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The layoffs at Klarna

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Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#111

Post by throwawaysleep »

rubyist5eva wrote: post #42
chrsig wrote: post #14

> The culture of “we are awesome” has dominated most internal communications for the last couple of years, including in 2022. We all believed that we were awesome and would continue growing and winning. This is the big thing that drives me nuts . I don't know if it's a fragility of ego thing or what the cause may be, but it results in a corporate inability to critically self-evaluate at the highest levels. If you can…

> The self congratulatory back-patting (even if it's just "everything is fine, we're doing great") is treating success like an achievement. Success requires vigilance. Excellence is not an achievement, it's an activity. I used to wonder why friends of mine would get gifts for things like graduating elementary school or even high school. I asked my father for something because I was graduating highschool on the honour…

It comes from a time when it was not so mundane. My grandfather on one side was the first in his family to truly read and write well enough to have a job involving it.

That is a big deal and far from a default.

Yes, now graduating high school is not an achievement, but it used to be quite one, especially for the average person.

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#112

Post by junofan »

lumost wrote: post #67
Areading314 wrote: post #3

Klarna generated $1.42 billion revenue in 2021, a 32 percent year-on-year increase. A majority of Klarna’s income comes from interchange, processing and merchant fees. As Klarna has expanded its BNPL offering, its losses have increased. It reported a net loss of $730 million in 2021, a 337 percent increase on its 2020 loss. I would say its surprising that this company is still in business at all with numbers like thi…

For transaction processing, wouldn't a 1-3% margin be about the maximum achievable? That would translate to about 15 million dollars in potential profit against a 730 million loss.

Visa’s margins are like 50–60%.

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#113

Post by dsomers »

alecbz wrote: post #33
chrsig wrote: post #14

> The culture of “we are awesome” has dominated most internal communications for the last couple of years, including in 2022. We all believed that we were awesome and would continue growing and winning. This is the big thing that drives me nuts . I don't know if it's a fragility of ego thing or what the cause may be, but it results in a corporate inability to critically self-evaluate at the highest levels. If you can…

Stripe had a few “official” principles that I really liked along these lines: “We haven’t won yet”, “macro-optimism but micro-pessimism”. They’re no longer official principles though, and I’m not 100% sure how much they were actually acted upon while they were (at least during my tenure).

> “macro-optimism but micro-pessimism”

This is an interesting idea, I have I feeling I know the what they’re getting at, but if you have any examples of how they put that into practice I’d love to hear it.

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#114

Post by zdragnar »

chrsig wrote: post #95
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> experiences that untreated ADHD blessed me with was routinely failing classes. That repeated exposure to undeniable failure Huh. Never thought of this. In a balanced culture, this offers no advantage. But in one still recovering from the self esteem days, when even games were encouraged not to produce any losers, I see how that awareness is competitive.

I used the word blessed somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I'm not sure I would call it an advantage, rather just a different set of experiences than a large majority of the tech world.

I suspect most standup comedians are in a similar boat, so to speak. You keep failing until you succeed. You can't keep your audiences recycling only the same old jokes over and over, you need to keep writing new ones, tuning them over and over at small gigs so that you've got enough material that works for the bigger shows.

More than just failing, though, I think the lesson is learning to tolerate failure, and learning from it so that you can try again.

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#115

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

chrsig wrote: post #14

> The culture of “we are awesome” has dominated most internal communications for the last couple of years, including in 2022. We all believed that we were awesome and would continue growing and winning. This is the big thing that drives me nuts . I don't know if it's a fragility of ego thing or what the cause may be, but it results in a corporate inability to critically self-evaluate at the highest levels. If you can…

I really think this just comes from the fact that most startups are either:

1) from California

and/or 2) have founders that worked in California

and/or 3) raised money from VCs in California

I'm all on-board with it being better to be an optimist than a pessimist, and also on-board that destructive criticism doesn't really "serve" anyone.

But there's just this rampant over-optimism like nowhere I've experienced.

The culture of "we are awesome" to me - is culture of California.

I prefer California culture over doom and gloom and pessimism - but a little more reality, I think, is welcome.

The thing that rubbed off on me about California that I'm really grateful for is to always start with the positive. I'm definitely a happier person from getting absorbed into that culture.

But I think when you get to the point where you just completely ignore or don't speak about the negatives, it's not really helpful anymore. It's just delusion.

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#116

Post by Buttons840 »

alecbz wrote: post #33
chrsig wrote: post #14

> The culture of “we are awesome” has dominated most internal communications for the last couple of years, including in 2022. We all believed that we were awesome and would continue growing and winning. This is the big thing that drives me nuts . I don't know if it's a fragility of ego thing or what the cause may be, but it results in a corporate inability to critically self-evaluate at the highest levels. If you can…

Stripe had a few “official” principles that I really liked along these lines: “We haven’t won yet”, “macro-optimism but micro-pessimism”. They’re no longer official principles though, and I’m not 100% sure how much they were actually acted upon while they were (at least during my tenure).

I like the book Crucial Conversations, which tells us to avoid the "fool's choice" and be 100% honest and 100% respectful at the same time. The fool's choice is when a fool thinks something like "I can either tell the truth and be fired, or keep my mouth shut". The book teaches that with some thought you can find a way to tell the truth without being fired, etc. This is advice for an individual, but not an entire organization.

For organizations, they could at least hire a consultant / speaker to do a presentation every year on how people can effectively give negative feedback. The speaker could say "you all see bad things happening at the company, things you aren't happy about but don't want to risk speaking about, here's how you can speak about those issues without any risk". Teach people things like, studies have shown that proposing a solution along with your complaint makes it more likely to be accepted, etc. For the price of a speaker or two, you could train your company to effectively deliver and act on negative feedback. Too many people don't know how to effectively express their problems.

If someone wants to start a consultants / speaking tour you can have this idea.

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#117

Post by ygram »

whichdan wrote: post #91
ygram wrote: post #66

I have never understood why health ensurance is handled by the employer in the US, why don't people buy private health insurance instead? It feels insane to put yourself in that kind of dependency on your employer.

Employers cover a majority of the cost of insurance. In Boston, I pay maybe $70 every 2 weeks for health insurance, but on the private market I'd be paying 5-10x as much for worse coverage.

Do people ever try to negotiate higher salary instead of health endurance from employer and then have a private one instead?

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#118

Post by hbrn »

alecbz wrote: post #33
chrsig wrote: post #14

> The culture of “we are awesome” has dominated most internal communications for the last couple of years, including in 2022. We all believed that we were awesome and would continue growing and winning. This is the big thing that drives me nuts . I don't know if it's a fragility of ego thing or what the cause may be, but it results in a corporate inability to critically self-evaluate at the highest levels. If you can…

Stripe had a few “official” principles that I really liked along these lines: “We haven’t won yet”, “macro-optimism but micro-pessimism”. They’re no longer official principles though, and I’m not 100% sure how much they were actually acted upon while they were (at least during my tenure).

It's still on their website, not sure if it's public though: https://stripe.com/jobs/culture

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#119

Post by hef19898 »

junofan wrote: post #102
polote wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing matters as long as a company is growing. You don't have to improve or have the best tech or the best sales or do everything right or have the best culture. The only thing that matter for a company is to grow.

Clearly something did matter since Klarna grew a lot and will probably continue growing. What matters is access to capital.

Ah, those nasty cash flow questions. Who would have thought that positive net cash flow excluding outside investment would actually be important.

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#120

Post by YPCrumble »

curiousllama wrote: post #60
jedberg wrote: post #34

Wow, that sounds so poorly handled. Not figuring out a way to tell everyone affected at (nearly) the same time is probably the worst sin. Best layoff I ever went through was when my boss came to our team and said, "look, don't tell anyone, but we have a layoff coming in a few days. I have to let one of the three of you go. Do you want me to decide or do you want to decide amongst yourselves?". She knew we were good f…

> Best layoff I ever went through was when my boss came to our team and said, "look, don't tell anyone, but we have a layoff coming in a few days. I have to let one of the three of you go. Do you want me to decide or do you want to decide amongst yourselves?" Judging from your reaction, it sounds like yall had a great work environment, and that this was a good way to handle the layoff for your team. It sounds like it…

Why would this invite a lawsuit? Layoffs are part of business.
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