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Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

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Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#581

Post by philod »

anonymouse008 wrote: post #60

> 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. This is one of the most interesting statements ever written. If you ran a 'Idea Fourier' on this signal, so many things fall out: cheap interest rates pushes crazy valuations and estimations, believing the low interest fantasy was a requirement to gettin…

I run revenue planning for a large-ish public SaaS company. We knew all of these factors were a risk this year but they were immediately shot down when brought up or part of models. "Focus on what we can control" "Usage and growth is so high there are no signs of slowdown". Whenever we used data to show that macro factors might be artificially driving up usage and demand it was dismissed. Politics plays a large role here as senior leaders want to take credit for all the growth. What's funny is now when it's all trending down of course macro is the factor and rarely anyone's fault.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#582

Post by dragonwriter »

adamsmith143 wrote: post #361
nsxwolf wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last time I got laid off, my severance was basically enough to buy a bus ticket to the unemployment office. What they're doing here is incredible. (Almost felt compelled to name names here but took a breath)

I find it interesting that they're saying they're doing so bad financially they need to cut 14% of their workforce but are also doing well enough they can pay 14% of their payroll for 3.5 months of no work + Bonuses + PTO + Stock + 6 Months of Healthcare? Doesn't seem to add up

Much of the severance is legally mandated pay in lieu of notice for a mass layoff, the rest is (usually, and presumably in this case) an inducement for a release of any potential claims and to sign non-disparagement agreements.

Of course, its presented as largesse to the recipients, but its very much not.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#583

Post by winphone1974 »

naasking wrote: post #500
TorKlingberg wrote: post #418

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?

> 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.

This is a crazy approach. It signals the company is on trouble so the first to go will be your best, who all have lots of options. Anyone half decent will immediately start risk diversification by looking for other opportunities. Meanwhile nothing will get done by anybody and in the end your left with the dregs.

Far better for everyone involved to do it quick rather than perfect. Those getting let go shouldn't see it coming and those staying shouldn't find out before it's all been done.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#584

Post by cldellow »

naasking wrote: post #546
cldellow wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some possible reasons: You may not get the number of volunteers you need, so you still have to do layoffs. Except now, more people have been stressing about it for a longer period of time. The "low performers" who will have a hard time finding a new job elsewhere are unlikely to voluntarily leave. So you offer a buyout package to derisk the decision for them. But then the "high performers" who you'd rather retain mig…

Yes, there's stress associated with possible layoffs, but buyout packages and knowing it's not going to happen for, say 6 months, means there's loads of time to make the necessary adjustments. I think a big part of the stress is the suddenness of it all. Something like 50% of people are living paycheque to paycheque, so of course a sudden round of layoffs would be crazy stressful because there's a chance that your li…

I'm open to the idea that there might be some employees who would find this more humane.

However, I think a lot of people really struggle with uncertainty. During these six months, especially in a large corporate environment, there would be a lot of horse-trading. Employees will seek assurances they won't be fired. They may avoid projects or people they think are likely to get cut.

At the same time, the business likely has an idea of where they want to go. The "in" managers will navigate their preferred people to safe projects. But there isn't room in the boat for all of their employees -- after all, the business has announced the target for layoffs.

This was my experience when I was at Microsoft during their horribly ill-conceived layoffs in 2009. They basically announced that there would be 3 rounds of layoffs tallying up to 5,000 people over the next several months. It was... incredibly demoralizing.

I still remember one fellow on my team who got fired in the 2nd or 3rd round. He took it poorly (understandably!) and then ripped into the people who didn't get fired (also understandable, but still really shitty).

I don't really know that the advance warning helped him. I think he knew he was likely to get fired when layoffs were announced. Being a dead man walking... not very good for anyone, really.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#585

Post by pugio »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #527
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…

I think most of us graybeards here might agree that a focus on STEM, and programming particularly, is not in any way shape or form a better education. The treatment of the humanities as "lesser" has been catastrophic, in my opinion.

I didn't mean that "a better education is one which focuses on programming". We'd like to improve education across the board, but have chosen to focus our efforts on STEM topics at the moment.

Humanities are by no means lesser, they're just not what we're focused on, presently. (Also, a really good humanities education probably looks very different from a really good STEM education setup. Different challenges, different problems to solve, at least initially.)

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#586

Post by mengibar10 »

rbera wrote: post #575
mengibar10 wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a well position and well oiled company is in fear of losing business and firing people how come you expect to find jobs let alone stable jobs. You give your 4-5 years to a company and the company dumps you at the first sight of hardship. I think Stripe made a bad choice when firing people. They should have decreased salaries, percentage wise more at the management level and try to keep their workers. I wouldn't wa…

I won’t pretend I know what the ideal solution is, but lowering salaries across the board doesn’t seem like a great choice. If someone is a high performing employee and then sees a cut to their paycheck, that’s an incentive for them to leave, and that’s also extra bad for the company because of course better performing employees will be more capable of finding another job. With layoffs, companies remove their “worst”…

Last statement is actually the gist of what I wanted to mean. The moment you make a mass layoff that sends a message to all employees.

Please be mindful of measly 3% decrease in your salary, you wouldn't even see the difference.

The more open the management is to their employees the more they become loyal. It's all about honestly sharing burden.

You can always layoff not performing employees, a company has all the right to do so. We are talking about a mass layoff.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#587

Post by twblalock »

guax wrote: post #523
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

They do, but it would be novel if for once, they choose decency instead of profit.

That could easily turn out to be suboptimal for "decency" in the long term. If the company does not operate efficiently, it might have to lay off more than 14% of its workforce a year from now.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#588

Post by jupp0r »

Glad to see that Stripe has a pretty good package for the laid off employees. This is the right way to do this and I imagine the vast majority of people laid off will be able to find new jobs fast and pocket some of the severance pay.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#589

Post by jollyllama »

mengibar10 wrote: post #560
radu_floricica wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offence, but they're not putting anybody in the electric chair. They're letting people go with pay until almost March - if you can't find a new job in 4 months, it's on you, and maybe they weren't wrong to give you up. A dynamic job market includes hiring and firings. At most they have to apologize for some disruption, and they more than made up for that with the severance packages. And about the language - "fire"…

If a well position and well oiled company is in fear of losing business and firing people how come you expect to find jobs let alone stable jobs. You give your 4-5 years to a company and the company dumps you at the first sight of hardship. I think Stripe made a bad choice when firing people. They should have decreased salaries, percentage wise more at the management level and try to keep their workers. I wouldn't wa…

Hypothetically speaking, assume you are to be laid off. Would you rather be laid off now with pay until March, or laid off in March with no notice and no further pay? They're being pretty generous here, relatively speaking.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#590

Post by celestialcheese »

rexreed wrote: post #550
celestialcheese wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How do you deal with recurring revenue subscriptions?

It depends on how you set up your billing and subscription management. If you're locked into stripes subscription management, this isn't really possible (which is one of the reasons why Stripe built this :))

Otherwise, you can pin certain accounts to specific payment processors.

Or even better if you're dealing with larger enterprise subscriptions, or even smaller subscriptions, move to ACH/Wire/Invoice model with yearly billing. Saves money on credit card fees and moves away from middlemen that can hold your money hostage.

I'm hopeful about FedNow as a strong competitor to these middlemen and enabling instant, easy, low-fee payments.[1]

1 - https://www.pymnts.com/news/payment-methods/2022/fednow-pilo...

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