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The layoffs at Klarna

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Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#251

Post by puchatek »

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…

I hope that your definition of success is healthier than your definition of failure.

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#252

Post by blantonl »

elvis10ten wrote: post #190
parkerhiggins wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why did we (as an industry) go with “eat your dog food” instead of just “eat your own food”? I find the former disgusting each time I hear it.

I think this term started in the enterprise software space, and was probably coined because subconsciously, enterprise software sales and management people realized that their products were on par with dog food - ground up mystery stuff that is just barely edible except for animals that will practically eat anything. But package it up in nice marketing and sales efforts, and away we go!

This is coming from someone who spent WAY too much time in the Enterprise software space.

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#253

Post by drakonka »

Ekaros wrote: post #240
drakonka wrote: post #203

I was actually surprised to read that the Swedish CEO "took a dab at unions". Sure, relationships with unions can be complicated, but I've never heard an employer talk negatively about them here (maybe I'm just sheltered?). I am used to seeing union reps come to the office a few times a year for Q&As and feedback sessions, and taking about union membership was normal in internal channels. Never heard of anyone in lea…

At least in Finland the tech unions are mostly toothless. They might help you with a lawyer if it is certain that employer screwed up. And any actions taken are very light, in lines of we recommend you not to work overtime... And maybe day or two of walking out... And then finally capitulate for minimal pay increase...

Swedish unions aren't perfect for sure, but so far I've only had positive experiences myself. I've luckily never had an actual conflict at work to bring my union in over though, so the extent of my experience has been calling them for general advice and getting an extra week of vacation as part of a collective agreement. I've also heard a few stories of coworkers bringing in union reps when they felt they were being pushed out on unfair terms and negotiating much better severance packages.

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#254

Post by blantonl »

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…

99 out of 100 times this would have been 3 spidermen pointing at each other.

Glad your manager was able to recognize your team could handle this decision themselves. But, wow.

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#255

Post by yuliyp »

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…

They're much riskier bonds. The market can change, or competitors can try to win customers over, or anything else to throw out those lifetime value calculations.

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#256

Post by puchatek »

literallyWTF wrote: post #165
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…

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.

By quoting her wrongly you missed precisely the reason why her's was considered a good approach to communicating this.

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#257

Post by blantonl »

allenu wrote: post #57
hotpotamus wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently left an 8,000 person company that's been on a 2 decade loop of private money to publicly traded and back a couple times now. It occurred to me that in 25ish years (about 10 of which I worked there) that it might never have made any money - I can't remember a profitable year ever; we were always seeking growth above all else. I now work at a small SaaS company of around 50 people and it's only ever made mon…

> I recently left an 8,000 person company that's been on a 2 decade loop of private money to publicly traded and back a couple times now. It occurred to me that in 25ish years (about 10 of which I worked there) that it might never have made any money That is crazy if true. My fear is that there are a ton of tech companies like that, just chasing future profits or an acquisition, but not actually creating anything of…

Rackspace?

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#258

Post by smashah »

chrisseaton wrote: post #229
smashah wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After the third attempt I decided to chat with Klarna support. They saw the attempts and told me to stop trying as it would be damaging my credit score. What exactly is the truth? I don't know. Klarna is a black box to me.

My guess is you were accidentally using 'Klarna Financing' - that's not their main product and not what most people think of when you say 'Klarna' - it's a formal consumer-credit loan. It's like getting a car loan, rather than paying in instalments, as their main product is. And yeah that'd be apocalyptic on your credit score - equivalent of being rejected for a car loan multiple times in a day!

It was the 0% Klarna option (the only Klarna option) on the Google Store if that makes it any clearer. I stay away from this stuff generally so I can't tell the difference between these options when I'm trying to checkout.

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#259

Post by cosmodisk »

dthul wrote: post #147
logifail wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

The Economist Guide To Analysing Companies is a good start. Others would be corporate finance books or intro books to accounting.

Re: The layoffs at Klarna

#260

Post by tedivm »

chrisseaton wrote: post #229
smashah wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After the third attempt I decided to chat with Klarna support. They saw the attempts and told me to stop trying as it would be damaging my credit score. What exactly is the truth? I don't know. Klarna is a black box to me.

My guess is you were accidentally using 'Klarna Financing' - that's not their main product and not what most people think of when you say 'Klarna' - it's a formal consumer-credit loan. It's like getting a car loan, rather than paying in instalments, as their main product is. And yeah that'd be apocalyptic on your credit score - equivalent of being rejected for a car loan multiple times in a day!

It's not a big deal on credit scores at all actually. FICO-8 and the other common credit score algorithms all make the assumption that multiple credit checks in a short period of time just means the person is rate shopping, which is an extremely common thing. When I got a car last year I had ten hard lookups in a single day- this didn't do any more "damage" than a single lookup.

On top of that even hard lookups stop affecting scores pretty quickly. They really exist to prevent someone from taking out a bunch of loans without each other loan company knowing about it.

I do know that things like the Vantage score, used by credit karma and nerd wallet, put a higher weight on these checks. This is, in my opinion, purely to drive engagement to their website. FICO is what is actually used by lenders, and tends to be more stable (in my experience).

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