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.
There's one of those under every rock you turn.
Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce
221–230 of 1001 posts
Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn’t it mandatory to pay holiday accrued? Because it’s been, well, accrued…
No. It can say otherwise in your employee handbook.
It should be in your contract, which means it was up for negotiation. Unless that's what you mean. While there's such high demand for tech workers, I would expect to see people being smarter with their contracts and picking up on things like that, start setting precedents.
At the moment the precedents are still heavily employee biased, but you ask for whatever you want in your contract during negotiations. Negotiate your sick pay, negotiate your PTO, negotiate your vesting schedules and exit terms, negotiate your hours and time in lieu policies. Negotiate your Intellectual Property terms. That one is super common to see lopsided toward the employer. We don't have unions or award rates, so we also miss out on some of those protections, hence why we need to make sure it's in the contract.
Even the nicest, fairest business owners I've worked for will start with industry standard contracts that do their best to shaft you, because it's industry standard and they don't see it as lopsided. But I've never had trouble negotiating for this stuff to be made clearer and fairer.
Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have an example handy of a CEO who has provided acceptable accountability in a situation like this?
Satoru Iwata took a large pay cut when Nintendo was in a downturn in 2014ish
That's actually not uncommon in Japan. CEOs are basically married to their companies, and take their performance quite personally.
Also, Japanese execs are paid substantially less than their US/UK counterparts.
I doubt that it has happened in quite a while, but there have been CEOs that have committed suicide, when their companies failed.
Doubt that will catch on, in the US.
Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce
#224Earlier 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…
if you walk out on Friday and start a new job on Monday does the severance still apply? This setup is incredibly generous in my mind to the point where there's a lot of incentive to get laid off. If you got another job in a couple days and severance was still paid by Stripe then that+PTO+RSU+typical signing bonus is one hell of a payday.
> if you walk out on Friday and start a new job on Monday does the severance still apply?
If you "walk out" i.e. quit, then severance doesn't apply. Severance is for people they're laying off. But, yes, if you get let go on Friday, you can work elsewhere on Monday, unless Stripe has specific non-competes in place (which aren't legal a lot of places).
> This setup is incredibly generous in my mind to the point where there's a lot of incentive to get laid off. If you got another job in a couple days
When we're in an economic downturn, and a lot of other companies are conducting layoffs or hiring freezes that is easier said than done. Definitely was a rough experience in 2007/08 during the last big one.
Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce
#225Hey 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…
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…
while this is certainly great (at least in the us standard), it's still different from "John and I are fully responsible for the decisions leading up to it."?
Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce
#226Hey 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…
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…
This is what I hate about the internet rage machine. No research was done by people automatically assuming that the company was just going to send the employees packing with “thoughts and prayers”.
That’s very generous severance and the company doing right by its employees.
I don’t know how long the process is for non US citizens. But in my over 25 year career, and changing jobs eight times as a software developer, it has never taken me more than a month from actively looking to having a couple of offers. 14 weeks and bonus and paid out PTO is more than enough.
Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce
#227> 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 (…
One thing that i think hits Stripe harder than most is all the people who quit their jobs to do their own thing. You know they all setup Stripe accounts for e-com and other invoice/payment functionality. I think reality is pushing them back to regular day jobs and those new Stripe accounts are going to sit with zero transactions.
Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
What did they screw up, though? Their psychic abilities failed? A coin flip came up tails but they bet on heads?
"Their psychic abilities failed? A coin flip came up tails but they bet on heads?"
Isn't it interesting how we want to absolve execs of all blame when they bet wrong and get unlucky, but declare them geniuses and masters of business when they bet right and get lucky?
Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce
#229Hey 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…
I don’t understand responses like this. They are returning to February headcount. The executive team also made the long term planning decisions which gave those people jobs for the last 9 months (and income for the next 3). Would the right thing to do have been not choosing to give more people a living for 13 months at least? Are companies to never speculatively invest in growth?
A lot of people would genuinely prefer for companies to never make risky investments in growth, yes. If you’ve ever wondered how the Japanese norm of lifetime employment can be sustained, this is why; many employees prefer it to a system where they might discover one day that their job was dependent on a speculative investment that didn’t pan out.
Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce
#230Hey 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…
Why act like the founders have to grovel and beg for forgiveness? They don't. If they had been extra cautious during covid in expectation for the economy to take a dive would stripe be in a better position today? Absolutely not.