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Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

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Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#701
post #690

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16 years. Working at the Senior/Staff level. Most recently Clojure work. I’ve done a lot of Java of course, although I’ve been rejected from some of those jobs because I spent the last year doing Clojure full time instead of Java.

yeah, it gets to be tough once you get over the 10 to 15 year mark. Alot of companies probably prefer younger folks.

wtf is happening in software? it seems tough to break in, and apparently it gets tough after ten years? so there's a ten year gap where the 'going is good'?

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#702
post #575

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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”…

Reducing salaries opens a whole new can of worms with legal and immigration involved. Basically, if you hire someone on a visa, it is going to be a hassle to reduce their salaries - and the knock on effects could include restarting the immigration process. It might end up costing more than the dollars saved, and employees will likely leave anyway.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#703

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The culture is the product of many personal decisions. If I was working nights and (especially) weekends at my current employer (another big tech company), I would be told to stop.

why is that a good thing?

In Germany that is required by law (if your employer sees you working when ill, working too long, working too much - they have to force you to stop).

If not by law, then because almost noone is happy working 60-70h and it puts pressure on others who feel like they also need to work similar hours. Additionally the efficiency gets worse as the weekly hours increase.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#704
post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

16 years. Working at the Senior/Staff level. Most recently Clojure work. I’ve done a lot of Java of course, although I’ve been rejected from some of those jobs because I spent the last year doing Clojure full time instead of Java.

yeah, it gets to be tough once you get over the 10 to 15 year mark. Alot of companies probably prefer younger folks.

Lmao not at all.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#705
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've known people to be laid off from one position, apply for a different position at the same company the next day, and end up hired into that position. It can happen.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It always does, I agree. Then again most people in that cohort probably have the corresponding level of financial means / literacy [to have a cushion]. Either way just read above that in this case specifically the severance seems generous enough. I’m not worried for the typical stripe worker here. This will be good for them if they don’t get bogged down by shock / sadness.

Even if you have a couple of years saved up, being out of work can put a damper on your plans quickly. It means your spouse's job is especially important for health insurance (in the states), and that is assuming they have a job already. If you were looking to buy a house soon, those plans just got cancelled, and if you just spent a lot of your cushion on a down payment (with the intention of rebuilding your cushion)…

Agreed, I always forget about the Damocles sword that is lack of basic health in the US. I’m now wondering if this is by design…

The other points do still strike me as more qualitative though (for the cohort) but you convinced me with the health coverage. Absolutely nobody should be in danger of falling through the cracks on that side.

So yeah this sucks, it’s not great at all. Still would say: don’t give up folks - you’ll be able to find a job (better even, found a company?) even in a downturn. Again, this is software. The big co-enabler of unhinged capitalism. Here to stay.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#707

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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…

It could be as well that it's an European thing. At least over here work is just work (9 to 5, or less if possible), so we prefer to spent life with friends and family. Yeah, we don't earn $500K/year, but that's alright.

Yeah exactly. I don’t think of a worker who wants to stick to 9-5 as worth less until appraisal. I may still give them a full rating but not as much in bonus. You’re already paid plenty just to do your daily job. If anyone is going above and beyond in meaningfully productive ways, they get paid more.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#708
post #485

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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…

A common sentiment you see on the internet (especially from younger people who haven't experience a tough labor market) is that only the low performers get laid off. So I can see how they think it's really weird if managers aren't involved.

Low performers always 100% of the time get dropped during layoffs. It's the one window that companies can mostly let go of employees without being sued. (Though, if they lay off too many people in a protected class, still can get sued). What's interesting about a lot of the division or sector-downturn layoffs, that you end up seeing solid performers, and, when you are dropping a good portion of your division - very good performers let go. Most companies try to make a play for keeping their 10x developers - but, I've been in layoffs (Browser Division, Netscape, 1997sh) - where just absolutely everyone was dropped, regardless of performance.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#709
post #652

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"Let them go" is itself a euphemism, in that if it is taken literally, it presumes "they" _would_ go if "let". The active party making an intentional choice describes their actions in a way that places agency with everyone else. > The email is to the staff, not to you. No, it's on the 'newsroom' section of their public website. Though it is _addressed_ to staff (or former staff) it is _for_ a dual audience.

Yep, it is. Lot's of jargon. But it's the jargon used every day, by everyone up and down an org, in an attempt to be polite. It's not an attempt to use new language in a way as to absolve themselves of responsibility. Give them a break, they probably (rightly) have their egos and lives wrapped up in this business and feel kind of stupid right now. Just because they are successful it doesn't mean they are robots. It's…

This isn't about "jargon" being used to "be polite". "Jargon" is specialized terminology which may not be understood outside of a group or context. "We took an existing encoder-decoder transformer model from huggingface and slapped a token-level classifier head on it" is lot of jargon. By contrast, everyone understands what "let go" means.

The reason for choosing to say "let go" vs "terminated" isn't to "be polite". More broadly, in this and similar announcements, we see framing, of active vs passive parties, to spin responsibility, agency and involvement. The tone of the whole thing is "because of the broader economic environment, this business outcome was so inevitable and our hands were so forced we will barely acknowledge that it was a decision." And as a stark contrast, they describe all of the things they're giving "impacted" former employees in the active voice: "We'll pay", "We'll accelerate", "We'll cover", "We'll be supporting" etc.

I think they actually seem to be doing a pretty good job supporting the staff they terminated. I just think if they actually want to take responsibility for their actions, both bad and good, they should talk in a way that acknowledges when they're the principal actors.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2017/06/01/using-the-bu...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jargon#Specifics

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#710
post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sort of engineer are you and how many years of experience?

16 years. Working at the Senior/Staff level. Most recently Clojure work. I’ve done a lot of Java of course, although I’ve been rejected from some of those jobs because I spent the last year doing Clojure full time instead of Java.

My company is actually hiring senior/staff Clojure devs.

https://grnh.se/08cec3bb4us - Senior Engineer https://grnh.se/5c028b554us - Staff Engineer

You should take a look and let me know if you have any questions.

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