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The layoffs at Klarna

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Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#141

Post by drstewart »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #115
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…

I like how you mention California 6 times but somehow fail to realize this company was founded and based in Sweden

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#142

Post by aledalgrande »

autophagian wrote: post #86
testing7787 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Inability to focus when reading is often a symptom of untreated ADHD.

I think social media today makes you think you have many conditions, when in fact you just have normal behaviors. You don't need to have ADHD to get distracted, especially if your brain is trained to pay attention to a thing for 15 seconds max by said social media.

Try reading paper books, or focusing your eyes on a candle for 5 mins a day, your attention will improve.

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#143

Post by indymike »

throwaway859383 wrote: post #108
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…

Up until a massive expansion push some years ago, Klarna used to be a profitable company. It expanded from 3200 employees in 2019 to the 7000 that are there now. They also started spending money on experiments that had not much to do with the core business.

Employee count may be the worst business metric of all time.

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#145

Post by Apocryphon »

drstewart wrote: post #141
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I like how you mention California 6 times but somehow fail to realize this company was founded and based in Sweden

Wonder how similar Sweden is to the North American west coast, culturally speaking. It is the center of Scandinavia's tech scene, after all, and has birthed many companies.

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#146

Post by parkerhiggins »

CharlesW wrote: post #52
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 worked for a company where the C-suite used the phrase "drinking our own champagne" instead of "eating our own dog food". To me, this just oozed insecurity about the product and the company.

sure let’s replace a daily life sustaining activity with a celebratory product

total disconnection and bastardization of the point of the phrase

rare level of yuck here

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#147

Post by dthul »

logifail wrote: post #80
cosmodisk wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company I used to work for got acquired by a listed company. At the same time, I was doing finance module at the university. One assignment was to analyse a company's financial reports and come up with a conclusion. So I analysed the company I worked for and the outcome was that I need to get out. At the same time the company was sending communication as it's about to discover time travel and unicorn milk.

> At the same time, I was doing finance module at the university. One assignment was to analyse a company's financial reports and come up with a conclusion. So I analysed the company I worked for and the outcome was that I need to get out. That's interesting. My OH is almost half way through her MBA and for one recent module, she chose to analyse her current employer's financial reports and come up with a conclusion.…

Any good resources for a tech employee to learn about these things without having studied it?

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#148

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

treis wrote: post #61
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…

In a lot of ways internet businesses are like buying bonds. You pay some cost to acquire a customer and will get revenue from them over time. You can calculate a present value for that customer based on that future revenue. As long as that value is more than what you paid to acquire the customer you're making money. And if your numbers are right then you, more or less, want to spend as much money as you can buying cu…

This is a very, very dangerous business to be in unless your numbers are rock solid and you make sure your models reflect reality.

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#149

Post by chrsig »

zdragnar wrote: post #114
chrsig wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 learn…

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

This is the real trick.

From my own personal experience: I went through a period of intolerance to failure -- "failure can't happen again". hypervigiliance[0] is just as problematic as negligence.

Accepting that failure will happen has allowed me to unwind quite a bit, aided in finding more empathy for others, and changed my focus to managing failure and risk. Somewahat oddly I'd come to that spot in regards to managing software in production earlier than I had been able to apply it to my own psyche.

In a way, accepting that failure happens is an optimization technique. It affords the room for curiosity and forgiveness that is required in practice to have the greatest reduction in incidents or impacts of failure over time.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervigilance

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#150

Post by hef19898 »

logifail wrote: post #7
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…

> As Klarna has expanded its BNPL offering, its losses have increased. It reported a net loss of $730 million in 2021, a 337 percent increase on its 2020 loss Yet the tone from the acticle is that employees appeared to think the company was successful?

It truely shocking how little employees can care about their employers finacials.
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