Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

stripe.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

531–540 of 1001 posts

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#531

Post by irrational »

pugio wrote: post #502

Random shot here, but I work for a non profit interested in building a better kind of education (focused on programming, ml, and data science). We've been having a hard time figuring out how to hire qualified people to build top-notch educational content because we pay less than industry rates. The upside is that we do meaningful work, have good health care, decent pay, good work environment, (edit: also fully remote…

> to build top-notch educational content

I'm confused as to whether you are looking to hire Instructional Designers (who probably have a masters degree in educational/instructional psychology) to design/build educational content, or if you are looking for programmers to build the learning management system (LMS) to host the content the Instructional Designers are building. Or... maybe you are looking for programmers to be subject matter experts for the Instructional Designers?

I sure hope you are not trying to get programmers to design and build top-notch educational content. That's like asking a programmer to also do the work of a graphic designer. They are two entirely different skill sets.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#532

Post by naasking »

lazide wrote: post #522
naasking wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a manager I find their really curious. I guess they were trying to avoid leaks. That's something I don't quite get. This adversarial relationship between employees and employers and management is stupid. Why not tell the workforce you have to cut costs, so if you're thinking of changing careers now is the time. Whoever is left presumably wants to stay.

Like the court system being adversarial, it’s that way because it’s the only thing that scales, for a number of reasons. The longer a company can avoid it/bigger they can be without it, the better everything is. At some point however, it’s inevitable. To answer your second question, because the ones who leave are often the ones with the most options and lowest risk to themselves if they are unemployed, which highly c…

> To answer your second question, because the ones who leave are often the ones with the most options and lowest risk to themselves if they are unemployed, which highly correlates with those who are the ‘best’.

Maybe, but some of these "best" people might just leave after a round of layoffs anyway right? And now you're even more short-staffed than you wanted to be.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#533

Post by bluesroo »

TideAd wrote: post #448
anonym29 wrote: post #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. • H…

You say 40+ interviews. Is this something you've done? I did 10 last time I was on the market that was about my limit. 40 sounds like it would take inhuman stamina.

If you're not employed and you want the best comp you can get, you should treat it as a full time job. My last job hunt was probably ~40-50 hours a week for a month between wrangling recruiters, hiring managers, and the interviews themselves... But I was absolutely haggard by the end of it and made sure that the hiring managers knew early that I'd need a few weeks between when I accept my offer and when I could begin.

I had direct contact with 31 companies. Of those, 16 made it past the recruiter+tech screens. We're about 2 weeks into the job hunt and at that point I needed to start pruning. I had frank conversations with the hiring managers and recruiters about comp, work/life balance, and how tight scheduling would need to be for the following interviews. This narrowed it down to ~8 companies. I also told them all they'd need to wait for ~2 weeks so that I could finish up all of my on-sites before I'd accept or reject their offers.

I scheduled on-sites over the following 2 weeks. Because all of the hiring managers and recruiters knew I was in 8 on-sites, they all tried to give me quick and good first offers hoping that I'd take it and drop my following interviews. A few tried to pressure me into a 2 day decision window (surprise, these offers were the lowest by far).

Of the 8, I received 6 offers. I failed the Google on-site and I turned down another company because of work/life stuff that came up during the interview. As offers came in I could decline ones that were clearly too low. The very last company that I interviewed with had the best offer, so I was pretty happy that I stuck it out... But the only time I was more exhausted was when we had a newborn in the house.

Depending on how you count "interview", these was easily in excess of 40. Each on-site was 3-6 interviews back to back.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#534

Post by mrits »

pugio wrote: post #502

Random shot here, but I work for a non profit interested in building a better kind of education (focused on programming, ml, and data science). We've been having a hard time figuring out how to hire qualified people to build top-notch educational content because we pay less than industry rates. The upside is that we do meaningful work, have good health care, decent pay, good work environment, (edit: also fully remote…

Have you tried paying industry rates? I've never understood the idea that a greater number of less qualified people is a way to build a "top-notch" product. Scale down and hire the people you need.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#535

Post by naasking »

jlrubin wrote: post #515
naasking wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a manager I find their really curious. I guess they were trying to avoid leaks. That's something I don't quite get. This adversarial relationship between employees and employers and management is stupid. Why not tell the workforce you have to cut costs, so if you're thinking of changing careers now is the time. Whoever is left presumably wants to stay.

that'd cause an org wide panic, and you might lose key personel in your actually profitable business units. cutting costs at this scale is not just reducing employees, it's getting rid of employees who are working in areas you need to cut. the secrecy lets management retain control.

> cutting costs at this scale is not just reducing employees, it's getting rid of employees who are working in areas you need to cut.

Sure, but if people are going to leave after cost cutting is announced, then you can often shuffle people from those areas into other areas without dealing with whole hiring rigamarole.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#536

Post by pvg »

p0pcult wrote: post #501
dang wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Please avoid generic ideological battle especially - it just makes threads predictable, therefore boring and eventually nasty.

[flagged]

It's a generic tangent because you can attach it to almost anything - it's just a short, shallow reflexive trope comment and not a meaningful critique of anything. The latter is totally fine, the former is something that's bad for the forum.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#537

Post by ivraatiems »

pugio wrote: post #502

Random shot here, but I work for a non profit interested in building a better kind of education (focused on programming, ml, and data science). We've been having a hard time figuring out how to hire qualified people to build top-notch educational content because we pay less than industry rates. The upside is that we do meaningful work, have good health care, decent pay, good work environment, (edit: also fully remote…

How far below industry are you? What's your tech stack?

Have you posted in the "who is hiring" threads?

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#538

Post by bluesroo »

dehrmann wrote: post #347
anonym29 wrote: post #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. • H…

> unused PTO This is required in California.

Which is also why a vast majority of software companies have "unlimited" PTO. It allows them to have no PTO on the books.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#539

Post by celestialcheese »

rexreed wrote: post #245

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…

Spread out transactions across multiple payment processors. We've backloaded authorize.net and braintree behind stripe to act as a failover and primary when the fees are cheaper.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#540

Post by idontpost »

jlrubin wrote: post #515
naasking wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a manager I find their really curious. I guess they were trying to avoid leaks. That's something I don't quite get. This adversarial relationship between employees and employers and management is stupid. Why not tell the workforce you have to cut costs, so if you're thinking of changing careers now is the time. Whoever is left presumably wants to stay.

that'd cause an org wide panic, and you might lose key personel in your actually profitable business units. cutting costs at this scale is not just reducing employees, it's getting rid of employees who are working in areas you need to cut. the secrecy lets management retain control.

No post body was provided.
Post reply on HN