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