[HN Gopher] Brex Layoffs
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Brex Layoffs
        
       Author : bpc84
       Score  : 97 points
       Date   : 2024-01-23 18:08 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.brex.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.brex.com)
        
       | Ancalagon wrote:
       | Kind of saw that coming. The salaries at Brex were insane.
        
         | H8crilA wrote:
         | Higher than FAANG? Or whatever is the acronym today.
        
           | Ancalagon wrote:
           | At some point (not sure if this is still the case) you could
           | choose between all salary or a mix of salary and options. The
           | total comp in either case was ~450k for a senior dev. So we
           | are talking Netflix-level salaries for a startup.
        
           | onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
           | Higher than MSFT for sure - but not Netflix or Google:
           | https://www.levels.fyi/companies/brex/salaries/software-
           | engi...
        
             | fuddle wrote:
             | $263.42K for an entry level position, wow.
        
               | onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
               | If you look, entry level is >10% more than the next
               | level, so it's probably off - but likely about $200k or
               | more.
               | 
               | Pretty great for a Non-FAANG company.
        
           | goalonetwo wrote:
           | FAANG is not the top of the market at all anymore. Google
           | pays middle market unless you have a competing offer.
        
         | myth_drannon wrote:
         | To be fair, everyone is laying off. Whatever paid peanuts or
         | millions. Hopefully, the devs who got the bigger piece of the
         | cake stashed some under the mattress.
        
           | Ancalagon wrote:
           | 20% after an 11% layoff is high even during current times imo
        
         | dpflan wrote:
         | Cash salary or made up stock options valuations?
        
       | ashconnor wrote:
       | Brexit?
        
       | GiorgioG wrote:
       | > To continue capturing the massive opportunity ahead, we're
       | hyper-focused on building a high-velocity product and growth
       | machine.
       | 
       | I mean, who wouldn't want to work for this guy?
        
         | wiremine wrote:
         | Came here to say the same thing. The lack of plain English is
         | funny if it wasn't such a sad situation. I also know it's
         | nothing new or unique.
        
         | masto wrote:
         | He's clearly operating at all levels.
         | 
         | As an aside, it's funny (not ha-ha funny) watching these things
         | sweep through in waves; they're basically fashion. For a while,
         | we needed to "put the structure in place to be able to scale"
         | and it was all about adding more levels of hierarchy. Now we're
         | flattening the org chart and managers are expected to do
         | everyone's job at once. Today everyone needs to own the product
         | vision. Tomorrow you need to focus on execution and stop
         | stepping on product management's toes. Be more hands-on. Now
         | stop micromanaging. We're Agile. We can't keep changing the
         | plan. Promote from within; the best leaders start in the
         | trenches. We need professionals with outside perspective, so
         | we're filling that role with some guy from Oracle.
        
       | hmsp wrote:
       | "high velocity"
        
         | kolanos wrote:
         | Terminal Velocity
        
       | cowthulhu wrote:
       | Interesting that the CFO and CTO also got the boot, but the
       | positions weren't eliminated. Is this a power grab? Or am I
       | misreading?
        
         | Jemaclus wrote:
         | It's not clear to me how you would have a company of this size
         | without a CTO or CFO. I'm interested in why your expectation is
         | that the roles themselves would be eliminated, versus bringing
         | in people who might perform better?
        
           | hiatus wrote:
           | FTA: > We're flattening our org structure and reducing layers
           | of management. Our goal is for leaders to operate closer to
           | the metal, less siloed and more functionally, focused on few
           | cross-company priorities. These changes begin with the
           | leadership team and cascade across the org:
        
         | nkingsy wrote:
         | COO and CTO
        
         | gamblor956 wrote:
         | The CFO position is generally mandated by law in most states,
         | though it can be filled by another officer such as the CEO
         | (i.e., it doesn't need to be its own position).
         | 
         | However, it is generally considered a red flag for a large
         | company to have these positions filled by the same individual
         | (unless the company is a subsidiary of an even bigger company,
         | in which case the CFO role in the subsidiary may be a pro forma
         | position).
        
           | hiatus wrote:
           | > The CFO position is generally mandated by law in most
           | states, though it can be filled by another officer such as
           | the CEO (i.e., it doesn't need to be its own position).
           | 
           | Only two states seem to mandate a CFO from
           | https://www.harborcompliance.com/corporate-governance-by-
           | sta...
        
         | mooreds wrote:
         | CTO position is not being backfilled. There will be a VP of
         | engineering, not quite the same.
        
       | Gabrys1 wrote:
       | I like that they shared publicly the severance package (I missed
       | that in a company before, the severance package was only
       | available to the ones laid off, and you wouldn't even know if you
       | got the same as your colleagues).
       | 
       | And the package itself seems alright too (and sensible, for
       | example: the laid off can keep their laptops. What would company
       | do with almost 300 extra laptops?). Time of the lay off also not
       | too bad (firing people in November/December is really uncool).
       | 
       | All in all, not TOO bad from what I can see in the public post.
       | 
       | Oh, and they also said how many people first, not how many
       | percent, which suggest they think about their human resources as
       | actual individuals.
        
         | sokoloff wrote:
         | I've been on both sides of the layoff discussions all too many
         | times over the years. Even at the most disorganized or chaotic
         | places, I've never seen the severance packages be anything
         | other than a set formula.
         | 
         | That formula might consider location, level, tenure, and other
         | relevant factors, but I don't think I've ever seen a case where
         | it was "I like Alice more than Bob, so Alice gets more..."
        
         | mrsilencedogood wrote:
         | The laptop thing is usually less about clawing back property
         | and more about preventing the laptop, potentially with customer
         | PII and source code and other stuff on it, ending up sold on
         | ebay or left laying around as a personal device to be
         | eventually lost at an airport 3 years later, and so on. They
         | take them back, wipe them, then either resell them to a
         | reseller or reissue them to other employees etc.
        
           | toomuchtodo wrote:
           | Indeed, the financial services firm I contribute at is
           | required to remotely lock and wipe laptops when offboarding
           | for compliance purposes, and that is somewhat consistent with
           | the other FIs I've seen the inside of. How effective this is
           | depends on an org's MDM story (people, process, controls).
        
           | jupp0r wrote:
           | If they are managed devices (which I hope they are at a
           | fintech company), it should be trivial to remote wipe them
           | before removing MDM from them to enable personal use/resale
           | etc.
        
             | nkohari wrote:
             | As I understand it, it's a question of insurance. Either
             | way, it's very common in larger companies to either reissue
             | or physically destroy machines after an employee leaves.
        
             | pwb25 wrote:
             | how would you wipe them without an internet connection if I
             | shut it off ?
        
               | nunez wrote:
               | the minute it goes online, it gets the kill signal
        
         | ipaddr wrote:
         | 8 weeks plus 2 weeks per year seems light. 4 weeks for every
         | year sounds more fair. The interview process was over 8 weeks
        
           | sokoloff wrote:
           | Those equations intersect at 4 years of tenure. Brex was
           | founded only 7 years ago, so most affected employees would
           | presumably make out better with 8 + 2 * N than with 4 * N.
        
             | ipaddr wrote:
             | We are still including the 8 weeks. 8 + (4*n).
        
           | JCharante wrote:
           | > 8 weeks plus 2 weeks per year seems light. 4 weeks for
           | every year sounds more fair. The interview process was over 8
           | weeks
           | 
           | Well that would be a short severance for everybody who was
           | hired in the last year.
        
         | elvis10ten wrote:
         | > Time of the lay off also not too bad (firing people in
         | November/December is really uncool).
         | 
         | I don't understand this. Why is it uncool? And why is January
         | better?
         | 
         | I guess it doesn't let people enjoy their vacations. But on the
         | flip side, isn't that a good thing? You can curb expenses on
         | the vacation/holidays.
        
           | what_ever wrote:
           | You can enjoy those holidays with the family instead of being
           | stressed and sad about losing the job. The holidays being
           | Thanksgiving and Christmas.
        
             | elvis10ten wrote:
             | I see. I guess different strokes for different folks.
             | 
             | For me, if my job or project is doomed, and my employer
             | knows, I will rather they tell me immediately so I can
             | start figuring out solutions ASAP.
             | 
             | It doesn't matter if it's the holidays. The last thing I
             | will want is to come back from a holiday in Portugal,
             | spirits high, year plans made, but only to be told I am
             | fired.
             | 
             | But I can understand the other perspective.
        
           | blowski wrote:
           | There are effectively 2-3 dead weeks in which you're not paid
           | but can't look for a new job. All you can do over Christmas
           | and New Year is worry.
        
           | AmericanChopper wrote:
           | Nobody's hiring during that time of year.
        
         | ralphc wrote:
         | Looking at that list 6 months of COBRA is short, really short.
         | In this job-search environment your COBRA is going to run out
         | well before you could find your next job.
         | 
         | When I was laid off from Oracle in 2012 I got 18 months of
         | COBRA. That sounds must more reasonable.
        
       | latchkey wrote:
       | Previously:
       | 
       |  _Brex, valued at $12.3B earlier this year, lays off 11% of
       | staff_ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33167302 (October 11,
       | 2022 -- 14 points, 1 comments)
        
       | mrnobody_67 wrote:
       | Company was burning $17m per month with less than $300m in
       | revenue... while growing at a slower rate than ramp.com . simply
       | unsustainable.
        
         | eterm wrote:
         | What am I not understanding about your comment, 300m is 25m per
         | month, so that sounds very profitable?
        
           | e1g wrote:
           | They spend every cent of the revenue they made AND the extra
           | $17m each month.
        
             | kstrauser wrote:
             | Ohhhh, I misunderstood that in the same way. $17 is the
             | burn (i.e. the net loss), not the expenses.
        
           | umeshunni wrote:
           | Their spend is $42m per month
        
         | chatmasta wrote:
         | Is there some relevance in the comparison to ramp.com or were
         | you just mentioning it as an example?
        
           | dalyons wrote:
           | its effectively their competitor
        
             | chatmasta wrote:
             | Oh right... for some reason I thought it was a crypto
             | startup. Maybe that's another Ramp
        
               | dalyons wrote:
               | yeah, thats https://ramp.network/ . Also called Ramp. I
               | made the same mistake previously.
        
       | mise_en_place wrote:
       | It's really disappointing to see the trajectory that Brex is on.
       | I was extremely enthusiastic about their product, they had the
       | best business banking/credit/expense tracking in the industry. I
       | was a very happy customer, until they decided they would only
       | chase SV startup unicorns as their customers, and terminated my
       | account. Brex is very much a cautionary tale for other startups.
        
         | yesimahuman wrote:
         | They lied (or did not clearly inform their sales people) about
         | their AWS credit promotion a few years ago which really annoyed
         | me when they were trying to sell us. Went back to the safe
         | embrace of SVB but I guess that didn't really play out well. As
         | a startup I desperately want to see more credit card companies
         | willing to offer cards to founders without ridiculous personal
         | guarantees, so I hope they figure it out.
        
           | mise_en_place wrote:
           | I have used SVB in the past as well, for my first startup.
           | They were solidly OK. This is still an area ripe for
           | disruption IMO, old Brex filled the niche but for some reason
           | we just can't do payments and banking correctly in the US.
           | India has UPI for instance, and even foreigners can avail
           | themselves of this facility.
        
             | tedivm wrote:
             | Solidly okay right up to their bank run.
        
           | ensignavenger wrote:
           | As an SVB customer, how bad was it? Did you have any delays
           | or other issues accessing your money? Did service or perks
           | change a lot after the takeover?
        
             | yesimahuman wrote:
             | They let us get our cash out within a few days IIRC, and we
             | switched to a different bank (was right after we were
             | acquired so kind of a different situation). I would say
             | there's still a large gap in the market SVB filled but I am
             | not using them for my new company yet so can't compare
             | before/after.
        
         | tennisflyi wrote:
         | Aren't they all?
        
       | gr1zzlybe4r wrote:
       | I wonder what the revenue of their customers looks like. They
       | have to have a ton of revenue from other startups that themselves
       | are in tenuous financial positions.
       | 
       | From the employee's perspective, it definitely sucks though. I
       | went through a layoff this year and it took me a lot longer than
       | I anticipated to get another job.
        
       | frfl wrote:
       | > increasing in-person collaboration in our hubs, and
       | concentrating the time zones in which we operate.
       | 
       | > With our focus on financial software and high-quality growth,
       | we grew gross profit by 75%+ last year. While we're proud of
       | those accomplishments, we still have a way to go to ensure high-
       | velocity growth and profitability for years to come
        
         | e1g wrote:
         | > increasing in-person collaboration in our hubs, and
         | concentrating the time zones in which we operate
         | 
         | Massive turn-around since Brex declared themselves to be
         | remote-first and said things like "Yes, employees can relocate
         | permanently with Brex's transition to remote-first"
         | https://www.brex.com/journal/remote-first-at-brex
        
           | bagels wrote:
           | Employees had leverage. Now they do not.
        
         | gamblor956 wrote:
         | If true, this is a good sign for the future of the company, as
         | it means that their revenue metrics are fine.
         | 
         | The problem is that they are simply spending too much on
         | activities not related to the business. For tech companies,
         | that usually means spending too much money on "tech" that isn't
         | actually relevant to the revenue-generating business,
         | especially now that the section 174 changes have eliminated the
         | preferential treatment of software R&D.
        
       | claudiulodro wrote:
       | It seems like companies are really tightening the screws further
       | this year. When I got into this industry I figured the good times
       | would roll for about 10 years, and then it would be about time
       | for another career change. "Make hay while the sun is shining",
       | as they say. I'm right around that 10th year, and I think that
       | prediction was accurate.
        
         | soneca wrote:
         | Do you think there is a career out there better than (I assume)
         | software development?
         | 
         | My view is that we are still in pretty good times. Maybe not
         | great, but everyone who kept their jobs is still earning a big
         | salary.
         | 
         | And everything else other than software development is worse
         | (specifically if you bundle things like ML into "software
         | development").
         | 
         | I am curious. What career would you change to?
        
           | toomuchtodo wrote:
           | Attorney. Build a system, work from anywhere, make your own
           | schedule. Hard to outsource.
        
             | atlasunshrugged wrote:
             | Really? I would have assumed that attorney is one of those
             | jobs that is going to be hugely disrupted by AI. Should
             | people new to the field bother if they aren't going to be
             | top X% (5? 10?)?
        
               | cpursley wrote:
               | There's way more to legal work than filling out forms.
               | The AI is going to replace legal assistants, not the
               | attorneys themselves.
        
               | abc03 wrote:
               | For people without the resources, yes. For people that
               | have a problem and resources, no. They pay for the best
               | and want to be sure it's watertight.
        
               | esafak wrote:
               | Just get into and through Harvard Law, easy peasy...
               | 
               | The best programmers make good money too.
        
               | toomuchtodo wrote:
               | Quality is determined by a combination of network,
               | reputation, and results, not your Alma mater. Search for
               | a securities or criminal defense attorney, ask around,
               | see if where they got their diploma plays into the
               | referrals you get.
        
               | gamblor956 wrote:
               | Actual legal work, as opposed to legal-adjacent tasks,
               | will be the last to be disrupted by AI, at least so long
               | as AI means LLM. Law is simply too complicated to rely on
               | something that doesn't have the ability to understand.
               | 
               | Doc review staff will be effectively eliminated...but
               | they're already being eliminated by non-AI technology, so
               | AI will just be the last straw.
        
               | kstrauser wrote:
               | I watched a tech demo of an LLM writing code to make a
               | neat little user interface. I would have thought that
               | utterly impossible a couple years ago.
               | 
               | I don't think this would be a good time to start a career
               | drafting contracts.
        
             | madmaxmcfly wrote:
             | Here I am the one to bring up AI, ugh. I get a sense that,
             | of all things, LLM's actually encroach on legal professions
             | the most (aside from copywriters). But this is from an
             | outside perspective. Any insights?
        
               | toomuchtodo wrote:
               | If blockchain didn't replace the law, neither is a
               | hallucinating robot in the near term. Has to pass legal
               | muster, not techbro bar. I say this as someone deeply
               | involved in GRC in finance where a component of my work
               | is working on improving LLM guardrails for knowledge
               | management.
        
             | dpflan wrote:
             | What does build a system mean?
        
               | toomuchtodo wrote:
               | Focus on a niche, create a funnel, be very good at that
               | niche, scale horizontally.
               | 
               | EDIT: Picked attorney because you have to be licensed to
               | practice law, creating a barrier to the equivalent of
               | code bootcamps. My apologies if the model around the idea
               | wasn't clear, I will do better!
        
               | dpflan wrote:
               | Why is this seemingly general rule so specific to law
               | (being an attorney)?
        
               | dpflan wrote:
               | The license is the key, as a barrier to entry. Medicine
               | is very high and takes a lot of time but pretty
               | impenetrable. Law is cheaper for the time and money. What
               | else would have this property?
        
           | claudiulodro wrote:
           | Self-employed tradesman pays as much on a per-hour basis as
           | contract dev work and doesn't have to compete with a million
           | people in developing countries willing to work for $20/hr.
           | The project management parts from software development aren't
           | too different either -- it's all tasks, coordinating
           | stakeholders, etc.
           | 
           | That's my angle, but there are plenty of other fields too:
           | healthcare (nurses make as much as most SWEs and can live
           | anywhere in the country), government, certain employee
           | tradesmen (electrician, etc.), basically anything that
           | requires some sort of license or training. Life is long,
           | spending a couple years to get 10+ years of good returns is a
           | wise investment.
           | 
           | I've never been to the Bay Area, so what I'm about to say may
           | not apply, but look in any middle-class neighborhood: maybe
           | 5% of the people are in tech -- what is everyone else doing?
           | The above is a sampling of careers that have provided people
           | in my neighborhood a comfortable American Dream style of
           | life.
        
             | Deprecate9151 wrote:
             | I want to call this out because I see this advice a lot
             | (and it's also my backup plan).
             | 
             | Trade work can be a fantastic way to earn a living, but it
             | is HARD work. It will break your body if you do it for your
             | whole life. There is a reason plenty of people jumped to
             | office work the first chance they got.
             | 
             | Don't go into the trades blind, take care of your body, or
             | you'll be like my grandpa and need help uncurling your
             | fingers if you fall asleep making a fist.
        
               | bradfox2 wrote:
               | You want a specialized trade. HV Electrician at a utility
               | or something like that.
               | 
               | An off the shelf commercial or residential trade sounds
               | like a nightmare, especially in an area with bad weather
               | part of the year.
               | 
               | That said, if you can deal with employees of that type as
               | a business owner, you can clean up.
        
             | oldandboring wrote:
             | > but look in any middle-class neighborhood: maybe 5% of
             | the people are in tech -- what is everyone else doing?
             | 
             | This comment is why I love HN. Once you sort through all
             | the kiddos who don't know anything about anything, you get
             | golden nuggets like this.
             | 
             | In my middle (almost upper-middle) class neighborhood we
             | have a bunch of doctors and psychologists, a bunch of
             | lawyers, a few retired professionals, a couple professors
             | and.... me in tech.
        
             | AnotherGoodName wrote:
             | >I've never been to the Bay Area, so what I'm about to say
             | may not apply,
             | 
             | This is honestly where it is hitting. When I moved to the
             | bay area ~10years ago I asked myself 'why are they paying
             | me usd500k to move here when I could just work from my home
             | country for a fraction of that'.
             | 
             | Meanwhile in my home country there's a tech boom. In fact
             | my current big faang company is hiring there and closing
             | jobs here.
             | 
             | Can't say I'm surprised except that it took this long for
             | the realization that you don't need to have your staff move
             | to the bay area and thus you don't need to pay bay area
             | wages.
        
             | Yhippa wrote:
             | This chain and this comment is one of the best things I've
             | read on here in years. It reminded me that a lot of
             | community colleges have workforce programs that I need to
             | look into:
             | https://www.nvcc.edu/academics/programs/index.html
        
           | blastro wrote:
           | Curious to the answers here, leaving a breadcrumb for later.
        
       | yourstruly-br wrote:
       | There was no lack of funding for Henrique's posh wedding ceremony
       | in a paradise island in Brazil back in October though.
       | https://www.metropoles.com/colunas/fabia-oliveira/video-veja...
        
       | jchonphoenix wrote:
       | 20% of the company
       | 
       | Given how it sounds like Brex is doing, they're likely going to
       | need to cut again. This isn't deep enough to really solve any
       | systemic or structural problems. It will likely work though if
       | the product vision and execution are on point and they just need
       | more runway/less bloat.
        
         | jamestimmins wrote:
         | But do layoffs ever solve systemic or structural problems?
         | 
         | They're typically about reducing burn. Whether management knows
         | how to identify and fix core problems is a totally different
         | question.
        
           | JumpCrisscross wrote:
           | > _But do layoffs ever solve systemic or structural
           | problems?_
           | 
           | Brex is a leveraged play on start-up fundraising. They're a
           | fundamentally cyclical business.
        
           | jchonphoenix wrote:
           | I have seen them do so in the past. But they need to be very
           | targeted similar to surgery. There's some tumor in the
           | company and you need to identify what that is and remove all
           | of it.
           | 
           | I've seen it effectively done once.
        
       | shmatt wrote:
       | Oof to this link in the post
       | https://www.brex.com/journal/operate-at-all-levels
       | 
       | What a terrible culture, dunking on people management, calling it
       | meaningless
       | 
       | And no, I don't want the Director of AI to explain react
       | component rendering to me, it sounds like they are grooming a
       | generation of super-micromanaging executives. Maybe the CTO was
       | kicked out after he failed to complete 3 back to back leetcode
       | hards
        
         | bsilvereagle wrote:
         | > it sounds like they are grooming a generation of super-
         | micromanaging executives
         | 
         | My read from the linked example was the Director built a tool
         | outside of the critical path that was a quality of life
         | (performance) improvement. This is a prime example of code that
         | leaders should be writing - the team isn't blocked by them,
         | they can put it down at any time, they maintain familiarity
         | with the tools and codebase (both the good and the bad), and if
         | it lands then the team is uplifted.
        
           | shmatt wrote:
           | A leader should know how to influence his org within a 3
           | minute conversation to do this. The fact he stopped his
           | Director of AI work to do this means their org is broken - or
           | worse they have no influence over it
        
         | encoderer wrote:
         | Disagree.
         | 
         | this is a founder pushing back against having a leadership
         | caste that can't actually do the work to drive the business
         | forward themselves.
        
         | nurettin wrote:
         | This is not even cynicism, it's just grasping at straws.
        
         | fossuser wrote:
         | It depends - I mostly agree with that blog post.
         | 
         | If a leader doesn't understand the underlying role (at least
         | somewhat) - they can't reason about it. The best people
         | managers I had were good at that skill and took it seriously,
         | but also had a technical understanding of the role.
         | 
         | I think it's relatively common for bad people to get hired to
         | these management roles because the skill can be harder to
         | evaluate than straight engineering. Hire enough of this kind of
         | person and your company dies. It's also why managers get a bad
         | reputation generally - good managers/team leads are excellent,
         | bad ones are neutral at best.
        
           | shmatt wrote:
           | Can you imagine Ilya Sutskever being fired because his
           | frontend code wasn't up to par
        
             | helicalmix wrote:
             | This is a silly example, because Ilya's umbrella isn't
             | front-end code.
             | 
             | To answer your question though, yes, if Ilya was Head of UX
             | Engineering and his front-end code wasn't up to par, he
             | should be fired.
        
         | madmaxmcfly wrote:
         | Where do you read that people management is meaningless? I only
         | read that people management alone isn't the most productive way
         | for anyone to operate
        
         | justin66 wrote:
         | Yeesh. That looks almost satirical.
        
       | ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
       | "Today we're restructuring Brex to become a high-velocity
       | company"
       | 
       | Lol. Wtf were you doing so long as a CEO?
       | 
       | I never understood these dumb messages.
        
         | geodel wrote:
         | Leveraging synergies to provide accelerated experience in
         | rapidly changing customer marketplace to become thoughtiest of
         | all thought leaders...blah..blah..
        
       | kissgyorgy wrote:
       | It's insane how much bullshit is on their home page. Can someone
       | explain what the hell are "smart spending" and "integrated
       | cards"?
        
       | sam0x17 wrote:
       | I guess this is what happens 1.5 years later when you decide to
       | kick all LLCs off from using your platform and they all go to use
       | your competitors instead
        
         | blast wrote:
         | What happened there?
        
           | sam0x17 wrote:
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31772847
           | 
           | source: was one of the affected LLCs. Went to Mercury and
           | never looked back!
        
       | spandrew wrote:
       | "Henrique and I are responsible for the decisions that led us
       | here, and seeing so many talented folks go through this
       | experience is never what you hope for as a founder."
       | 
       | ~ Responsible but not accountable, got it.
        
         | juunpp wrote:
         | Just the right kind of leadership you want in an employer.
        
         | Yhippa wrote:
         | "As a result of this, nothing will change for Henrique and I."
        
       | tschellenbach wrote:
       | Likely not the last round. From their numbers, it seems pretty
       | clear that they need to become profitable.
        
       | vegancap wrote:
       | Tone of this is just awful, reads like he's saying they've laid
       | off a bunch of people who were slowing us down, and sort of ends
       | it by saying how excited he is about the business now they've
       | been let go...
        
       | JCharante wrote:
       | > Waiver of the one-year equity cliff for those who haven't
       | reached theirs yet.
       | 
       | That's nice, however I find it "unfair" that if you are offered X
       | RSUs as part of your first year comp but they vest over 4 years
       | then if you get laid off you lose them even if you already
       | "worked" for them. My experience losing 40k worth of RSUs at my
       | first job has certainly soured equity compensation in my eyes.
        
       | Yhippa wrote:
       | So strange putting this out in public. It's almost like it was
       | entirely written to investors.
        
       | yalogin wrote:
       | How bad is the job market for tech folks now? Are companies
       | hiring at all ?
        
         | frfl wrote:
         | My response will just be one data point, so take it with a
         | grain of salt and do your own research.
         | 
         | Job applications to interview rates are _way_ down, like 5% or
         | less. Some job posts will likely feel like you sent your job
         | application into a black hole and it will never be seen by
         | anyone or get any response at all. I'd imagine use of "AI" job
         | application screening services have greatly increased and HR
         | departments are likely screening application even harder than
         | before.
         | 
         | Most jobs posted are senior/staff level only, rarely do you see
         | a non-senior posting. But still you might see an non-senior job
         | posted here and there.
         | 
         | People I know did find jobs after layoffs in 2023, but rather
         | than in weeks it was months and likely, but I'm not 100%
         | certain, for lower pay (all people I know where in different
         | countries, but working for US companies). Other companies have
         | hiring freezes and some seem to (almost) not have hired at all
         | in 2023.
         | 
         | One trend I've noticed is job postings by US companies in South
         | America (Brazil for eg.), Mexico, Eastern Europe, India are
         | _way_ up. Interpret that as you will.
         | 
         | Venture funds are likely scaling their investments into
         | companies back, especially non-AI companies, so venture funded
         | companies that were in growth month either tried their best to
         | cut costs (no hiring, layoffs) and shift to profit/revenue mode
         | or shut down. Publicly traded companies seem to have shifted to
         | increasing their share prices using similar tactics.
         | 
         | So, currently bleak, compared to pre-covid to 2021, but might
         | be possible to still find something with a lot of persistence.
         | Not an ideal situation for anyone looking currently, unless you
         | have some special connections or are skilled in AI work etc.
        
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