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

591–600 of 1001 posts

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#591

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#592

Post by pugio »

mrits wrote: post #534
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.

It's a fair point. Qualified ML people working at big companies command huge salaries. Work at big tech: get lots of $$ and access to big compute.

Our value prop is different. Work with us, and do something really meaningful. I think that's a pretty normal tradeoff between for-profit and non-profit companies, no? (Higher pay vs possibly higher goal satisfaction).

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#593

Post by JBlue42 »

imchillyb wrote: post #576
pc86 wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Quoted post unavailable.

I feel like pc86 was just being straightforward about how those decisions are made. They can speak for themselves though.

When I was part of a mass lay-off, it was big enough to trigger CA state law where they had to detail everything. You could clearly see that it was strictly based on who was paid the most (below the managerial level).

>The 'righting' came because of shitty financial decisions made from top-down. The top should be fired first and foremost. The company wouldn't be in the position its in if management were doing their fucking jobs.

Should but rarely, if ever, happens. Some even get a larger bonus when meeting next quarter targets or some other short-term indicator.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#594

Post by reducesuffering »

thunkle wrote: post #417
thunkle wrote: post #298

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.

Ya'll are hyper focusing on the nights and weekends. That was my personal decision, not part of the culture.

Actually, with a 3.1 WLB rating, it seems that it likely is very much part of the culture. https://www.teamblind.com/company/Stripe/reviews

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#595

Post by filoleg »

givemeethekeys wrote: post #428
thunkle wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya'll are hyper focusing on the nights and weekends. That was my personal decision, not part of the culture.

Due to the recent news of other tech companies making their employees work nights and weekends before laying them off, it is easy to interpret your earlier message such that Stripe did the same.

> recent news of other tech companies making their employees work nights and weekends

Are there any companies aside from Twitter that would fall under this? Because that's the only one I've seen mentioned in the news that way, but you make it sound like there are plenty others. So I was curious if I simply missed something.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#596

Post by amrrs »

pugio wrote: post #579
irrational wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

In short: we're looking for people with overlap between instructional design experience and programing+ml industry experience, to create instructional content. A masters in education/instructional psychology isn't needed, so long as you can demonstrate pedagogical aptitude. In other words, can you put yourself in the mind of a beginner, and craft an explanation which is clear, intuitive, and anticipates common studen…

Are you also US only hiring or True Remote from the other side of the globe ?

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#597

Post by apozem »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #545
TearsInTheRain wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why is that a good thing?

To not drag down everyone else’s quality of life. Culture comes from the top. Defaults matter. Overarching thesis is the people who work to live don’t want to be dragged by those who live to work. Not a judgement about someone’s passion.

The pressure is there if someone on your team works nights and weekends, especially if they are senior to you. They may not even realize they are pressuring you! But it is impossible to avoid.

Something to remember, especially if you have anyone working under you - your work level will be seen as the minimum for your team members, not the exception.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#598

Post by relaxing »

verst wrote: post #564
jgoodhcg wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4 months is relatively generous but... > if you can't find a new job in 4 months, it's on you, This statement feels _wrong_. We are all subject to macro trends that we don't have control over. They impact our lives. Even the well off tech people but especially people in other industries.

Good luck finding a job in this economy now. It's tough for everyone, even the most skilled. Many companies have outright hiring freezes. I just read that Amazon now has a hiring freeze for all corporate jobs, previously this only impacted retail, stores etc

What economy are you in? I still see plenty of job postings on the East coast.

Anyway, if you were looking for a break from Stripe’s culture you’re not gonna be happy at AMZN.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#599

Post by gurumeditations »

hnews_account_1 wrote: post #580
thunkle wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya'll are hyper focusing on the nights and weekends. That was my personal decision, not part of the culture.

Don’t worry. Online forums are always like that. They’ll pretend like they’ve never had a high pressure job that paid out handsomely if you applied yourself and hence motivated you to work harder. To them, they think everyone should have work life balance from the age of 23 just because they’ve discovered its importance at 32 years of age. Young people have to work hard. I don’t expect my reports to work on any eveni…

That is so willingly naive. A culture that allows something which grants an advantage eventually requires you do that thing by implicit force. Don’t fool yourself. This is 101 stuff and anyone who doesn’t understand this concept shouldn’t be in charge, because it doesn’t just lead to overwork but also to more pernicious evil things, see MeToo and others.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#600

Post by danielrhodes »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #545
TearsInTheRain wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why is that a good thing?

To not drag down everyone else’s quality of life. Culture comes from the top. Defaults matter. Overarching thesis is the people who work to live don’t want to be dragged by those who live to work. Not a judgement about someone’s passion.

It seems unreasonable to dictate the way your colleagues work because it doesn't match your own value system. If the culture of the company/team is fast paced or long hours, maybe it isn't the right fit for you.

Generally speaking though, companies should value output and results over hours. Easier said than done. Additionally, value should be placed on what one commits to do and delivers on. So if somebody is constantly having to pull late nights to complete work, they may be overcommitting. It's also possible a manager will consistently push people to overcommit: this is a problem because that can indicate poor boundaries, bad planning, poor resourcing, and so on.

Post reply on HN