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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

#661
post #636
post #633

* 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 regions where tha…

Makes sense. There is an expectation that they might want to welcome some of these people back at some point.

Would anyone go back and work at an office where they were laid off?

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#662
post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense. There is an expectation that they might want to welcome some of these people back at some point.

Would anyone go back and work at an office where they were laid off?

Sure, depending on the circumstances. Had a friend just start back at a company in a different city after leaving for a couple years. He left mainly because of a bad manager the first time. That wasn't being laid off, but it's similar.

Sometimes companies need to do layoffs to survive, or they merged and have duplicate roles. Lots of reasons. It makes sense to take care of good talent that have to be let go in case they come back later.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#663
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm British, so I appreciate that there's a difference in approach across the pond, but I still think this is a shitty thing to do. They are still growing (and setting records it would seem). Just hold on to the staff and swallow the small dent in opex.

Corporations have fiduciary duty to the their investors, not their employees.

Stripe is a pre-IPO company with their employees holding equity.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#664
post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense. There is an expectation that they might want to welcome some of these people back at some point.

Would anyone go back and work at an office where they were laid off?

I would yea, especially if the separation was handled well and I was still looking for consistent work.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#665
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…

We expect our companies to be efficient and competitive -- and that is the correct expectation to have in a market economy! Giving people busywork will hurt companies, and thus the overall economy, in the long run. That will make everything worse, including school funding and homelessness and inequality. After all, if you want to redistribute wealth, you have to generate wealth! It would also mean companies would be…

Companies should be able to hire / lay off at will. They exists to generate profit for owners. To protect people we have taxes and we should also have UBI. Some countries can definitely afford it.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#666
post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, and don't let anybody ask what compensation the EVP is getting, there's definitely no fat to trim there...

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#668
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…

I've worked in a system like this. Seeing a guy walk into work to surf the web all day because he was obsolete but 5 years away from retirement and a friend with most management there meant I was stuck at temp employment for lower wage because the higher paying position was technically filled. It was the first job I had after school - it burst my early life ideas about socialism and social justice.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#669
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is what I hate about the internet rage machine. I think the issue (also related to how we interface with the internet) is that most of these replies completely dodged the question. The OP was asking about personal accountability, not about "how are your going to make this as palatable as possible?" Consider two scenarios: (1) A manager fires half their workforce, but gives them a generous severance. In respons…

Whether the manager does one or two doesn’t have any effect on my being able to pay my bills.

Does it not matter when you're deciding on employment though?

If the through-line wasn't obvious, it's that leadership quality matters. Trust matters. When you decide to stay with a company or invest in a company, you don't have the privleged access to know that their actions "won't have any effect" on your ability to pay your bills in the future. In the context of uncertainty, leadership quality matters.

You bet on the jockey, not the horse.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#670
post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense. There is an expectation that they might want to welcome some of these people back at some point.

Would anyone go back and work at an office where they were laid off?

It happens in other industries all the time. Knew a guy who got laid off from the same factory 3 times in 8 years or so. I've even seen it happen once or twice in tech.
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