191–200 of 339 posts
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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.
1-3% of the transaction volume. That percentage is the 1.4 billion Klarna takes as revenue. The margins of that can be very high.
Putting that aside (since all tech companies will lay off new joiners), I don't think this story points to any (cultural) problems at Klarna.
Layoffs are always tough and people will be unhappy. Based on the timelines presented in the article, everybody knew within 1-2 days whether they are affected or not, and affected people got a good severance package. By "good" I mean more than Klarna had to pay based on the law, based on the article.
It's important to remember that 99% of working people in the world would not get this deal in a layoff.
I think we (tech workers) need to stop expecting to always be treated as unicorn snowflakes (esp. in the current market conditions).
> 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…
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.
If the business keeps growing and the stock keeps going up, it papers over a lot of those problems.
Of course, when the growth stops suddenly, all the skeletons fall out of the closet.
Buy now pay later schemes are usually really terrible ideas. Companies like Klarna and Afterpay should be avoided at all costs. Often the loan repayment schedules are intentionally confusing and predatory. Here’s a relevant You Need A Budget podcast episode for those looking for more on this topic: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Z9NQoseq5nvutAInURR2r
It is impossible for someone who leads a company like that to be a good person. Why would anyone be surprised at them being heartless to their employees?
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If EMPLOYER pays you 10k and you want to buy a plan for 5k, you first have to pay taxes on the 10k, lets say 20%, so you have 8k - 5k = 3k left over. OR The employer can just buy the 5k plan for you tax free, and pay you 5k instead. This means you have 4k left over after tax! This is because healthcare plans are not taxed if provided by the employer. Incredibly retarded, yes, it is.
Why isn't this just tax deductible?
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How was that the “best layoff”? Instead of being an actual fucking leader and making a difficult decision, your boss just said “lol so who wants to leave.” I swear sometimes the shit I read here makes me go insane.
She was a great leader. She recognized that our team was cohesive and could make a better decision than she could. She was one of the best managers I ever had.
> 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…
This. Any success, let alone wild success is highly unlikely. Just assume you’ll work on interesting problems and at some point you’ll realize either you or the problem will change in a way that makes disengaging the right answer.
I tried to get a big-ticket item using Klarna. Had the money in the bank, just thought I'd give it a go. It failed multiple times without any sort of meaningful error message. Apparently each of those failed attempts hit my credit score. I told them to close my account multiple times through multiple channels (chat/email/etc.) and reverse any damage done to my credit score. Till this day I get monthly balance/stateme…
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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?