues
| like if you know social security number you can order stuff.
| mlonkibjuyhv wrote:
| Oh all the things I wish they would use their marketing budget
| on. For instance they still can't correctly compute different
| VAT classes in their merchant reports.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I thought Klarna did a 'soft' credit check? That shouldn't show
| up on your file? I think they need permission to do a hard
| credit check.
| smashah wrote:
| After the third attempt I decided to chat with Klarna
| support. They saw the attempts and told me to stop trying as
| it would be damaging my credit score. What exactly is the
| truth? I don't know. Klarna is a black box to me.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| My guess is you were accidentally using 'Klarna Financing'
| - that's not their main product and not what most people
| think of when you say 'Klarna' - it's a formal consumer-
| credit loan. It's like getting a car loan, rather than
| paying in instalments, as their main product is.
|
| And yeah that'd be apocalyptic on your credit score -
| equivalent of being rejected for a car loan multiple times
| in a day!
| smashah wrote:
| It was the 0% Klarna option (the only Klarna option) on
| the Google Store if that makes it any clearer. I stay
| away from this stuff generally so I can't tell the
| difference between these options when I'm trying to
| checkout.
| tedivm wrote:
| It's not a big deal on credit scores at all actually.
| FICO-8 and the other common credit score algorithms all
| make the assumption that multiple credit checks in a
| short period of time just means the person is rate
| shopping, which is an extremely common thing. When I got
| a car last year I had ten hard lookups in a single day-
| this didn't do any more "damage" than a single lookup.
|
| On top of that even hard lookups stop affecting scores
| pretty quickly. They really exist to prevent someone from
| taking out a bunch of loans without each other loan
| company knowing about it.
|
| I do know that things like the Vantage score, used by
| credit karma and nerd wallet, put a higher weight on
| these checks. This is, in my opinion, purely to drive
| engagement to their website. FICO is what is actually
| used by lenders, and tends to be more stable (in my
| experience).
| BonoboIO wrote:
| Hit them hard with a GDPR request, forward it to your local
| privacy organization.
|
| In Europe this is popcorn time.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| This is what I do with every single company I have even the
| slightest negative interaction with regarding my data.
|
| Its a lot of fun.
| smashah wrote:
| Good suggestion. I've now filed a complaint with the ICO and
| sent them an email requesting for all the data they have on
| me.
| samcrawford wrote:
| The same author has been reporting diligently on Pollen, and has
| said he will do a write-up on the collapse there. I will be very
| interested to read that.
| SahAssar wrote:
| Got some links? A quick search of the blog turned up nothing
| besides a quick mention here:
| https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/pragmatic-engineer-test/
| tomduncalf wrote:
| It was on his Twitter AFAIK, for some reason Twitter search
| wouldn't find it but here is the thread! https://mobile.twitt
| er.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1557841469674...
| [deleted]
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