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Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

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Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#291

Post by arnvald »

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…

Been there with Braintree. One day they told us “your company profile is too risky, we won’t serve you unless you keep a deposit of $x million with us. We couldn’t afford that, so we migrated to another provider and then diversified - we integrated Stripe, Adyen and later a few local providers and we were able to dynamically switch between them. It was a lot of effort, but it made us more resilient and independent

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#292

Post by blululu »

zug_zug wrote: post #244
eganist wrote: post #47

Hey pc, if you're around: > John and I are fully responsible for the decisions leading up to it. What are the two of you doing to show accountability? Are you slashing your own future stock grants, cutting your own salaries, diluting your positions with stock grants to everyone else? What's the consequence for this decision on your end that shows you're accountable for what happened, not just responsible for it? Sinc…

> Are you slashing your own future stock grants, cutting your own salaries, diluting your positions with stock grants to everyone else? This sounds a bit emotional to me. Layoffs can be an emotional topic, but let's reflect for a moment. I guess the thrust of the remark is to put some sort of public "shame" on companies that perform layoffs (especially such fast ones) for the major inconvenience they cause for thousa…

This is being obtuse and trying to deflect the concern. The concern is that if a company's leadership is allowed to make mistakes without suffering any personal consequences then they will continue making bad decisions.

The op question is not emotional in the slightest. The executive leadership made a series of mistake. People are left in the lurch and the business has suffered because of these mistakes. Asking if the incentives are aligned here is a strict matter of rational business calculus.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#293

Post by ryandrake »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #208
ryandrake wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of the fundamental problem of megawealth: You can't actually be held accountable for anything short of "ritual suicide". When a senior exec or CxO screws up, what conceivably could punish them? Lose their salary for a year? Ineffective. The wealthy make more from interest on their investments than they could ever need to live. What else could punish them? Their stock value going down? Oooh.. Mark Zuckerbe…

People keep working and earning more because they genuinely enjoy doing it. Would you really prefer the traditional alternative, where rich people become full-time idlers and look down their noses at those of us who have jobs?

> Would you really prefer the traditional alternative, where rich people become full-time idlers and look down their noses at those of us who have jobs?

Actually, yes, as it could open up career opportunities for others further down the totem pole. At almost every company I've ever worked, the CxO, SVP, VP roles were all hogged up by already-set-for-life people (or people who became set for life by working there a few years). They just hang on to those very senior roles like barnacles, while the rank and file fight each other their whole careers for a few open Director or manager roles.

If already-rich people could just admit they won the game and gracefully resign to "spend more time with their family" or "look down their noses" or whatever rich people like to do, maybe some of those Directors could be promoted to VPs and some of those managers could be promoted to Director and so on. This would help refresh the tree a little, cycle new blood through leadership, and help even more people climb the ladder.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#294

Post by tempsy »

joenot443 wrote: post #258
tempsy wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if frantically interviewing for a new job during the holidays when lots of tech companies are also laying people off can be considered a vacation.

They have 3.5mos. I find it unlikely someone’s market value dropped enough that they could once be a Stripe employee but they’re now unemployable.

that’s not what i’m referring to. these layoffs are macro driven so you’re competing against a lot of people. and it’s harder to schedule interviews around the holidays so on average you need more time.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#295

Post by nathanappere »

memish wrote: post #90
eganist wrote: post #47

Hey pc, if you're around: > John and I are fully responsible for the decisions leading up to it. What are the two of you doing to show accountability? Are you slashing your own future stock grants, cutting your own salaries, diluting your positions with stock grants to everyone else? What's the consequence for this decision on your end that shows you're accountable for what happened, not just responsible for it? Sinc…

That's in the email: 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 re…

How does this answer the parent comment at all?!

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#296

Post by hirsin »

nobleach wrote: post #163
sharkweek wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, essentially. “Do you care to know why I'm in this chair with you all? I mean, why I earn the big bucks? I'm here for one reason and one reason alone. I'm here to guess what the music might do a week, a month, a year from now. That's it. Nothing more. And standing here tonight, I'm afraid that I don't hear - a - thing. Just... silence.” -John Tuld, Margin Call

Imagine that they DIDN'T hire more people when they grew by 3x. See how much people complain about the grind at AWS. People are extraordinarily overworked. We'd be reading "Why I left Stripe" posts and calling out the CEOs for not scaling up properly.

Stripe was already known (in my circles at least) for being a ~grinder~ long hours type place. Not neccesarily because they're understaffed but because it was a work work work culture.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#297

Post by zeroonetwothree »

alexpetralia wrote: post #282
pid-1 wrote: post #20

> In making these changes, you might reasonably wonder whether Stripe’s leadership made some errors of judgment. We’d go further than that. In our view, we made two very consequential mistakes, and we want to highlight them here since they’re important: > - 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…

I would argue CEOs generally find it optimal to "overgrow" during boom periods and "cut" during bust periods. This is why we see the routinely observe the pattern. It is not because a bunch of confused CEOs are constantly making mistakes. This was expected, even planned for (if not explicitly). This is how startups work. Overgrow, then cut, then overgrow again. Layoffs, especially around moonshots or non-revenue-gene…

It's true but it would be nice if they were honest about it. It makes sense as a strategy because, if the bust doesn't come (or as soon as you think), then you'd much rather be in the position of having grown to take advantage of it than not.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#298

Post by thunkle »

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.

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#299

Post by he_is_legend »

csomar wrote: post #122
dabeeeenster wrote: post #77

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.

Is that legally speaking? Ethically speaking? Or financially speaking?

And which one is really more important to humanity?

Re: Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce

#300

Post by l33t233372 »

groffee wrote: post #173
nsxwolf wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would make it better in your eyes? A year's severance? 2 years?

It's not about the severance. It's about the empty platitudes they and all people like them spew. "they take responsibility" what does that even mean? It's meaningless. Are they taking a paycut themselves? Letting themselves go instead of their employes? Cutting down on bonuses to keep their people employed?

Why is taking responsibility the same as taking a punishment in your eyes?
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