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Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

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Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#131

Post by dboreham »

buscoquadnary wrote: post #120
memish wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's in the email: Severance pay. We will pay 14 weeks of severance for all departing employees, and more for those with longer tenure. That is, those departing will be paid until at least February 21st 2023. Bonus. We will pay our 2022 annual bonus for all departing employees, regardless of their departure date. (It will be prorated for people hired in 2022.) PTO. We’ll pay for all unused PTO time (including in re…

Dude that is a freaking sick severance. Hell that is the kind of situation where is want to get laid off.

Even better in the UK where you don't pay tax on severance (at least, the first 30K).

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#133

Post by mbreese »

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #64
pid-1 wrote: post #20

> In making these changes, you might reasonably wonder whether Stripe’s leadership made some errors of judgment. We’d go further than that. In our view, we made two very consequential mistakes, and we want to highlight them here since they’re important: > - 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…

That first point is key, and I think they're being... less than honest. The reality is there's very little evidence for an actual "broader slowdown". GDP growth in the US was decent in the last quarter despite a huge decline in home sales and headwinds from inflation, and unemployment remains at record lows. There's certainly some signs for concern, but the only real, persistent decline has been in the stock market (…

> The reality is there's very little evidence for an actual "broader slowdown". GDP growth in the US was decent in the last quarter despite a huge decline in home sales and headwinds from inflation, and unemployment remains at record lows.

I thinks as a payment processor, they are in a better position than most to predict sales trends. This effect might be restricted to their segment of the market. But if the payments they process are down significantly, then does it matter (to Stripe) if parts of the economy that they aren’t involved in are more robust?

I’m not excusing actions, but they have more data on the economy than most, just from their position in it. They may have thought (their part of) the market was going to keep growing (the mistake), but that doesn’t change the fact that it isn’t.

I just feel bad for everyone affected.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#134

Post by lefstathiou »

eganist wrote: post #111
memish wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's in the email: Severance pay. We will pay 14 weeks of severance for all departing employees, and more for those with longer tenure. That is, those departing will be paid until at least February 21st 2023. Bonus. We will pay our 2022 annual bonus for all departing employees, regardless of their departure date. (It will be prorated for people hired in 2022.) PTO. We’ll pay for all unused PTO time (including in re…

That's how they're supporting their employees, but this would've already been accounted for anyway (the vesting, potential bonuses, pay through Feb 2023, etc), so this isn't accountability so much as it's "we'll, we won't see the immediate benefit until March" Would've been a different story for instance if pc/jc were diluted with new grants to departing and existing employees.

What more do you want? They are paying out millions in cash ("out of the goodness in their heart"... ie they don't have to and people shouldnt expect) which is directly reducing the value of the equity, which impacts them more than anyone else by a huge proportion. Handing out equity grants makes no little sense to me and is unlikely what these employees want... "hey you're fired, here's some stock at our latest valuation pre correction".

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#135

Post by nscalf »

tempsy wrote: post #114
sdrinf wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second they go public it triggers a 6-12 months window after which all of their employees can cash out. This will, inexorably lead to an exodus of their most senior peeps, and when it happens, will probably be ground zero for the next gen of fintech startups. Delaying going IPO this way, amongst other things, is about retention.

I don’t think this is correct. Then your theory is that every tech company that went public in last 2 years have experienced a brain drain that Stripe has not. Lock up periods aren’t set in stone. They probably didn’t need to raise money and could have done a direct listing and let employees cash out immediately.

There’s also no lack of buyers for stripe on secondary markets.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#136

Post by ulfw »

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #64
pid-1 wrote: post #20

> In making these changes, you might reasonably wonder whether Stripe’s leadership made some errors of judgment. We’d go further than that. In our view, we made two very consequential mistakes, and we want to highlight them here since they’re important: > - 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…

That first point is key, and I think they're being... less than honest. The reality is there's very little evidence for an actual "broader slowdown". GDP growth in the US was decent in the last quarter despite a huge decline in home sales and headwinds from inflation, and unemployment remains at record lows. There's certainly some signs for concern, but the only real, persistent decline has been in the stock market (…

Agree 100% with you. Also having talked to recruiters there I found them absolutely disorganised. At least here in APAC. Might be better stateside. They gave me the impression of not really knowing what org to build and job descriptions/titles/org changed wildly during talks (and then abruptly ended, leaving me with a terrible impression). The one thing they kept going on about though is how they're the biggest bestest most promising of unicorns and how much they'd be in 'super growth mode'

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#137

Post by nsxwolf »

ulfw wrote: post #81
eganist wrote: post #47

Hey 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's zero responsibility. Just empty words that frankly are unnecessary in the situation.

What would make it better in your eyes? A year's severance? 2 years?

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#138

Post by sanjayio »

eganist wrote: post #111
memish wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's in the email: Severance pay. We will pay 14 weeks of severance for all departing employees, and more for those with longer tenure. That is, those departing will be paid until at least February 21st 2023. Bonus. We will pay our 2022 annual bonus for all departing employees, regardless of their departure date. (It will be prorated for people hired in 2022.) PTO. We’ll pay for all unused PTO time (including in re…

That's how they're supporting their employees, but this would've already been accounted for anyway (the vesting, potential bonuses, pay through Feb 2023, etc), so this isn't accountability so much as it's "we'll, we won't see the immediate benefit until March" Would've been a different story for instance if pc/jc were diluted with new grants to departing and existing employees.

This seems extremely generous to me. We don’t have to torture the founders because of economic conditions. It’s risky enough being a founder and this’ll have a downwind impact on them as well. For example, paying all these benefits means fewer hires, means less output, means their stock options might be worth less.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#139

Post by tempsy »

Xeoncross wrote: post #123
tempsy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a little different when everyone is cutting staff at the same time and there’s lots of competition for a limited number of “good” jobs

IDK, there seem to be plenty of big tech jobs still open. I just got one. Overall, there are about 1.9 open jobs in the US for every person unemployed.

Tech jobs follow a bimodal distribution.

Only a few pay the $400k-$500k Google level salaries you hear about for mid level employees.

It might be relatively easy to find a $120k job but that doesn’t mean every laid off person can now walk into Google with ease when even big tech is laying people off or freezing hiring.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#140

Post by throw3823423 »

tempsy wrote: post #36

I feel bad for employees that have waited a decade to cash out. No reason why Stripe couldn’t have gone public in 2020-2021 at a huge valuation but from past interviews it sounds like the decision to remain private was just a founder preference thing because “focus” or something. Now the IPO market is completely frozen and its valuation is likely cut in half from peak, at least.

For anyone that has been there anywhere near a decade, there's been opportunities to cash out partially, at very good valuations. You'll see that a vast majority of early employees have departed, and they didn't do that by giving away their early options, or getting crushed by AMT by exercising without liquidity.

While it might have been nicer to IPO by now, early employees are doing extremely well.

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