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Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

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Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#481
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.

They couldn’t IPO. Stripe is a bubble. They don’t want their financials under a microscope.

What leads you to believe they're a bubble?

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#482
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…

> they have no urgent material need to let people go

Why doesn't the company reserve the right to optimize/choose to focus on profit?

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stripe’s reach as a processor probably isn’t broad enough to see those kinds of trends. Their processing fees are quite high so there’s huge industry sectors that will just never touch them.

Stripe processes in the area of $350-400bln annually, which is equivalent to about 1/10th the GDP of the U.K. That's absolutely enough volume to see macro trends as it relates the classes of merchants they support.

FIS, which I don't even think is one of the largest, does over 600B per quarter in the globally and 12 figures yearly.

Stripe needs to 6-7x its processing to be one of the largest.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#484
post #156
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Stripe profitable? I heard some of its financing is from PE and bank funding, which tend to be less tolerant of money losing or low profit operations. If they are not profitable they will need more capital eventually or to lengthen their runway.

I don't believe that is public information but they always could be cash flow positive if they needed to be that's for sure.

that 15% number was probably picked for a reason. (to make them cash flow positive)

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sucks because my manager was only told this morning As a manager I find their really curious. I guess they were trying to avoid leaks. I wonder how they chose who to lay off. Most recent performance rating? Next level managers impression?

I work at a company that did layoffs recently as well, about double this size. Our managers also had no idea until day of. The entire day was spent watching co workers google calendars and slack accounts. Once they got a meeting booked with HR, their meeting titles all turned into "busy", so we would know who is getting cut and who wasn't. It was a brutal day. In our case I don't think they were picking people based…

Is it "really weird," though? Layoffs, especially when you start talking about entire teams, divisions, products, etc. is about revenue, profitability, and righting the ship (or safeguarding the ship so you don't have to right it 6 months from now). Whether Jim got "exceeds expectations" or "greatly exceeds expectations" is irrelevant when an EVP needs to trim $12M off their budget and Jim's department lost $9M last year.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#486

Quoted post unavailable.

Sounds like they are being more than reasonable.

> 14 weeks of severance for all departing employees > will pay our 2022 annual bonus for all departing employees, regardless of their departure date > 6 months of existing healthcare premiums or healthcare continuation

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#487
post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How does this delay GAAP profitability? They paid out 3.5 months severance and their full 2022 bonuses. If they hadn't laid these people off then in the next 3 months (1 quarter) they would have paid them 3 months salary and their full 2022 bonuses.

It delays profitability relative to simply laying employees off with more-traditional severance.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#488

Stripe stresses me out. I really cringe worrying about having too many financial eggs in the Stripe basket. But Paypal is no alternative and traditional CC processors are awful. How does one hedge their bets with Stripe? I worry one day we'll hit some transaction "trigger" and then all our money will get locked up in Stripe with no customer support recourse. I fear being "too successful" with no recourse if I depend…

doesn't stripe do daily payouts? i don't wat to say losing a day of revenue would be fine, but it shouldn't be a real existential risk to your business.

Daily payouts isn't the issue. Of course we get the payouts daily. But when they lock your account and you have $5M+ in recurring revenue from subscriptions on recurring revenue then you have a real problem.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#489

Quoted post unavailable.

I make mistakes all the time as a developer, I would hate to be fired for them and if I would, I would never claim responsibility.

And that's why I don't get how people expect directors/managers to be infallible.

Taking responsibility isn't about walking away from the job, but learning from it and making it right.

Whether that is done well in this case, I don't know, but that wasn't your point. As far as I can tell they got pretty decent severance packages.

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