Reading this letter, seems like they're also going to try to cut cloud costs. A consultant who wanted to travel around companies and help them lower cloud costs could make a KILLING right now.
Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce
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Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce
#72> We were much too optimistic about the internet economy’s near-term growth in 2022 and 2023 and underestimated both the likelihood and impact of a broader slowdown. This is one of the most interesting statements ever written. If you ran a 'Idea Fourier' on this signal, so many things fall out: cheap interest rates pushes crazy valuations and estimations, believing the low interest fantasy was a requirement to gettin…
And a refreshingly honest statement. Too often these layoffs are put on external factors. Having someone admit the actual mistake is due to human optimism (greed maybe) just +1’d my respect for Stripe.
Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce
#73They have almost 700 jobs listed on their careers page:
https://stripe.com/jobs/search
Seems like a move to just dump some redundant people and blame the macro situation
Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce
#74- 14 weeks severance
- 2022 bonus and PTO paid out
- accelerated vesting
- 6 months of healthcare.
This is a phenomenal severance package and I hope one that will set the standard for companies doing layoffs. So many companies in the US do two weeks or less, with nothing else (not even healthcare) or even use it to claw back shares.
Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce
#75Hey pc, if you're around: > John and I are fully responsible for the decisions leading up to it. What are the two of you doing to show accountability? Are you slashing your own future stock grants, cutting your own salaries, diluting your positions with stock grants to everyone else? What's the consequence for this decision on your end that shows you're accountable for what happened, not just responsible for it? Sinc…
There are rarely if ever any serious consequences to top execs screwing up wealthy companies.
Such execs are usually already so wealthy that they never have to work another day in their life, no matter what happens or how much they screw up.
They can always find other prestigious, high paid jobs, and sometimes even get rewarded with huge amounts of money from the very companies they screwed over.
Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Though the bottom 14% is a pretty big amount to cut, almost certainly some decent performers in that group. I don't think you can only cut "poor performers" in any sort of bulk layoffs. You can avoid it in aggregate, but there will be enough mistakes, enough teams that need to cut a number but don't have enough poor performers, or even enough high performers who are just on teams that are deemed no longer necessary…
High performers on redundant teams would almost certainly be transferred, assuming there isn't some odd middle management infighting going on.
Transferring a high performer often implies laying off another person in the target team.
The time to do that would have been in a reorg (Stripe's philosophy for that is at https://stripe.com/guides/atlas/organizations-and-hypergrowt... ) prior to layoffs.
During a layoff, if you want to transfer to a different team, apply for a job on that team if they've still got some open headcount.
Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce
#77Grew tx volume 3x since the pandemic, but using the macro environment as an excuse to shave the bottom 14%. Just come out and say it.
Unless they were planning on growing transaction volume more
I'm British, so I appreciate that there's a difference in approach across the pond, but I still think this is a shitty thing to do. They are still growing (and setting records it would seem).
Just hold on to the staff and swallow the small dent in opex.
Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce
#78Hey pc, if you're around: > John and I are fully responsible for the decisions leading up to it. What are the two of you doing to show accountability? Are you slashing your own future stock grants, cutting your own salaries, diluting your positions with stock grants to everyone else? What's the consequence for this decision on your end that shows you're accountable for what happened, not just responsible for it? Sinc…
No post body was provided.
Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Though the bottom 14% is a pretty big amount to cut, almost certainly some decent performers in that group. I don't think you can only cut "poor performers" in any sort of bulk layoffs. You can avoid it in aggregate, but there will be enough mistakes, enough teams that need to cut a number but don't have enough poor performers, or even enough high performers who are just on teams that are deemed no longer necessary…
I've seen a company's culture effectively be killed overnight because one "low performer" was cut off. Not every impact an employee has is directly represented in their own bottom line. The company in question was able to stomach this because it would go on to undergo significant structural changes anway but it basically had to start building a new company culture from scratch and doing it top-down is much harder tha…
Could you expand on that? I'm curious to know how one employee can single-handedly carry the company's culture.
Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce
#80They've been doing "layoffs" for quite some time, they've just been trying to keep it quiet. I know multiple people (including engineers) that were let go in the past two months.
Don't forget not giving raises and promotions that are bonehead obvious, had several friends find new jobs after getting passed over from some BS.