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Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

stripe.com

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Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#311
I would like to offer some tips for those faced with the potential of layoffs that I have compiled. I understand much of these come too late for those already affected, but for those worried about the prospect, these can help to ease the pain if it does happen:

• Check if your company pays out unused PTO, sick days, etc as cash. If they do, do not use any of the applicable type(s) unless you are going to lose it.

• Have a LinkedIn, fill out all the fields, add 500+ random people in your field. Once you have done all this, you get ranked way higher in the algo for recruiters who are searching (you will be granted a visible "All-Star" status, so you will know when you've reached this). After that, go add every recruiter in your field/industry you can find (ideally 500+). Internal recruiters are better than external recruiters / headhunters, but don't neglect the headhunters, especially the "rockstar" ones from more prestigious staffing firms. Finally, add a bunch (500+) of people in your field (who you should now have mutuals with, via the recruiters). Always respond politely to all recruiters even if you're happily employed. Try to be friendly with them, not strictly professional. Build up a rolodex of recruiters. You now have a list of people you can ask for work if you do get laid off. Recruiter-sourced candidates have MUCH better odds of being hired than cold applicants, provided you're not a known name in your industry. If you do this, you'll be able to schedule 40+ interviews in about 3 days, which take place over the following week or two, if you really want to pack them together.

• Don't neglect contract work completely. Many companies have a surprisingly large hiring pipeline of contract -> FTE, provided you do a good job.

• How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

• Corporate Confidential by Cynthia Shapiro, if you're in an enterprise / corporate environment.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#312
post #232
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a European the severance for a large company doesn’t sound all to different to what I am used to. Normally you have 3 months by contract plus some add a month per year tenure. Healthcare costs, career support etc is normal for larger/successful companies. Then certain countries (not the company) will pay 80percent of your salary for 2 years to find a new job. Happy that some companies also start to do this in the…

>As a European the severance for a large company doesn’t sound all to different to what I am used to. IME 14 weeks minimum is really generous in the US. I've been at 2 companies where it was 1 week per year of employment. At one company they added on 1 month of severance during a really large layoff. The tenure at tech companies in the US tends to be quite short, so getting 14 weeks probably unusual at typical tech c…

WARN Act requires 60 days (8-9 weeks) notice or 60 days on payroll if they walk you out the day of.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#313

They'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.

Yeah, this is round 2. It would be nice if they retroactively provide this same support to those folks.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#314
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 (…

Beyond pc explicitly admitting that they made the mistake you're saying they didn't, Stripe and other payment processors, especially internet payment processors, are extremely sensitive to economic forecasts. I can think of three obvious reasons that current market conditions would tell them to prepare for a macroeconomic downturn:

1) The housing market is the largest asset base in the world's wealthiest country and changes in that market reliably predict macroeconomic downturns (1). 2) E-commerce transactions are supported more than the economy as a whole by discretionary income. Interest rates drastically change consumers' spending habits; when rates rise, discretionary spending drops as consumers save more (2). You can infer that the GDP of e-commerce decreases at a rate higher than the larger economy because of that drop in spending. 3) Stripe has a very high retention rate for its customers. That counterintuitively increases the volatility of its stock because of increasing interest rates (3)

Beyond the appeal to intuition you made around tech companies assuming that post-COVID demand would remain, there are plenty of reasons that a payment processor that primarily services e-commerce would need to downsize. They are simply more sensitive to macroeconomic conditions.

[1] https://seekingalpha.com/article/4535186-how-to-predict-a-re... [2] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/071715/how-do-chang... [3] https://whoisnnamdi.com/high-retention-high-volatility/

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#315
post #249
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…

The 14 weeks of severance alone is probably worth ~$60 M [1] Scrounging on the web suggests that Stripe may be EBITDA-profitable but not GAAP-profitable. $60M (perhaps double that with all the other benefits laid out here) is easily enough to delay GAAP profitability by a quarter or two. That may not seem like much, but it has a huge impact on investor sentiment. [1] 0.14 8000 200000*14/52

No it doesn't. Especially with a 14% reduction in by far the largest expenditure.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#316

I work for Stripe and got laid off this morning. Sucks because my manager was only told this morning, and didn't have a chance to talk about how well I was doing or take any part in the decision making. We'll at least I'll get a break. I worked nights and weekends all of October.

> I worked nights and weekends all of October.

Sorry to hear that. Why were you working nights and weekends?

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#317
post #202

This is the part I don't like. Stripe is a hugely successful company and they have no urgent material need to let people go. This is an optimization effort. I actually do believe that 'pruning' is a healthy thing for organizations, to enable them to be nimble and dynamic - however - obviously this comes at great social cost. The benefits of 'pruning' come at the cost of externalizing regular, creating real human chal…

[flagged]

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#318
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wonder if the chicken or egg comes first. Maybe I'm living in a bubble, but I didn't see any broad slowdown until companies started laying off, saying there's this broad slowdown that's totally coming soon. Now, with people being laid off and tightening their spending, leading to an actual slowdown, the prophecy is fulfilled! The last recession had a pretty clear cause you could point your finger at: The col…

Inflation came first. Then the controls to slow Inflation raise the cost of borrowing money. We're seeing the fallout of that now.

Corp greed came first I think.. inflation due to covid was transitory.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#319
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The reality is there's very little evidence for an actual "broader slowdown". I'm not sure about 'broader slowdown' but in the industry I'm in we've seen a massive slowdown in signups and expansions in the existing customers. When we speak with our customers, especially banks, they are seeing massive slowdowns on their side. Someone has bad metrics here, and when most of our customers across a wide range of industri…

I always wonder if the chicken or egg comes first. Maybe I'm living in a bubble, but I didn't see any broad slowdown until companies started laying off, saying there's this broad slowdown that's totally coming soon. Now, with people being laid off and tightening their spending, leading to an actual slowdown, the prophecy is fulfilled! The last recession had a pretty clear cause you could point your finger at: The col…

Inflation goes up, cost of borrowing money goes up (cars, mortgages) -> less money to spend on non-essentials and the essentials get pared down to the minimum.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#320
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…

i hate this trend of ceos saying they take responsibility. Reminds me of lord farquuad, "some of you may die, but that is a price i'm willing to pay"

What do you suggest?
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