* 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 that’s not legally required).
* Healthcare. We’ll pay the cash equivalent of 6 months of existing healthcare premiums or healthcare continuation.
* RSU vesting. We’ll accelerate everyone who has already reached their one-year vesting cliff to the February 2023 vesting date (or longer, depending on departure date). For those who haven’t reached their vesting cliffs, we'll waive the cliff.
While layoffs in general suck, the terms of this one are quite substantially better than many other companies.
I applied for around 30, interviewed with 5, got 2 offers accepted 1. I canceled 2 interviews and got only 1 rejection (they said I was too senior for the role even though it was a senior developer role).
The process is kind of random. I aced all the coding tests but ultimately I ended up accepting the offer from the only company which did not make me do a coding test.
IMO, the smartest engineers can identify talent without relying on the outcome of a coding test. Coding tests are shallow and misleading; they don't evaluate the skills that really count.
I just want to state the obvious, interviewing is a different skill than developing. You get better at interviewing with practice and the more interviews you do, the better you get.
Also, you got to be confident and toughen up before your interviews, because even if some would be interesting, constructive done in a pleasant way by nice people, many will be nasty. I got through many interviews were there were several people acting like machine guns, spitting dozens of sometimes silly questions just trying to catch me with a mistake.
Boy, how much I would wanted to switch roles a bit and show them that is not a constructive way to lead an interview.
Interviewing is a skill, but luck is obviously a huge factor. My current job for a relatively mediocre salary at a smaller startup took a year and a half to find.
I have 6 years of experience and it took two months of active recruiting(since July) for me for Senior/upper Regular positions in non-faang companies. I ended up getting a pretty decent but boring project in a small company that pays really well. I applied to dozens of companies, had actual response from maybe a third of them, more than half of those offered heavily under-market salaries or ghosted me. Ended up with ~5 actual tech interviews, with three offers. Only one of them was actually interesting but they tried to undercut what I wanted by 20% after two months long recruitment process which I found disrespectful, especially since they knew what I asked for since the beginning. Chose the 'stable boring thing' in the end. So it's not that much different with 5-10 years of experience, sadly.
You think there’s a difference between 10 years and 15 years? Get better at interviewing. The years of experience you put on your resume isn’t what’s losing you the job. “Too senior but willing to work for just senior rates” certainly isn’t it.
Something else that tends to change around the 10 year mark is that if you prefer to continue your career with IC roles then the people interviewing and making hiring decisions will often be younger and less experienced than you. Obviously at good employers that makes no difference but ageism is certainly a factor in this industry. It's not the years of experience that are losing those jobs, it's just the years.
Are you trying to interview for principal eng positions? Imo it’s hard to do except for some super early stage enterprises no matter the market conditions
imo the meaning of "principal engineer" is wildly different between companies anyway. That means something if you're in a FAANG shop but if it's some place nobody's ever heard of it's just needed because all the midlevels already have senior titles.
Recruiters are always willing to waste your time especially since their job is to provide their employers options, and besides they need their pay as well. If they aren't recruiting, then they aren't justifying their own salaries. So while you might be getting interview or connection requests, that doesn't correlate to actual hiring.
He's referring to third-party recruiters, who could use your resume (or information about who you've recently applied with, which they'll usually ask) to find potential clients. Doesn't make a lot of sense if we're talking Google or Amazon recruiters.
we will hire backfills to replace employees who move on to new opportunities, and there are some targeted places where we will continue to hire people incrementally
I am not a native English speaker. Here I used funny as a synonim for strange, which is probably a mistake due to me extracting most of my English knowledge from Hollywood films.
For a moment I thought you outed yourself as German, because a sentence like: “Komisch, ich hatte ein Interview mit ihnen letzte Woche.” works just fine. But we German’s have no sense of humor so I’ve heard. Also an explanation.
Yeah, did the google interview late this summer and then they froze hiring. Got contacted by a recruiter from google last month. Told him I had already interviewed. He told me I should just wait until the freeze is over and not interview again.
to be fair, I'm pretty sure Google was doing interviews even when things were completely frozen. I applied in May, did interviews in June/july, passed HC in July and was frozen out for months and months. Sounds like things are just starting to open back up.
The economy is anything but strong. Housing skyrocketed across 20/21/22 in particular, and now coming back down with a thump, combined with big cost of living hikes things are looking grim for your average salaried worker (especially if they have a big/recent mortgage, there's some negative equity love to be had). The only thing that might save us this summer from a very dark outlook is finally the tourists are coming back.. so that might soften the landing.
Job prospect wise: Devs are (and have been) enjoying a very strong market, but I think (personally) we're going to see some challenging times ahead once the retail reality of Christmas flows through. The banks had been on hiring binges (hey just like US tech co's) and they're going to wind off just as quickly as they wound on.
So come, but eyes wide open if you do. If you've got a sh*tload of money to bring with you, can get over the cost of living, there's probably some deals to be had in a year or two...
Oh man, I remember people were almost panic buying houses because it just kept going up. I briefly looked around but gave up after finding that some shitty cottage in Island Bay was selling for 800k.
At the time, almost every conversation at work kept devolving into property (oh and crypto lol) which was annoying. And what was even more annoying were people who bought that were _convinced_ that they had got a good deal, lecturing me I should buy as well.
I ended up leaving the country for better pay, lower housing cost and good amount of savings to last me a while . I hope in 2 or so years when we go back, the prices are more reasonable.
Anybody who takes a mortgage on the edge of their affordability and combines it with 1-2 years fixation is plain stupid and lacks primary school math skills, no other way around this simple fact (there is of course almost always the factor of greed but only very simple people let it run unchecked).
As much as I don't wish anything bad to anybody, stupid people being bitten back by their stupid decisions is very low on the sympathy list for anybody, compared to say civilians being shelled at their homes because vladimir woke up pissed off this morning.
Given how strict banks are, I’d be surprised if many people were in this position. A colleagues had their spend on coffee criticised by a bank, then they live well within their means.
I have a lot of sympathy for first home buyers as the market is tough. However if you bought and assumed that rates would stay at 2.5% and you can afford to pay more, I haven’t a ton of sympathy.
The historic average over 10 years is approximately 6.5%.
As a Kiwi who left NZ, I strongly suggest looking elsewhere. Wages are just terrible for an OECD nation and unlikely to improve any time soon. This is exacerbated by system issues to cost of living. Everything from food to housing will shock you. I could go on at length about other issues, but I would recommend Australia LONG before NZ.
Thanks I was actually considering NZ as the next destination. I do think though that this is currently the case pretty much everywhere you go. In Singapore for instance the flats that were rented last year are currently 40% higher.
+50% higher wages for the same role. Many more career opportunities. The nation is not only richer, but has a much more dynamic business culture and four times the population as New Zealand. Lower cost of living. Far better amenities and infrastructure in the cities. Lower cost of housing relative to wages. Nicer/friendlier culture. If you're single, Australia has BEAUTIFUL women compared to NZ. Australia FAAAAR better weather. A bit too hot for me in summer but NZ winters are grey, cold, wet, and miserable. Housing stock in NZ is utter shit. I'm talking cold wind blowing up through the floorboards with 100% humidity inside. I lived in many homes in NZ before leaving and in every single one I would wage up with wet windows, blankets, bedding, etc., and only spending astronomically on heating would resolve it. NZ has really terrible rates of childhood respiratory illnesses for an OECD nation for this reason.
Public transport is SO SHIT. You'll be driving everywhere. If you end up in Auckland (which you probably will), prepare for a two hour commute each way unless you live in the city. I'm not joking. Unfortunately, you don't want to live in Auckland city because it's dirty, lacks amenities, is stupid expensive for the terrible apartments, and is actually really dangerous now. The Labour government has spent five years trying to reduce the prison population, and people are rarely given prison terms anymore. People are getting regularly assaulted now and perpetrators are being sent through a "restorative justice" procedure designed to keep them out of prison. In practise this means sending a letter to their victim and doing a few hours of community service.
The health system is juuust about to collapse. I don't mean that in the modern colloquial sense. I mean thousands and thousands of staff are missing from critical positions all over the country. People are dying now. If you go to the hospital for assistance, unless you're actively dying, you could be sitting in the waiting room for days before some intern hurriedly gives you a painkiller and sends you home. NZ had a funding freeze for all healthcare workers during covid. Why? God knows. Similar issues exist in the fire service. There was one day when only four emergency line operators were on the phones for the whole country of five million people.
This one you might find controversial, depending on your politics. The current Labour government is ALL IN on racial politics. New Zealand has something called the "Treaty of Waitangi." A document signed between some Maori tribes and England a couple hundred years ago. Property disputes are still happening. The government occasionally gives these tribes billions of dollars in reparation. This might be okay, but they're getting really aggressive more recently. At the moment they're trying to pass something called the "3 Waters" bill where they give half the governing rights to drinking water in most major population hubs to a small group of Maori tribes. Permanently give away control based on race. This is in addition to them setting up a separate health system based on race. I have a colleague in government in New Zealand who has to use Maori words in official communications now, in addition to saying Maori prayers each morning, and regular mandatory Maori "cultural knowledge" training. As you might expect, they are taught that science is a "racist white construct, and traditional Maori knowledge is just as valid." So now the government pays millions of dollars when building roads to consult local Maori taniwha (spirit monster) hunters. Just to ensure that the taniwha are happy.
I could go on and on and on. I'm glad I left. I strongly urge you not to go unless you are independently wealthy and love the outdoors. NZ outdoors is really nice.
I guess this turned into more of a rant. Something like 800k Kiwis live in Australia. There is a very good reason for this.
I left NZ to go to Australia. Hated those 5 years living in Sydney. Sydney is one of the worst places I’ve been. If the choice is anywhere in NZ and Sydney I would pick NZ hands down.
Singapore on the other hand. Best 10 years ever.
Edit: the rest of Australia is nice. Especially people in Brisbane. My comments and negativity is to Sydney which is a horrrible place to live and work.
I knew the end was coming so I started early but yeah, unemployed. It’s tougher to find senior IC positions but they are definitely out there. I love where I landed and we are hiring aggressively across all experience levels so DM me if you’re looking and don’t mind a node backend.
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.
Heh, I actually interviewed with Reify during my last job search (where I ended up taking the job I was eventually laid off from). They weren't interested back then :/
They weren't interested as they might have had a better candidate. That is typically the reason. It is not about you not passing a metaphorical "bar" at least that is the case for senior positions.
I have been recruiting quite a lot and at the end of the cycle you go through making difficult choices. Often times you get 2 good candidates and only one spot. So you compare them and pick a better one. The dismissed candidate can be picked next year due to lack of better candidates.
Unless it has been clearly stated in the reply that you seemed to be below their expectation of a senior candidate. And even then... a lot can change over the year and if you feel like you are better you have every right to reapply. Most companies will inform you of reapply policy terms if your are outside of it.
Any company that rejects your 15 years of Java and other language experience because you spent the last year working in a Clojure shop is probably not a good company to work for. And not worthy of you. Think of it as your filter.
Specific language expertise rarely matters. I intentionally avoid discussing specific technologies used to achieve results/goals/services unless it's highly relevant (e.g. creating a RESTful web service etc.)
It's good to have your technologies listed, and be honest if your doing something out of your comfort zone... but there really isn't a technology out there that can't be picked up in 1-3 months.
+1 to this. Especially at the 16-years-experience level. Maybe earlier in someone's career where their primary focus is how to fit in and ship stuff without getting stuck all the time. But at ~staff level, your thinking and your contributions become a lot more language-agnostic (not entirely, but mostly)
I would not say that clojure/haskell/elixir can be picked up in 1-3 months in most environments. I do agree that you should highlight broader engineering experience and keep langs/techs as merely a proof of some competence in those.
If the job mentions the technology and most clojure/haskell/elixir dev jobs do then well unless they state "looking for experienced person willing to learn" in description I would not bother them. (at least with my complete lack of experience in tech). Similarly as I would not apply to "weird-tech-i-merely-heard consultant". Also think there should be consistency on the job titles/descriptions on the side of job posters.
My company (AppsFlyer) does a ton of Clojure work, and I think they'd love to talk (though most of our R&D is in Israel). Doesn't look like they have an open position in the US listed, but I'll send this message to some of our senior Clojure people and see whether they want to talk more with you.
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'?
When I started my career 10y ago, even then it was understood that after getting in, you've got 10-15y to go before you start running out of desirability. Search "why aren't there any 20y+ devs", it's not a new phenomenon.
Something happens, idk what, after 10-15y. Either people made so much money that they retired, or they all become managers, or idk?
Personally I'm still doing fine but I can see the 15y horizon coming, and I'm glad I saved money like a madman. I've got options, hope you plan as such.
Almost no company does hard enough work, they don't need very experienced people - and they tend to charge more.
10 years of CRUD APIs is as productive as 20 or 30 years of CRUD APIs.
If anything, the older you get the higher the chance you won't know the latest BS kids are using these days.
I'm at 15 years, I keep specialising in different things (leadership, people management, mentoring, backend, frontend, infra, performance, crypto) but I'm just running out of things and the best paying companies (remote only) still want the same 3 skills.
My dad is doing pretty much what I'm doing with a 30 years advantage and getting jobs is harder and harder.
It does get boring, but my passive income from products is still not matching my ever growing daily rate. I guess at some point I'll stop being able to raise my daily rate, my passive income will catch up and I'll drop consulting entirely.
You use inexperienced and/or cheap programmers to build the foundation of your company. Then you bring in experienced folks to keep the barely-functional ball of mud shambling along for the next 10 years.
Startups really need senior people only to hit the ground running; only established companies with seniors can afford to hire juniors.
The thing is after a certain level of seniority, there is really not that much difference so you may just as well focus with someone with 10 years experience who charges a bit less, compared to a 15y dragon.
Yes, but it started roughly 10 years ago. It wasn't hard to break in and being older didn't matter. Now we have a massive glut of CS/IT graduates and a maturing industry exiting the rapid growth phase. On top of that we have a market and economy being propped up by 2 trillion in reverse repos.
It's a pyramid, so it gets harder because there are fewer roles to pick from that feels worthwhile, and you also need to overcome a fear from employers that you're too experienced and will get bored and leave.
I'm at 27 years experience, and my problem is not finding positions that I could get (with some finessing about how I want to stay hands on and/or love their specific company), but finding places that have sufficiently senior roles at the kind of salaries I expect. Most smaller companies don't need someone as experienced as me and/or can't afford me, and I don't really want to work at a FAANG or similar (had one big corporate experience and don't particularly need another) unless something truly exceptional is on offer.
Here's a tip to those looking:
If you struggle, look for roles that look undervalued and/or are slightly below your level, and apply anyway. Be honest about what you expect as long as you're not overvaluing yourself relative to your experience. Recruiters are often fine with putting forward a few expensive candidates if they look good enough. Especially external recruiters whose pay is usually at least partially linked to the salary you're hired at, but also because a spread helps give hiring managers an idea of the tradeoffs they're facing.
Undervalued roles (roles advertised with too low salary for what they're looking for) tend to attract fewer applications, so you're both more likely to get a shot and negotiating salary up beyond the stated level is usually possible. Applying to roles slightly below your level makes it easier to get past the first level recruiter filter because they like to give a range and for lower level roles they're less likely to have applicants to push on the upper end.
Shift your target down until you get the interviews. Then work on getting offers. Then work on lifting the offers to the level you need.
It's usually far more important to get past the recruiter than it is to get a perfect match with the role because a lot of companies have a lot of flexibility in what they're actually looking for. Especially for more senior roles the hiring manager will also often have reasonable influence and ability to get the budget lifted for a candidate that stands out.
E.g. in my current job search, my currently most promising prospect is a role where I told the recruiter I would not consider offers lower than 20% above the high end of their advertised range because I thought the advertised range was too low for the years of experience they wanted. And they wanted someone with less experience than me. She put me forward anyway, and on the back of seeing my CV they came back and wanted to interview me for a more senior role that has not been advertised, and where I'm currently the only candidate. I may or may not end up there, but to me that's a pretty normal experience when approaching companies about roles which fit those criteria.
If you want recommendations on what to avoid, an 8 page resume that starts out by listing your high school summer job in the 1960's is the best anti-example I've seen.
I was taught to leave the month off your start and end dates of previous positions when applying for a job. Still don’t know if this is a good idea or not, but at the very least it opens up another dialog tree with potential employers. Seems to have worked fine for me, but who knows. The rationale was “it’s less information to parse”. Might be just a superstition.
Interviewers always ask for more specifics anyways, which is good because you can use that as an opportunity to jump into things you accomplished near the end of a job, or at the beginning of another.
For most software positions, I’d omit the dates for school, and just note the institution and the degree you obtained. Unless it’s your first job or you’re still working on your degree. You can use dates as filler, but after 1 or 2 positions, in my experience (as an interviewer and interviewee) it tends to be better to sacrifice such details so you can elaborate more on work experience and projects, whilst keeping the resumé a single page. Or put the year on the same line as the school and degree, if you care.
Only APAC companies have asked though, haven’t really bothered with European companies
If you have a CS degree it doesn’t matter what the gap is there to where your years of job experience begins, assuming degree is before experience starts
I don't take these events personally, it's strictly business after all, esp when the termination agreement is generous enough, and conduct is kept professional and decent between the employer and employees.
It's like a breakup but on very amicable terms, it sucks at first esp when it's abrupt but you get used to it, and there's always the chance of you getting back together.
If the company shows generosity during the separation, going beyond what was expected, I would certainly consider going back. If they only do the minimal required or less, probably not.
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.
Depends on how much I liked the job and if there was any hope of being paid what I'm paying now.
I can think of three jobs I would happily go back to if they paid what I get paid now (and the companies still existed). One game dev company, one game publisher, and one retail job, where I mostly chatted with other employees, stocked and cleaned up shelves, and helped about a 1-2 dozen customers a night.
My current job I might be willing to come back to at some point if I left it. It has some warts, but it's been pretty good overall.
Other past jobs, not unless they paid 50-100% more than I'm making now. Nothing against them necessarily, but I wouldn't want to have that job again.
In a big company with thousands of employees, for sure. You probably won't even see the same faces. It's totally impersonal. In a smaller company, it's different. I actually left a (small) company in very good terms, but yet, I feel it would be weird going back there.
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.
Hey, at the big tech companies plenty of people get laid off and then just transfer to a new role at a different team instead of actually leaving the company.
Depends. If they handle it well and offer a generous package when you're laid off, then it's a positive signal that you'll be treated fairly and that they genuinely didn't want to have to let you go. In that case I might consider it.
Companies that come crawling back on their knees to you are usually ready to substantially up your comp. or improve your work duties, considering the position they must be in to be trying it.
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.
I feel most decent engineers can get rehired elsewhere with 14 weeks of runway. I do agree this is generous af.
Most companies just give out minimum severance. No acceleration of vesting. Healthcare continues for maybe 1-2 months. I know at my current company, I will lose all PTO.
They are also saying that departments are affected disproportionately. It's likely much harder for recruiters to find a new job, especially when hiring is being frozen at most companies
> I feel most decent engineers can get rehired elsewhere with 14 weeks of runway.
Oh, sweet summer children and children of recession free economies for IT.
If job openings fall to 10-20-30% of current ones and tens, hundreds of thousands of IT workers are fired, good luck getting hired quickly, when any of the few good remaining job opening has hundreds of good applicants.
We'll be back to the days of:
Sure, you can code, your algorithms are efficient and your CV is impressive, but can you tell me how many overloads of string.contains are there in the Foo lang standard library? Ah, you say that's unfair? Well, the previous 10 candidates where just as good as you so we need more. We need you to hit the ground running, be productive the first week and be coaching our experienced devs within the first month.
You're right, and this is in the guidelines. Swipes like these (even if they feel jovial by the writers) sap credibility from posts and civility from the threads.
Sure. If there wasn't already a sprawl from this, I'd have kept quiet. But like, the "summer child" thing really is super annoying, and the parent commenter is mostly right, if off-topic.
I'm only here because we're all here. But summer child seems like the most prosaic insult possible, if one can even call it that, and it serves as a sort of useful shorthand. With a certainty approaching 99%, I think there is something better to be annoyed at.
I don't think it's super insulting or anything, it's just a condescending swipe. When you take a condescending swipe, you set a ceiling on the tone for everything that follows.
It's a new expression to me (in regular use, I had heard it before but not often) but it also works fine. I disagree that we need to get rid of it just because it's old fashioned.
It's a very apt phrase. Young people whose only experience of professional life has been in the "summer", e.g. the good times, and have no conception of what it's like to find employment in the proverbial winter.
ZIRP has created an entire generation with absolutely no clue about the very existence of, let alone the harshness of, cycles.
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Edit out swipes.
I doubt it. It’s a direct reference to the book. To be a sweet summer child in the book is to be naive about the winter that is eventually coming, since you’re too young to have ever lived through a winter before, and therefore have no idea or conception or experience of what the real world is actually like. For those who don’t know, summers and winters are exceptionally long in the fantasy world of Westeros, and if you were born at the beginning of summer, you could reach the age of 10 before ever knowing a winter.
Thanks for the correction. I’m from California and never heard it before. Do you think the author of GOT was paying homage to the Southern usage for a reason?
Also the trick is, if they want you to live anywhere with a median home price > $360k, then it's a bad deal. A $120K job better be full time remote and have fantastic work life balance.
Borrowing with 0% equity is also often considered a bad idea. If you assume 25% initial equity, you can go 1:4 salary:cheapest available housing.
If you intend to buy a family home, chances are there are two people sharing the burden. If you make $120k and the partner $60, you could borrow $540k, for a total home price of $720k if you have 25% starting equity.
That opens up quite a lot of options.
Personally, though, in the current market, I wouldn't borrow that much. It's quite possible that the biggest housing crash in several generations is just around the corner, and interest rates may very well be 15% within 5 years.
Man, it feels like interest rates SHOULD get to 15% in the next year, but I don't think Powell has the guts to grind the stock and real estate markets into dust the way he's supposed to
For now, he seems committed to raising rates until inflation normalizes. I don't think he's very worried about stock and real estate markets. But at some point, there will be effects in the real economy, and unemployment will start to rise.
Hopefully, inflation will go down at around 5% unemployment. But if he has to continue tightening until unemployment hits 6, 8 or 10%, I suspect he will will be forced to eventuall pivot, even if he doesn't want to.
In that case I'm in need of a significant salary increase... Over here, in a high priced region of Germany, house prices tend to be some at 10x of yearly salaries, which is totally fine.
Tell me your ways. I wouldn’t mind working in government. Bonus that I’m a veteran (states) but now I’m 40 and still new to software ( 3 years experience self taught )
Governments are serviced by a long chain of middle man businesses, and at the end of the chain is usually a group of highly paid developers with high job security maintaining legacy applications.
In 40+ years in the industry, I've only been unwillingly unemployed for about a month, when the startup I was at imploded (frankly, much to everyone's relief).
Doesn't mean it won't get really bad, or that you'll be happy with what you find.
Your first job would have been at the tail end of the dot com bust. That was a fairly tough time to start. By 04-05 tech was back and has been ever since. Tech didn’t see layoffs, like we are seeing now, in 2008.
I would anticipate it's less that people won't find jobs and more that they'll get worse ones that they wouldn't have accepted before... but then again if you were already in the lower rung you're now competing with ex-FAANG guys
I think that scenario is increasingly unlikely. Unlike the past two downturns, there are vastly more mature companies with devs essential to their business models.
> Software engineers are needed all over the place and thus are often easily employable.
Needed as in must have or nice to have?
There are tons of devs creating tons of tech for the sake of creating tech. Cryptocurrencies come to mind, or all those half baked government automation projects where the digital version is in the end slower and more error prone (plus with limited or no recourse in case of failure).
And secondly, sure, they are, but what happens when you have 10 million devs and 8 million dev jobs? Past success is not a guarantee of future performance. Detroit and the car company cities and towns were amazing places to live in, and car engineer jobs were great, decades ago. Until they stopped being great.
> Sure, you can code, your algorithms are efficient and your CV is impressive, but...
it sucks and is unfair, and I might suffer from that myself, but isn't this the very essence of capitalism? if I'm ridiculously good and there are 10 more people who are also ridiculously good, it's going to come down to nitpicking, because we all compete in a market for this same req.
Calm down. Demand is super strong, even right now. It's almost impossible to get a decent software engineer who has a strong command of the English language and can articulate himself.
Most developers hitting the market with CVs are bootcamp generated and they don't have the slightest idea (and neither the interest) of what they are doing. They'll disappear as soon as the money does.
Unless you have a family and live in the Bay Area, you should always be able to move to a low cost of living and wait for the recession. It'd cost much less than $30k/year to spend a year in Kuala Lumpur with all your food delivered.
Note that for some people being laid off and not quickly finding a job can mean being kicked back to whatever possibly authoritarian country they came from.
A 5000+ person company I have consulted for is hopelessly unable to find anyone who has advanced Python ecosystem experience for less than $200k. There's lots of boring companies that pay competitive-ish salaries ($140-180k), but most people gravitate to the shiny big companies that look good on a resume.
The funny thing, it's a +5000 persons company. If this Software Developer is instrumental for the company, you'd think he'd be worth $40/employee. So there are developers, just companies not willing to pay them enough (even though we established that it's not really that high).
I was mentioning small companies in my previous post (think 4-6 devs and maybe a dozen other employees). $100k/yerar can sometimes make it or break it. Tech developers remain inaccessible for these companies making them disadvantaged in this market.
This might explain the crazy seed rounds the eco-system has been going through in the last few years. $3 million seems be the bare minimum for any startup looking to do something technical now.
To back this up: I'm an unemployed Python dev in the U.S. with a credible resume and GitHub profile, actively looking for something remote. $140k would be absolutely fine, no interest in FAANG or shiny companies, in fact for various reasons I've been looking primarily at smaller places. I'm not really worried yet and I've had some luck, but it's definitely not the case that anyone skilled can count on just walking into a job. I've been rejected out of hand where I met the essentials of the posting and had no doubt I could do the job.
I'd like to hear the aforementioned spiel about the "advanced Python ecosystem," which to me could mean anything between "knows what a virtual environment is" and "ML/TensorFlow expert."
At risk of ruining a great spiel, I’d assume it boils down to “it’s amazingly foolhardy to target the candidate pool of people who have already done what you’re trying to do, when there’s a much larger pool of people who haven’t already done that thing but are readily capable of doing it”.
Tech skills and domain knowledge are transferable and learnable. So if you’re targeting hires, maybe aim for people who excel in non-transferable skills and then just teach them (or pay them to learn) the domain skills.
There’s also the side benefit that if you hire a person and ask them to repeat something they’ve done before, you still need to figure out a growth path for them. But if you hire a person and ask them to do a new-to-them thing, you have the bones of a growth path baked in.
Do you mean being able to follow the tutorial at https://packaging.python.org/en/latest/tutorials/packaging-p...? I've never needed to do that before but it seems pretty straightforward. So far I haven't seen anyone specifically request that skill in a job posting and I'd consider that a strange question to ask in a skills test for a general developer position.
What does “advanced Python ecosystem experience” mean? Are we talking someone who contributes to the packaging tools themselves or just a competent release manager?
Are they insisting on full-time in-person with in a high cost of living area? (Or a dress code?)
Do they have a policy preventing employees from working on open source software?
Do they have a reputation for requiring things like mandatory overtime or off-hours availability?
I have trouble believing this is true unless they’re answering yes to at least a couple of those questions. If they aren’t, have they considered changing how they’re looking? It wouldn’t be the first time bad leads are due to a recruiter who just isn’t the right person for the job.
Sure if you are a FAANG, hot startup with funding or offering $300k/year. But if you are a regular company with a normal budget, you are left with nothing.
And I understand this is the market. I'm just pointing is that it's not as near bad as the previous poster has claimed.
Does the ordinary company need professional Leetcode player that FAANGs are looking for? Or does it need someone who is about average on web development and willing to work for about average salary? Not every guy should aspire to date a supermodel and not every company should cargo-cult FAANG interview process.
Fair enough. You should be fine if you are doing regular REST/React stuff. But if you want to work on something like WASM, Rust, fine tuning Web Sockets over GraphQL, etc... then suddenly, you need an "above average" developer.
I can not understand how your comment relates to the parent in any meaningful way. The tech hiring boom that occurred with Covid was certainly one contributor to over-staffing.
The parent is simply stating that market conditions are changing and that it might not necessarily a given that it will be so easy to find something new if we continue to see layoffs. That all seems pretty logical. However your response seem to be two links that are now a year out of date and a bizarre statement to "Stop believing the bullshit you're being fed"?
Unlimited PTO sucks for employees. It isn't the case in every state but some states, including mine, require employers to pay out PTO upon separation. So having unlimited automatically means you get paid out nothing on separation, a bad deal for employees. If you're allowed to take time off, then you have earned it but because of the policy, you don't get to realize the benefit of having earned it upon separation.
Unlimited PTO also discourages using PTO because nobody wants to be seen as the person taking the most vacation. And there are therefore no useful guidelines about how much is reasonable or allowed. A written or de facto company policy of "if you take more than 2 weeks of PTO per year, you'll be seen as abusing the system" is not unlimited PTO, it's an excuse to not pay people.
> Unlimited PTO also discourages using PTO because nobody wants to be seen as the person taking the most vacation.
That depends on the management. I took more vacation at Netflix than anywhere else (where we had unlimited PTO). But the management made a point of talking about their extended vacations and making sure all the VPs took at least a few weeks of vacation every year to set a good example.
I don't recall anyone taking 2 months at a time, other than mothers who just gave birth (who usually took 3-6 months). That being said, in the US, even companies with generous vacation policies generally don't let you earn two months, much less take it. Usually the best you can do is accrue 1.5 times your annual earning, and most places rarely give more than four weeks.
I have actually received performance review notes at my current and former job (both with unlimited PTO) for not taking enough PTO...
But in both cases, the CEOs actively encouraged PTO. At my current job, people take PTO regularly (several people at my department have taken roughly 3-4 months of PTO over the course of the past 12 months, and were promoted). What matters isn't time-in-seat, but whether tasks get done.
They actually have difficulty hiring people though because it wasn't a great place to work under the previous CEO a few years ago, so the Glass Door score is pretty low, and it's been slowing edging up over time. But it's gotten to the point where about half of the people who leave for greener pastures end up coming back within 6 months.
"Unlimited PTO also discourages using PTO because nobody wants to be seen as the person taking the most vacation"
This fallacy needs to die. When I was at GE everyone in my blast radius took at least 1 month per year. Many took much more than that. There was no stigma.
It's not a fallacy. It's true, and obviously true.
It may not be true everywhere, but every company I've worked in that had "unlimited" PTO had far fewer vacation days taken than companies with a limited allocation of days.
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.
> 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?
Yes, it's normal for layoffs to be planned and executed by a very small group, typically to avoid leaks or creating hysteria ahead of decisions being finalized. This in turn means less-than-perfect information is available, and so less-than-scientific cuts are made.
"Ideally", your layoff strategy dictates some cuts regardless of performance: Say we're shutting down the self-driving car division, folding up recruiting, or choosing to accept the risk that comes with getting rid of the whole security team; sadly, the performance of the individuals involved isn't really considered.
Tenure, seniority, and comp are also factors that can come into play & are straightforward to establish without lower-level involvement.
It's even more common to hire one of the big consulting firms to do most of this. Every layoff at large companies I've been involved with was done via a Bain, BCG, etc...
> Say we're shutting down the self-driving car division, folding up recruiting, or choosing to accept the risk that comes with getting rid of the whole security team.
Did you intend this to be a spit take? The sentence read about the same as “Say you’re taking a stroll around town, visit a few cafés, or decide to end the day by jumping into an active volcano.”
No, I didn’t mean it that way or in reference to a specific company - although I can see how it read that way! Your comment made me laugh.
The point was more that layoffs can take out big slugs of staff without considering the individual, in a few different ways: initiatives we can just cancel completely (self driving cars); people we will likely need later but less in the shorter term (recruiting); or places where we consciously take on added risk (losing security).
I do think that for the company that sacked their security team, the executives may very well have had a full understanding of the risks it created — but couldn’t easily say so publicly (“we chose to 10x our risk of a security incident, so we keep 1 more product initiative staffed which might save us”). Just speculation. Not a situation I think many of us would be comfortable in.
frankly, as someone who is absolutely not a security expert but who pays attention to security concerns, most security efforts provide very little business benefit.
What was it Steve Yegge said in that legendary platforms rant?
"But I'll argue that Accessibility is actually more important than Security because dialing Accessibility to zero means you have no product at all, whereas dialing Security to zero can still get you a reasonably successful product such as the Playstation Network."
Even if you get bit by a huge data leak, it's just not going to matter that much (from a business perspective) if you already managed to become a big, significant part of the world (like PSN or Equifax - they're still around today, largely unimpacted by their screwups).
If you don't manage to become a big, significant part of the world, security successes or failures just won't matter that much. You don't have a lot of value, because you don't have a huge treasure trove of data, so you're not a primary target for most attackers. You'll sit there being irrelevant, and if there is a breach someday, probably neither you nor any of your handful of customers will actually notice."
Am I content that the world functions this way? No.
But I think it's important to recognize that it does.
> , typically to avoid leaks or creating hysteria ahead of decisions being finalized
When a layoff is known to be coming, the best and most employable people will often head for the doors quickly... leaving the company with a greater concentration of less desirable employees.
If it's by surprise then you'll lose fewer of the people you wanted to keep.
I don't that's really generally true. If it seems like the company is a "sinking ship", then yes, people who can see the writing on the wall and have food opportunities elsewhere will often leave quickly.
But in this case, nobody is worried about Stripe's long term trajectory or viability. I doubt the best and most employable people are leaving Stripe.
Imagine you had a recruiter call you for this next gig at great company which has +20% salary bump. Once you hear something bad is coming in your current company and no idea if you will be caught in it or not, its much easier step to just go and accept the next offer that you would otherwise pass.
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 on performance whatsoever. It seemed to just be about who was paid the best and who in the org structure could have their job removed and someone else take over. Really weird.
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 year.
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.
> Low performers always 100% of the time get dropped during layoffs.
This is totally not true. Usually they make jobs redundant not people. If there's a pool of people doing the same job and that headcount is reduced then it will often be the lowest performers that go however some places have done LIFO or cut the most expensive.
However if you're doing layoffs and you reduce your frontend team the it's likely low performers from the backend team get to stick around.
I've been through 18 layoffs since 1996, about 12 of them while in management. I can only speak to the Bay Area - practices may be different outside. You are correct, that lots of times positions/jobs are made "redundant" as part of the layoffs - but speaking as someone who both observed, and participated in the process - those "redundant" positions were quickly backfilled after the layoffs if there was any need.
The one exception might have been when the entire browser division was dropped back in Netscape - everyone was chopped there - but I can't say with certainty whether low-performing Server Division people were impacted (though IT and HR positions were chopped). So - fair, when a division or operating group is cut wholesale, low-performers in other divisions might not be dropped - but knowing the mindset of management - they really like to take advantage of a layoff as a "get out of jail free" card to let someone go. Much less stress, and way, way less paperwork.
When I saw layoffs at a small company (i.e., you could know all the engineers in the company) you could have probably guessed who they would have been by how well they seemed to perform. When I saw it in a big company, not much rhyme or reason tbh.
Which "makes sense" since companies usually try to keep the team deciding who to lay people off very small for fear of leaks. So the n people at a small company making the decisions might know everyone but the same n people at a large company might barely even know the names of all the middle-managers much less all the individual contributors and how well they are each doing within their role.
Everyone is in a protected class because everyone has a nationality, immigration status, ethnicity, sex, sexuality, etc.
The EEOC investigates workplace discrimination, so if you suspect it, it would help to file a complaint with them. They can gather evidence to determine if discrimination took/takes placr and hold the employer accountable.
One of HRs jobs is to track % of people who are > 40. If you are a company of 1000 employees, and you are 25% of each age group 20+,30+,40+,50+ and you do a 100 person layoff, and 100% of them are 40+ - you will be sued and they will almost certainly win.
I was part of lay offs some years ago. Managers didn’t know until the day of, and it wasn’t based on performance. All the performance reviews were already done months before. Some people were even due for promotions.
If layoffs are occurring, companies or managers are going to want to cut poor performers or trouble employees at that time.
So if younger employees are saying it's cutting low performers, and the rest are left as the younger and lower paid workers to pick up the slack, where senior levels are cut indiscriminately or based on salary, because they are higher paid and the goal is to cut expensive workers.
Assuming perfect information, Jim's skill being transferable, and Jim's performance eval being objective, you'd expect that the company would profit from transferring Jim and other top performers to their profitable products, and cutting the worst employees from those projects (after all, even a department making profit is likely to have some employees on the low end of the performance bell curve).
Of course that isn't as easy because of morale, team cohesion, performance evals rarely being comparable across teams, and people being not as fungible as the above suggests. Not to mention all the work this takes, in a time when you probably have other worries. So maybe it's not "really weird", just "not immediately obvious"
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.
> it was strictly based on who was paid the most (below the managerial level)
The "(below the managerial level)" part is the problem and the reason it is outrageous to people invested in a company but not in a position of power (such as the actual developers/engineers, even in a tech-centric company, at least once it has grown to a given size).
A lot of times what you'll see done is structured more as a reorg than just a straight layoff, where if they need to trim $xM from the budget, they'll start shrinking and eliminating teams at the IC level until they reach .7-.8 of that figure, then see how many "extra" managers they have and start trimming there, typically just based on seniority rather than pay. Rinse and repeat until you're at .9-1.1x depending on how many people you think will resign after the layoffs.
When you want to do broad company-wide layoffs, you have to adopt some broad strategies, otherwise it'll be way too much work to find 15% of the company. It's like trying to do surgery with a scalpel when you really need a saw to amputate an arm.
Imagine the mechanics if they involved every single low-level manager in decision making. You'd never find 15%. Everyone would justify where a person on their team or their team as a whole deserves to be saved. So you apply broader rules (eg certain products, certain types of jobs, performance based). The upside is that you can avoid people-specific favoritism. The downside is that you lose good people in those areas as you're not distinguishing good from bad.
My current company did a layoff, not quite 15%, but in that ballpark. They went down as far as the directors and gave them a number. I.e. pick X people to lose. This was in addition to some specific cuts where they axed the entire product and all teams associated with it.
It definitely allowed management to cut a few people that had been on their short list for a while.
I have a number of friends who all work at Stripe and this was definitely a secret circulating among the staff for at least the last week or so, like well beyond the "I wonder if we'll also have layoffs" rumors going around at almost every tech co right now.
I have a friend who worked at Stripe unit last year. He recently warned me that things are not going well, and he has heard rumors and I should avoid interviewing there. So I think they had some idea that something is going on.
> 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.
Like the court system being adversarial, it’s that way because it’s the only thing that scales, for a number of reasons. The longer a company can avoid it/bigger they can be without it, the better everything is. At some point however, it’s inevitable.
To answer your second question, because the ones who leave are often the ones with the most options and lowest risk to themselves if they are unemployed, which highly correlates with those who are the ‘best’ (in most hiring managers minds).
So it’s pretty common for all the ‘high performers’ to bail (happens anyway, but to a lesser extent on it’s own the moment ‘growth’ isn’t the first thing on peoples minds), and the folks left behind to be those that don’t feel comfortable finding another position.
Either because they have a mortgage hanging over their heads, or don’t feel confident in their skills, or are preoccupied with other responsibilities (kids, older parents, etc) and have less free time/are less interested in doing extra hours, or just hate interviewing, etc.
It’s basically the equivalent of a hot/pretty boyfriend or girlfriend. They are able to find other options easier, so tend to be the first to bounce if they stop getting what they want.
If you’re a manager, that’s obviously not great. Especially if you’re shallow.
> To answer your second question, because the ones who leave are often the ones with the most options and lowest risk to themselves if they are unemployed, which highly correlates with those who are the ‘best’.
Maybe, but some of these "best" people might just leave after a round of layoffs anyway right? And now you're even more short-staffed than you wanted to be.
Though the issue they are trying to solve appears to be having too many staff (overall).
Understaffing is almost always a local/team level concern.
As long as nothing important implodes after the cuts, it’s working as intended from their perspective.
The line and middle managers are the ones who always get really screwed in these situations, as they’re the ones responsible for figuring out how to keep who they need and keep things running (and growing!) while having the rug pulled out from under them staffing wise (and probably in other ways too).
This is when you figure out what (if any) power they have, how well they can prioritize, and what their personal character really is.
Will they level with people, cut things that don’t matter (as much), even if it’s a hard decision, give people flexibility where it matters, go up to bat for folks who it’s important that be done?
Or will they deflect, throw people under the bus to avoid making hard calls, and emotionally manipulate who’s left to keep things afloat while burning them out and underpaying them?
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.
The tell in advance approach is common place in countries with strong unions. The company might need to announce layoffs half a year in advance of the actual layoffs.
In effect noone will lose their job quickly unless there is a bankruptcy.
There is probably way less confusion in that way since you know that security guards wont escort you out any minute ...
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 might decide that yeah, it's easy to get a new job, so they'll take a sack of cash and go do something new.
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 life is about to implode. Knowing you have 6 months to figure something out would not be nearly so bad.
So what I'm suggesting is that you announce ahead of time and let people who were considering a change go ahead.
Then when that deadline is reached, you offer those buyout packages to the low performers or others you don't want, until you reach your target.
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.
I think you're saying that if you were being fired, and you were given a choice of:
(1) you're fired immediately, with 3 months severance pay
(2) 6 months notice, at the end, you're fired with no severance pay
you'd prefer the second choice?
That's reasonable!
The uncertainty I was describing in my comment applied not only to the fired employees, but to the ones who were being kept. From the company's perspective, there's value in providing clarity to those employees. That's why they'd rather pay 3 months severance (and get no labour from the employee) vs paying 6 months notice (and, theoretically, getting 6 months of labour from the employee).
that'd cause an org wide panic, and you might lose key personel in your actually profitable business units. cutting costs at this scale is not just reducing employees, it's getting rid of employees who are working in areas you need to cut. the secrecy lets management retain control.
> cutting costs at this scale is not just reducing employees, it's getting rid of employees who are working in areas you need to cut.
Sure, but if people are going to leave after cost cutting is announced, then you can often shuffle people from those areas into other areas without dealing with whole hiring rigamarole.
Apologies for the throwaway account but it's for obvious reasons.
I work at one of the mega-cap tech companies and manage a large team of engineers. It's extremely clear to me based on various pieces of information that I have access to that we'll be having a significant round of layoffs sometimes in the next quarter or two, yet I have zero involvement in the process. I suspect that at some point I'll be officially "told" that it's happening; perhaps the morning of?
Give it some time. I've been the manager of multiple engineering teams that had to undergo cuts, and in most cases I found myself in a situation similar to yours: it was obvious it was coming within months or weeks, but nobody was consulting me (which of course led me to believe I was being cut too).
But in every case, I was either consulted for input, or at least given a courtesy heads before the actual layoffs occurred.
In one case I was looped in a few weeks out and asked to help narrow things down. In another case I was simply shown a list of names the night before and offered a token opportunity to object. The list was sound, and I'm pretty sure my boss was doing me a solid on that one by sparing me the hardest decisions.
Line managers aren't always looped in for a few good reasons. Mainly, to prevent leaks. But also I think it can go a long way towards maintaining morale in a post layoff environment. There are countless anecdotes in these threads with people claiming their managers had no idea. Those same employees are now far less likely to be resentful of their managers for laying off their friends.
Best of luck. I don't envy being in your position.
There's an ongoing leak about layoffs just about for any company on Blind at any given time whether it will happen or not. Too much trolling to be ever reliable.
Sorry you're going through this and hope you don't have too much stress. I also echo the sentiment about needing a break, I wish I got laid off today. I'm not sure I can handle the Stripe culture that emerges from this.
I also wish I got laid off today. Stripe is a good company. But the Covid boom really fucked a lot of things up. I genuinely, no exaggeration, not felt my job was safe for a single day working here for over a year, and the worst part is even after this 1000 person layoff I still don't feel safe! It does not feel safe having a job that is so intimately linked to consumer spending.
The things I would have done with 14 weeks paid vacation + bonus + equity vest....
yeah it's hard for me to wrap my head around this. I'm very well paid and have a lot of money in the bank but grew up poor so the moment i'm unemployed all i can think of is the wolves will be at the door any minute. A break or like the sabbaticals people take because of "burn out" seem like an unacceptable risk to livelihood. Again, i think it just comes from growing up poor but if i'm not working i get really really scared that i'm two steps away from living in a shelter no matter how much is in savings/investments.
I don't intend to come across as trite, but based on my reading of this comment I'm sure you'll find another satisfactory job soon. Relax and enjoy the time to reflect.
I don't work at stripe, but in general after a big layoff there's still the same amount of work to be done but now you have less people to do it. It's not just the people that were laid off that are gone, but others will leave after the layoff occurs fearing more layoffs to come. Leading to even less people to do the work. It can become a downward spiral for those who are left.
At that point you really want to quit. At least until it gets to the point where the company is trying hard to keep employees That’s when they start handling out raises again
This appears to be a trend. A while ago my project owner's role went "poof" and he was notified of this via email the same morning.
The weird bit is that company policy is to award a generous notice period during which... you're not allowed to do anything.
It's been half a year now - most of the benefits of that period(like salary) are gone. He still appears to have access to the office, but nothing to do there.
I don't understand how a company which has such a program for laid off people doesn't bother to notify them in advance.
That’s actually never how it worked at Yahoo! there was a tonne of notice that redundancies were happening and further to that more notice once your job was marked at risk. Seems particularly brutal that there doesn’t seem to be a clear process or reasoning - presumably some metric in GitHub that removes all context about what the employee was doing…
Sorry to hear that. My company went through a similar deep cut in May 2020 and I also wasn't informed which of my direct reports were getting laid off. After I was informed, I fought for the new hire who joined a couple of weeks earlier who was let go over one of the underperforming engineers (who has since improved a lot after getting feedback and working with me on their issues). The new hire was already contributing more and it was clear they picked up on both technical and non-technical concepts very quickly.
Sorry to hear that. No matter what it's always tough.
But I'll share that I've been on the other side - months and months of talk of layoffs, then 6 months later announcement that layoffs will be rolled out over 3 months. Then finally hearing almost a year after rumors started.
I'll say getting it over with has a certain appeal.
Hey thunkle. Sounds like a tough spot to be in, but as you said, there's always a bright side, and who knows what lies ahead. What would be a good way to contact you?
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.
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.
I agree with the overarching sentiment, which is to lead by example (even if you're not explicitly in a leadership position).
At the same time I can accept some nuance here, e.g. working nights and weekends because you're taking some time back during the day in the week.
Similarly with remote working, if there's a wide enough timezone difference you might shift your routine to maximise overlap with the team.
I'm strongly in favour of maintaining harmony between work and life such that you're able to comfortably do both, but would not insist on a hard and fast rule.
If someone even further up the ladder says X does nights and weekends, so should the rest of the team, then the buck stops with that person, and they are contributing negatively to the culture.
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.
> If the culture of the company/team is fast paced or long hours, maybe it isn't the right fit for you.
Sure. And if the culture of the company/team is working 40 hours a week max and calling people out when they work more than that, then maybe it isn't the right fit for you.
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.
If some % of people are doing it then everyone will eventually be pressured to do it, otherwise they'll be at the bottom of the performance list. (Unless they are very good)
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.
Startups. If they do the math and the trendline doesn't seem good, they'll make their teams go through a grind before layoffs. It's not necessarily to eke out a bit of productivity, per se, but they're essentially throwing hail marys in the hope that something will happen.
Of course, when it inevitably doesn't they axe a few and the rest go back to work.
But in doing so were you not influencing the culture? Depending on how promotions etc work others might feel they need to keep up with that one guy working in the weekend.
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 evenings or weekends and if they even suggest it, I tell them not to and give them more lead. At the same time, if they override my decision and work through the evening, I am ready to answer questions over IM if I’m free too. I’m not going to say “why are you working evenings?”.
I just reached my 30s, and have pretty good WLB. Good WLB is just part of the picture though. You can work 5 hours a day and be miserable, and you can work 12 hours a day and be happy. It's also nice to have flexibility and independence I think. Being forced to work 12 hours always sucks over voluntarily working 12 hours.
I'd not recommend 23yo to stay chill in job, particularly if they have some ambition. At the same time, don't devoid yourself of other experiences in life if possible. Honestly, there is plenty of time in a day. If we have good discipline and prioritize correctly, lot can be done. That's what I struggle with personally.
Yes. Typically the guy who is working harder also happens to have varied interests. I’ve yet to see a work drone without an outside life who is doing 24/7 work. If I see them, I’d definitely limit them from work. I was the same 23 yo. I had an active social life and all the troubles of finding love etc. I did all right. Maybe a little worse than some of the folks I see today.
Unless you are born disabled, you’d better be born in a society that values hard work. At least until we reach self sustaining societies where no one needs to work, the dynamics of which are not worth speculation from our current standpoint in history.
> At least until we reach self sustaining societies
We are beyond 'self sustaining society'. We are throwing away food to protect market prices, we have planned obsolescence that makes perfectly fine devices to be thrown away to force people to buy new devices, we have more empty houses than the number of homeless.
The existing scarcity is artificial. Not something real.
Again this is incorrect. The only thing we have is artificial food security where we have issues with transport despite manufacturing enough to end global hunger. There isn’t enough housing to accommodate everyone. If you mean there are enough buildings, that is a cruel joke to the homeless.
Lol the best part though is thinking we are post scarcity. I thought this place had more brains than reddit or other idiotic forums.
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.
Maybe because you'd have to go the extra mile to outdo competition and gain a majority market share.
It isn't just the 9-5, but the idea that your job stops when you leave the office. If people see it as a transactional relationship only, it means there's less investment in the product
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.
This is nonsense. You want to muzzle a hard worker because you think the rest of the workforce will not match up? What I count is the output, not if people are working evenings and nights or during the workday. Work output is capped by what I require so I hold all the cards and I’ll pay the guy who wants to work more.
So you chose to undermine your colleagues and a somewhat decent culture, to gain a lead in a race to the bottom? That's even worse than enabling a company that's already shitty.
Stripe is a competitive company with not great WLB from reviews, maybe he enjoys a fast-paced busy environment. He gets paid for it. If people at Stripe don't like that culture they can very easily leave and get a more relaxed job.
This is probably good for re-normalizing behavior.
The corporation is not your friend, and it can quickly turn on you. The bigger the corporation is, the less your realistic impact above replacement is. You may think you can climb the pyramid but it is very difficult to do so in a meaningful way at the mega corps.
If you want to work nights and weekends, do it for yourself or a small company where you can make a difference in outcomes.
Layoffs do sometimes happen this way. I was an EM at a company with layoffs where line managers were not told at all about layoffs or included in deciding who to lay off: all discussions happened at the director level and up.
I know it's true this happens because in a recent round of layoffs, my manager not only found on the very same day, but got fired himself.
During mass layoffs, your immediate manager is often not told in advance in order to stop leaks and also because he/she may be one of the people laid off. (You cannot tell only some managers and leave others out, because managers of the same level talk among themselves. The ones left out would know why).
When firing 14% staff like more than 1000 and decisions are made by handful of people it’s not about who performed better or worse it’s about firing whom will have more impact on reducing spendings and less disruption in software delivery.
I know few highly paid engineers survived twitter lay offs. They were very good in their domain, and have been working for more than 10 years at twitter.
Cost of keeping talented high performing, highly paid engineers is lesser than letting go low performing engineers.
I know this isn't new or unique to Stripe, but the language used in these announcements to distance leadership from their choices is always so slimy. "We're not 'firing' or 'terminating' anyone; some people are just 'impacted' by our announcement that we have to 'say goodbye'." It makes repeated mentions of those who are "leaving" (the subject is the former employee) and avoids active verbs where the founders are the subjects. Not "we're terminating", "we're laying off", etc. Even the first statement taking responsibility covers the "decisions leading up to [this step]", rather than the step/mass layoff itself.
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" has a connotation of it being your fault. Being terminated or let go suggests a business decision first, and your performance second. They used the right word.
> 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
My email has gone from big recruitment finders-fee offers in spring to a drip of single 'seasoned candidate available' contacts in summer to '3 hand picked senior CVs enclosed' this week
It's possibly going to be hard yards for many people over next few months -- but lots of successful companies were born in such periods
I hope it works out for OP and everyone else impacted -- maybe one will build the next Stripe
A good strategy is to lower your compensation expectations significantly. You might get paid 40% or 50% of previous pay, but you still have solid ground under your feet and for once you might get an interesting project you always wanted to do, using some tech you never had time to try. Add it's not slavery, you can change jobs again when market improves.
Unemployment is near all time lows. The number of employed people is near all time high, and many have quit the job market (due to Covid). We are quite far from the scenario you are describing.
Finding your dream job? Maybe not. Finding a job in this market? It should be cakes.
As someone who trains a _lot_ of junior engineers and data scientists, it’s harder than 2021 but for an experienced engineer it’s frankly not that hard to find work right now.
I work on cloud computing services (PaaS / BaaS) and infrastructure. All the big employers in this space have hiring freezes.
I used to get 20 recruiting emails from Amazon a month. Now they have a complete corporate hiring freeze. The saying here in Seattle goes that if you can't find a job you could always try one of the many Amazon roles because they were always hiring. Not so anymore.
EDIT: if parent comment is referring to Amazon job postings, the all up corporate hiring freeze was just announced this morning!
Sure, but what about the psychological impact / feelings of people when reading all the news of hiring freezes?
For example engineers that were laid off at Stripe in Seattle ordinarily have a good chance of getting a job at Amazon, but now Amazon isn't hiring. That combination certainly causes folks to feel uneasy.
Additionally, cities like Seattle are expensive and not all companies pay equally well. If you bought a house on a single income but suddenly cannot find a new job paying enough to pay your bills, then that's a problem too. Previously there were lots of jobs of similar pay to go around. In the current economy that is no longer the case. Suddenly you will need to make some tough choices.
Yes we can argue that nobody should have put themselves into such a position in the first place, but buying a house is incredibly difficult in markets like Seattle and San Francisco, and so I don't blame people who are now in this predicament.
Amazon is not the only company. There are literally millions of companies out there. They can stop being so delicate and suck it up and work somewhere else than FAANG.
>If you bought a house on a single income but suddenly cannot find a new job paying enough to pay your bills
Have you seen the tv show called x-files? Trust No One. Don't make big financial decisions by depending on someone else. Save enough to save yourself from that kind of trouble and find a job. It doesn't need to be Amazon. Suck it up and survive.
I blame people who cry after making $200k+ and not saving. I blame them for making weird financial decisions and thinking their social status depends on their job titles at certain companies. Life is fast and everchanging. You must trust no one and be self sufficient.
I think what they mean is that morally, people need to take care of themselves. After four months, a past employer shouldn't still be on the hook for taking care of a person.
The past employer has new employees and that money needs to go to them.
If they're cutting staff at that quantity it's almost certainly to save money, and the money saved from laying off employees shouldn't be going towards funding new hires.
Right. A SWE I-IV might be easily able to step into another job, even another job with a similar comp level. But lots of folks, even tech folks, cant do it as quickly.
Director of QA? Might be tough and you'll likely turn down 10 manager of QA roles that want you to do hands on work along the way.
UX Research? You have a specific skill set that might be very useful at a large company but a lot of companies will want you to do more or handle more than you did previously.
Thats two examples but there are countless others. Plus a lot of folks go to Stripe as their first FANG+_job. They might not be able to step into another FANG+ role and could have to take a massive pay cut in their next roll.
> Thats two examples but there are countless others. Plus a lot of folks go to Stripe as their first FANG+_job. They might not be able to step into another FANG+ role and could have to take a massive pay cut in their next roll.
Oh, the woes of dropping from 98th income percentile to 95th...
I know you are joking but dropping from 250K to 125K is a significant life change and while you would still be fine in most of the US it could be really damaging for many families.
Fair point. It's a bad situation for everybody. Digging for blame probably leads to lockdowns and printing money in the Corona days, and later to eco-legislation being passed in Europe right before Russia started WW3. Plus, of course, Russia for starting WW3. Ah, and China for using real estate as savings accounts, and burning a fair 50% of its international goodwill by squashing civil rights in Hong Kong.
Stripe CEOs are just trying to do right by their company and most of their employees. But yes, times are tough for everybody, and I probably shouldn't have minimized that.
Steering a bit into /r/antiwork territory, I agree. We are forced to work. We did not choose to work. The choice is to work or live under a bridge/get woken up by cops and thrown in jail. When employers take away our ability to work, they are directly assaulting our ability to survive.
Wild animals don't have this problem. If you're a deer you literally run around all day eating plants and fucking. Sure, the animal kingdom has a whole host of other concerns, but my point is that we've replaced all those with a system and we don't have any choice but to live within the boundaries of that system.
It's not legal to live a deer's lifestyle as a human.
In our system's status quo, companies are allowed and encouraged to speculatively over-hire. There is no consequence for doing so. They figure that having a few too many employees is an easily correctable problem, so it's safer to just hire aggressively and hope it pans out. If not, oh well, the business isn't the one paying the price.
I think it would be a good idea for businesses to be required to pay average pay out severances to laid off employees, and that requirement should extend beyond this "generous" 4 months. I also think about hourly employees where severance is a foreign concept.
Maybe then they'd run their businesses more conservatively instead of making moonshot gambles with human lives. Maybe it's not the best policy for "the economy" or "innovation" or "competitive business" but we have more than enough resources to provide for the humans of this world, we just choose not to allocate them fairly.
> Wild animals don't have this problem. If you're a deer you literally run around all day eating plants and fucking. Sure, the animal kingdom has a whole host of other concerns, but my point is that we've replaced all those with a system and we don't have any choice but to live within the boundaries of that system. It's not legal to live a deer's lifestyle as a human.
I have a heard of 15 or so deer on my property. I spend a lot of time watching them, they seem to spend most of their time chewing their cud and watching for things that want to eat them but they seem pretty well adapted to it. They have a pretty good life overall. However, the deer don't have a choice either, but if they were given the choice to live as a typical human I doubt they'd take it. :) But then again, most people wouldn't choose to live as deer either.
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 want to work such company ever.
> You give your 4-5 years to a company and the company dumps you at the first sight of hardship.
You got paid every month for those 4-5 years right? That's the settlement of what the company owes you for the time you gave them.
I've had this point of view for a long time. Every payday, you and your employer are even. If you feel that you are giving your employer more than they are giving you, you need to negotiate a raise, or start looking elsewhere for a better deal.
Does that mean you quit without notice and feel zero guilt about it, or are you a one-sided corporate simp?
To me the world is a better place when an employment relationship is not purely contractual, on both sides, and I'm glad I live in a country that supports that.
I think we should recognise that while these ways of acting (in both directions) are legal, they can still be antisocial and rude (which of course doesn't mean they're not occasionally warranted). While a company's only legal obligation may be to pay their employees, that doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't socially call them out if they're too sharp-elbowed.
People tend to get emotionally attached to their workplaces and changing it is difficult sometimes. We know business is business. If companies act this way, they should also expect zero employee loyalty.
What you mean to say is "this is why there is zero employee loyalty". Employee loyalty is a concept from an era where it was commonplace, but it always had to be earned. So, here we are.
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” employees instead, which theoretically improves productivity, assuming of course the rest of the company doesn’t think they’ll get laid off too.
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.
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.
Stripe made a bad choice _hiring_ people, early this year. They were very explicit about this in the email. They overextended and didn't foresee the economy contracting the way it did - and now they have to correct.
Cutting salaries for everybody has a number of disadvantages, chief of which is that it will encourage the best of people to leave. Firing can be done strategically, targeting the most recent hires and the underperformers.
I do feel like I have to remind that the first duty of the management is to the company - not because the company is "Mother and Father", in an old communist wooden language, but because the company needs to survive in order to pay all salaries, and hopefully expand enough so it can hire again even more people (assumingly in a more sustainable way this time).
> they're not putting anybody in the electric chair.
I think you're reacting to hyperbole that is simply not present in the post to which you've responded. I have not compared this situation to any sort of life and death situation. I agree that Stripe's treatment of the people they've laid off is better than some other companies. I have merely commented on the language used in this and similar announcements.
> Being terminated or let go suggests a business decision first, and your performance second. They used the right word.
... except they never say in the active voice, "We're laying off ..." or "We're terminating ...". They repeatedly choose phrasing that make the former employees the subject. And "let go" is itself a euphemism invented for this purpose. "_they're_ going; we just let them"
Letting someone go implies they want to go, and just let them. In this case, the people obviously want to stay and continue working, so you don't let them go, you fire them.
The language is often impersonal, there is absolutely no humanity in it: you're terminating "resources" as if they were like disposable items you can get rid of at any moment.
Layoffs don't have to be like that. Business doesn't have to be like that, you can still be human and recognize you're getting rid of people with families.
There doesn't appear to be any attempt to distance themselves. He basically said: "We hired too many people. The decision to hire them was ours. It was a mistake. We have to let them go. We are at least going to cover salaries/healthcare for a decent amount of time."
There is probably too much business jargon, but that's how people actually talk in many companies (certainly in Stripe there is overuse of jargon). It's not a deliberate attempt to do anything, it's just the language of the world they are in. The email is to the staff, not to you.
"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.
I'm sure Stipe would be happy to have them stay, but, since Stripe will be unable to continue paying them for their time, I would guess they will mostly choose to go.
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 really not, they just knew it would be leaked and are getting ahead of it. They aren't fools.
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.
Analyzing the semantics of a phrase and then stating it implies "person A is saying/doing X", when right there person A is explicitly saying/doing Not X, is nonsensical.
My favorite color is blue. I like coffee => "his favorite color is brown!".
You're quoting from a section of the text where they are explicit in their responsibility to disprove that they use distancing language in a different section of the text.
The reason they aren't 'firing' or 'terminating' anyone is that they are seeking to avoid the appearance (rightly or wrongly) that the people being impacted are at fault. The company is changing direction and that new direction needs fewer people - one should not imagine that those who were impacted were bad at what they were doing (or even that they would be bad at working on the new direction). Instead, we are meant to understand that they made their best effort at how many people they needed and who at the company would best fill those slots. The fact that one person kept a job and another lost theirs has more to do with local realities as Stripe, a particular company, than the marketability or skills of the people impacted.
And this is the public language. Imagine the beautiful language they use inside.
My company got recently through some layoffs as well and well, ... it almost seemed from the speech they gave that the people fired were a burden. "Accelerate", "transform" and all that. Softening the blow as if you were dealing with a fucking bunch of idiots that don't know what's happening around them. It gets really surreal.
You can give them all the money you want, and that's really noble of some companies to do so, but please don't bullshit!
During the first larger round of layoffs that happened in the "original" Opera Software, the Head of HR stood in front of the employees and managed to say something like "We are not 'downsizing', we are just 'right-sizing'".
"Firing" would just be the wrong word, since it normally implies that the employee wasn't doing something right. It's a layoff. They're not saying anyone (other than them) did anything wrong.
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 challenges.
One somewhat obvious solution might be to 'reallocate' people for a while, and have them do 'window dressing' (like in Japan) while this happens. Some would argue this doesn't get you to the pruning, because there needs to be an element of existential churn, but I suggest otherwise.
At minimum, growing companies should 'find stuff' for people to do. Stripe is 100% looking to the future, there is no doubt, so maybe we can try to find a way to make this work on their future endeavours.
I feel that the whole 'California' project elides the negatives: homelessness in Los Angeles has reached impossible levels, there always were enormous problems with equality at least partially due to lack of civil resources, adverse school funding etc..
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 less likely to hire people. A lot of those people who got laid off never would have been hired in the first place if it was not going to be easy to get rid of them if market conditions changed.
Everyone who works for a startup should know that the market is very dynamic and companies that scale up might also scale down, and they should have a mercenary mindset about this. People who don't like that should work in different industries. People are expected to be adults about this stuff. And frankly the severance package the people who are laid off from Stripe are getting will add up to more money than most Americans make in a year.
I would never under any circumstances recommend the way Japan runs companies to anyone. Their economy is stagnant for a reason, and being an employee in Japan is terrible. You get lifetime employment at the cost of your own personal life, because the company owns all of your time.
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.
The problem with that is that in some cases there's really nothing else someone can do. If they are a recruiter, and the company is no longer hiring, keeping that person around doesn't help anyone, including that person.
Honestly the way Stripe is handling this seems pretty good. They are telling you now that you have until March to find a new job. They are essentially doing what you suggest, without making them come to work, by essentially paying them until March.
And some of them will probably get rehired as Stripe opens up new recs. Chances are the former employees will have a fast track into the new positions as they open up.
What you suggest is basically to just drag out the inevitable to the detriment of both the company and the employee.
If you keep someone on board with the intention of letting them go later, you do them a disservice by making them think they have a steady job. It stops them from looking for something else and missing possible opportunities.
If you tell them you will fire them, then you do them a disservice wasting their time if you don't expect them to work anyway.
That's why a severance payment makes sense. Pay them what they would have been paid but don't make them work.
Yeah, no, this is a privileged position. Even if I might opt to take that posture myself, it's not a normal position.
Most people have a need for an income and also, don't hugely differentiate between their work being BS or not. Also, many people who think they are not doing BS work, might very well be doing BS work.
Most people have families, responsibilities, children, parents that need support, mortgage payments, car payments, healthcare needs etc. - and work for the money, not some notion of 'impact'.
You'd rather stay at a dead-end position until a lack of money forces you to be laid off by a broke company that can't afford cushy terms?
The alternative is being fired early, given several months of pay, months of free healthcare, early grants, help if you're an H1B holder, and help from your old company in getting a new job...
There are bad layoffs and there are ok layoffs, I'd say this is an ok one.
I loathe to hint to you that 90% of jobs are 'dead end jobs'. There is no 'promotion' waiting for you arbitrarily. It's a steep hierarchy and most people don't want to perform to compete.
Moreover, in a downturn, it's rare that people are going to just jump off to a promotion, and rolling the dice is quite risky. Responsibilities, family, mortgages, etc..
I think a lot of the posture here is coming from young people in tech jobs who have a somewhat different situation than others, and, who might not realize how much risk is involved here.
It's almost always better to have the option to keep a job than not. If people don't want to stay they can leave.
I have no idea how you can claim to understand risk... then decline a guaranteed X months of pay for an uncertain number of months of pay that might even be less than X.
And the whole diatribe about dead end jobs, while packed full to the gills with angst, is just misunderstanding: usually dead end job means the job continues without upward mobility. Here it means you get terminated once things go from "bad" to "really bad" for your employer and you have no idea when.
> Seems like the option of continuing to "work" for your employer while finding another job is net better than that option.
I guess it depends on the person. My mental health would be 100% better knowing I have guaranteed income for X months and can freely spend my time working on getting a job and decompressing. As opposed to knowing I'm on a sinking ship but still having to half-ass 8 hour days for appearances.
Also recruiters who have been let go now are in a way better place than recruiters who are on ghost ships right now and will be let go deeper in the thick of the brewing storm...
This might sound wild, but maybe the decent thing to do is if the company warns the team months in advance that a purge is coming. Let those who need to leave, leave. Quietly tell those who you really want to remain that they should not fear.
I have one friend at Stripe who, after the rumors started swirling that this was coming, was hoping they were going to get laid off today (they didn't), so now they're stuck in a job they don't want anymore, but don't have the headspace to effectively job hunt right now.
Imagine a world where the company had offered them the opportunity to quit with a buy out package, probably quite a bit healthier of a situation for all involved given this person's abysmal morale in their current role.
I see the "get paid to quit" trend from time to time and I think it's a great idea.
This is such an adversarial read of things. Some companies do offer employees to quit in exchange for some compensation. It's win-win, the company reduces costs and the employee doesn't work at a place they don't want to be at. The whole "the employee can cause damage to the company" view is ridiculous – guess what, the employee can already do damage to the company while employed there, yet they don't.
It is not a win for the company to have low performers stay and high performers leave.
> The whole "the employee can cause damage to the company" view is ridiculous – guess what, the employee can already do damage to the company while employed there, yet they don't.
Yeah, because they don't know they will be fired. They aren't angry employees.
Furthermore, imagine if someone unknowingly embarks on a major step in life like buying a home, getting married, pregnant, moving, etc, and boom this hammer drops. You live on your toes if this is how the companies behave.
I have to disagree with your opinion on voluntary layoffs.
Here in the UK an employer has to inform the government and go through a mandatory redundancy process when laying off more than a given number of employees (I think it's 100 off the top of my head). At my last role I was put at risk of redundancy and went through the process. One of the first steps of that process was offering voluntary redundancy which had a higher redundancy package than if you received compulsory redundancy.
If someone was considering leaving, or was close to retirement leaving voluntarily gave them the opportunity to leave early and with a nice payout. Or if you had skills high in demand it gave you the opportunity to get a lump sum and walk into a new job.
This significantly reduced the need for the company to make compulsory redundancies.
It is a bad idea for the company to do voluntary layoff.
Your point focuses entirely on what is good for employees, which is unrealistic. Companies do what is good for themselves, not employees. Sometimes they overlap, but sometimes they don't.
You basically have a bunch of employees who know their job is going to end...waiting for it to end. Mentally, you're checked out. You're not going to produce your best work for your company and it becomes a struggle to stay engaged. That's my experience, anyway.
The better approach for everyone is to _maybe_ give 1-2 weeks warning so everyone can wrap up what they're working on, then give fair severance packages when the day comes.
This is a very good way to destroy a company: every top performer will jump ship in the week (or 15 minutes if it's still an employee's market) she catches wind of the purge.
It's important to understand that growing companies are not laying off because they have 'nothing for staff to do'.
This isn't likely a situation of 'Ford Motorcars had a bad 3 quarters, and sales forecasts are way down, we have to close two plants'.
They are laying off to improve efficiencies on paper, capture some excess value created by those staffers (hey - you built that thing, great, bye, don't need you! For now ...), and likely to bulk up the balance sheet before a transaction, like an IPO etc. - and as an excuse to get rid of what they perceive to be lower performing staff (who may or may not be adding value).
It's a supposed 'optimization' not a 'necessary' thing.
I suggest that in these scenarios, that there could be better alternatives, if we put our heads together and thought about it a bit.
From the perspective of those who are not shareholders, corporations are just a means of providing some service - even those that are 'necessary'.
It's odd that so many people fight so hard for the 'freedom and rights' of fairly powerful interests, systems which they will never be a part of or benefit from, and which regularly act against their own interests.
There are multiple stakeholders at play, the arbitrary posture of 'optimization for capital' is worse than naive in 2022, we've been through these experiments by now.
What’s so bad about optimization efforts? I would prefer normalizing layoffs with 12 weeks severance package to normalizing developers who code 10 hours a week and whose cost the companies inevitably pass on to their consumers.
It’s about the other 85%. Companies figure that a higher level of fear will increase people’s willingness to work overtime on weekends and nights too. Most people don’t even realize it but that’s whTs going on the employees subconsciously
Or it makes them quit themselves.. I have done that before as the company changed character / culture got hit by layoffs.
People and general positive vibe is what makes me want to put in the good work for my team. Fear culture is for exploitative / loser companies IMO. I wouldn’t want to work for such a company anymore.
Window dressing projects might be a bit much, but in general it is curious that for all the noise Zuckerberg and Pichai have made about productivity, they don't really complain that the headcount is holding back a project or initiative. If I was on the board, I would be much more concerned that the org is not able to use the headcount to grow marketshare/topline/new lines of business more so than anything else.
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.
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.
> Stripe is a hugely successful company and they have no urgent material need to let people go
Indirectly, what you are suggesting is that the company string people along for as long as possible and give them busy work. So people would get the money, but not their time.
What Stripe did with their severance package is give employees both the money and their time back. Few people would likely prefer still having to go to a pointless job.
(And of course Stripe had an urgent need to let people go, they wouldn't have the money to pay such significant, if any, severance.)
There is no "zero costs" way to operate an economy. If we increase the long-term responsibilities of a company to their employees - as opposed to giving the same amount of safety net via public means - it will have a significant impact on willingness to hire.
Stripe's severance package, which is as generous or more so than the most advanced democratic socialist countries, is about as good as one can hope or should hope to get from a company.
If longer benefits are desired, the voters of California would need to come together on that and figure out how to finance it. But conflating the LA homeless / drug crisis with the 14-week severance packages for high skilled workers doesn't add up.
(Side notes: the perception of job loss in Japan is drastically different than in the U.S. and the Bank of Japan has been lending money at near zero rates for decades. The result has been a plethora of zombie companies.)
It's a generic tangent because you can attach it to almost anything - it's just a short, shallow reflexive trope comment
and not a meaningful critique of anything. The latter is totally fine, the former is something that's bad for the forum.
I feel bad for employees that have waited a decade to cash out.
No reason why Stripe couldn’t have gone public in 2020-2021 at a huge valuation but from past interviews it sounds like the decision to remain private was just a founder preference thing because “focus” or something. Now the IPO market is completely frozen and its valuation is likely cut in half from peak, at least.
The second they go public it triggers a 6-12 months window after which all of their employees can cash out. This will, inexorably lead to an exodus of their most senior peeps, and when it happens, will probably be ground zero for the next gen of fintech startups.
Delaying going IPO this way, amongst other things, is about retention.
I don’t think this is correct. Then your theory is that every tech company that went public in last 2 years have experienced a brain drain that Stripe has not.
Lock up periods aren’t set in stone. They probably didn’t need to raise money and could have done a direct listing and let employees cash out immediately.
A "brain drain" doesn't just mean that people actually quit and leave. They can also dramatically ramp down the intensity because they are suddenly in a very comfortable financial position and the big risk they have been working so hard to avoid (losing their valuable equity for whatever reason) is off the table. It sucks, but that's the way it is for many people. It's hard to keep up the super high level of intensity after so long, especially when the downside case is mitigated by newfound financial independence.
whether you can sell on secondary markets is restricted by the company. pretty sure Stripe has not let most employees sell on secondary markets. personally have not seen them solicited on Forge or EquityZen myself.
A fun question to ask when interviewing at a startup is to what extent they block or facilitate employee share sales/transfers. Also check with private markets to see what their experience with that company is.
How do they prevent you from selling on the secondary market? Would love to see that clause on their options agreement. Most companies have first right of refusal which gives them the option to buy them first.
There are a few clauses but the gist is pretty simple: approval of any transfer of option or underlying share must be approved by the board of directors + they may also exercise their right of first refusal.
Most tech companies have four-year vesting periods. Lots of people at my current employer, which IPOed in 2020, are still vesting shares from pre-IPO stock grants. As a result, those people have a very strong financial incentive to stick around.
Stripe is a rarity in that it issues one-year equity grants, which would make it more susceptible to brain drain after an IPO compared to companies with longer vesting schedules.
To a certain extend yes you're right. But they've overextended. Realistically there won't be a fertile IPO market at their size/level of valuation in years now. So unless they up their salaries, it's doubtful some people who joined in hopes of cashing out after 1-2 years would be willing to wait an additional 4 or 5.
To some extent, but if you have been around since the early days it’s unlikely your golden handcuffs will be worth as much as your long-vested options.
For anyone that has been there anywhere near a decade, there's been opportunities to cash out partially, at very good valuations. You'll see that a vast majority of early employees have departed, and they didn't do that by giving away their early options, or getting crushed by AMT by exercising without liquidity.
While it might have been nicer to IPO by now, early employees are doing extremely well.
The trend of companies taking huge late stage rounds was always going to blow up the public tech IPO market. Many companies get too used to free money and operating with little inspection. By the time they feel like they "have to go public" the growth rate has peaked and they haven't learned to operate with any level of financial scrutiny. Result is private market investors do great and all too frequently public markets bomb in 6-12 months or sooner.
Yup! This has been the trend for the last 10 years. Facebook was probably the last well run company to go public, probably because it grew during the pre-Zirp era.
Is Stripe profitable? I heard some of its financing is from PE and bank funding, which tend to be less tolerant of money losing or low profit operations. If they are not profitable they will need more capital eventually or to lengthen their runway.
There's a healthy secondary market for companies like Stripe. Employees there can sell a good amount of their stock already (and have likely been able to for years).
Genuine question, what’s the real value proposition of Stripe?
They do have a slick integration process for outside developers, but is that enough for to justify the financial values attached to them in the recent past?
As one of the earliest stripe customers, yes, that was the reason why we switched to them from Authorize.net.
Developer docs and easy API integration was, and is still, their "stickyness". But the eco-system of new products they've added have grown that moat to make it easy and cost-efficient to offload more and more of the financial and subscription stack onto Stripe. It's a virtuous cycle
I would like to offer some tips for those faced with the potential of layoffs that I have compiled. I understand much of these come too late for those already affected, but for those worried about the prospect, these can help to ease the pain if it does happen:
• Check if your company pays out unused PTO, sick days, etc as cash. If they do, do not use any of the applicable type(s) unless you are going to lose it.
• Have a LinkedIn, fill out all the fields, add 500+ random people in your field. Once you have done all this, you get ranked way higher in the algo for recruiters who are searching (you will be granted a visible "All-Star" status, so you will know when you've reached this). After that, go add every recruiter in your field/industry you can find (ideally 500+). Internal recruiters are better than external recruiters / headhunters, but don't neglect the headhunters, especially the "rockstar" ones from more prestigious staffing firms. Finally, add a bunch (500+) of people in your field (who you should now have mutuals with, via the recruiters). Always respond politely to all recruiters even if you're happily employed. Try to be friendly with them, not strictly professional. Build up a rolodex of recruiters. You now have a list of people you can ask for work if you do get laid off. Recruiter-sourced candidates have MUCH better odds of being hired than cold applicants, provided you're not a known name in your industry. If you do this, you'll be able to schedule 40+ interviews in about 3 days, which take place over the following week or two, if you really want to pack them together.
• Don't neglect contract work completely. Many companies have a surprisingly large hiring pipeline of contract -> FTE, provided you do a good job.
• How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie.
• Corporate Confidential by Cynthia Shapiro, if you're in an enterprise / corporate environment.
You say 40+ interviews. Is this something you've done? I did 10 last time I was on the market that was about my limit. 40 sounds like it would take inhuman stamina.
If you're not employed and you want the best comp you can get, you should treat it as a full time job. My last job hunt was probably ~40-50 hours a week for a month between wrangling recruiters, hiring managers, and the interviews themselves... But I was absolutely haggard by the end of it and made sure that the hiring managers knew early that I'd need a few weeks between when I accept my offer and when I could begin.
I had direct contact with 31 companies. Of those, 16 made it past the recruiter+tech screens. We're about 2 weeks into the job hunt and at that point I needed to start pruning. I had frank conversations with the hiring managers and recruiters about comp, work/life balance, and how tight scheduling would need to be for the following interviews. This narrowed it down to ~8 companies. I also told them all they'd need to wait for ~2 weeks so that I could finish up all of my on-sites before I'd accept or reject their offers.
I scheduled on-sites over the following 2 weeks. Because all of the hiring managers and recruiters knew I was in 8 on-sites, they all tried to give me quick and good first offers hoping that I'd take it and drop my following interviews. A few tried to pressure me into a 2 day decision window (surprise, these offers were the lowest by far).
Of the 8, I received 6 offers. I failed the Google on-site and I turned down another company because of work/life stuff that came up during the interview. As offers came in I could decline ones that were clearly too low. The very last company that I interviewed with had the best offer, so I was pretty happy that I stuck it out... But the only time I was more exhausted was when we had a newborn in the house.
Depending on how you count "interview", these was easily in excess of 40. Each on-site was 3-6 interviews back to back.
I was happily employed, but wanted to stress test this strategy (and keep myself sharp, as practice in case anything did happen), and several years ago I did. Between a Wednesday morning and a Friday afternoon, I had set up over 40 interviews in the 2 week period starting the following Monday. I additionally scheduled a few more on Monday, for a total of 50+ round 1 interviews. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I had low double digit round 2s and single digit round 3s scheduled as well, with many more round 2 requests in the weeks following the resolution of this test.
It was exhausting, and the exhaustion scaled nonlinearly. By the end, I cancelled the last 5-10 first interviews, and all of the second/third round interviews. I did so with the same tact I recommend regarding replying to recruiters, and made no bad blood in the process. Several of the recruiters got such positive feedback from some of the clients that they told me I was welcome to apply again whenever I was ready.
Doing even 10 on-site interviews is incredibly draining, especially if you're actually contributing at your full time job.
I interviewed around 2 years ago at about 10 places as well. 10 days of interviewing for 6-7 hours was so mentally exhausting that I just took a week of vacation after all the interviews were done.
I had my 10 interviews in a span of 3 consecutive weeks.
I did about 30 interviews last time I was job hunting. It wasn't all at once, I would interview in waves: at most 3 final interviews a week. Doing that along with a full time job is definitely tricky, but with virtual interviews its manageable to stuff it in to your schedule.
There are a few reasons why I did this:
* Unless you have a strong connection or are industry (semi) famous, you're gonna get a _lot_ of rejections from most companies. Interviews aren't a very good way of assessing suitability for a job. You might get the wrong folks, interviewer or you might be having a bad day. Generally a single interviewer can tank the candidate with a thumbs down.
* The _only_ way to negotiate is with another offer in hand. This is just industry policy. Recruiters will tell you to your face that they are powerless to change the offer unless you give them a competing offer. Under these circumstances, you're forced to get as many offers as you can, and then play them against one another.
Most important bullet point whenever you are leaving a company:
* Never sign anything!
Unless there is a substantial check attached, you have no reason to sign any agreement with the employer you are leaving. Politely refuse, and if they insist, ask for compensation.
I had to drop off equipment once towards the end of a contract while the usual people responsible for accepting the return were out of office. I found the head of IT, typed up a paper saying "Anonym29 returned their equipment to Mr. Head of IT on [date] at [time]", put my signature on it, got his signature on it, made a copy for him, and kept the original - I didn't want the risk of the chain of custody getting mixed up and possibly have the company come after me for the cost of the equipment.
So maybe not "never sign anything" so much as "exercise good judgement in deciding what to sign, after carefully evaluating whether it will help you or hurt you to sign it"? Just a thought.
"Build up a rolodex of recruiters." - Given the sheer amount of LinkedIn spam I get from all over the world and for all kinds of roles, I doubt that most recruiters see any individual SWE on LinkedIn as anything other than a cell in a spreadsheet, no matter how friendly you are to them over email.
I can personally attest otherwise. There are many like this, and many of those aren't even open to building a real relationship with their recruitees, but that seems to become apparent pretty quickly when trying to establish a friendly relationship. I have found that I get better placements and better rates of follow-up interview rounds with the ones I do have a stronger connection with, which is why I mention this. You don't have to send them Christmas cards or anything - just name and number/email of the ones you didn't hate, and maybe a star next to the ones you got along really well with :)
How do you recommend identifying the good ones? I know to look for the more experienced ones and avoid people who’ve been bouncing around various sales roles. Also the ones hanging out on dev discords or mailing lists tend to be better. But it’s very hard to tell on LinkedIn.
I went from no degree and zero paid experience to six figure income in about 1 year, and big tech by 3 years, utilizing this strategy. The only job I ever cold applied for my first one. Recruiters (internal and external) have basically driven my entire career since then :)
I think job hunting is kind of like dating, in that the "match" between parties has significance, but it also largely a numbers game. Increasing your numbers == increasing your opportunities.
“On Tuesday we set a new record for total daily transaction volume processed.”
How does a company breaking records 36 hours ago conclude they need to lay off 14% of the workforce? Even with economic storm clouds on the horizon that seems very jumpy.
This is my concern - and it's sad but true. 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.
They are doing what any company does whether the slow down in the economy impacts them or not. They lie and say it impacts them and use it to do a purge.
I worked at companies that were in no way impacted by the 2008 financial crisis (in fact, business was booming). Leadership managed to use it as an excuse to do a hiring freeze and plead with existing employees that they are the lucky ones and they need to work harder during “this difficult time”. Facebook and Google just turned to that page recently in the “ruthless business playbook: version 1 (it never needed to be updated since the dawn of time)”.
It’s kind of psych 101 stuff. Never underestimate the true nature of business: Amorality.
There is some genuine bullshit going on now days because we have record low unemployment and open job positions. If they say it’s all in the service and labor sectors, well, that just means you gave more people an opportunity to earn money. Those people will then go online and spend it, so how the fuck would Stripe get less business? Unless Stripe is genuinely retarded, in which case I wouldn’t blame the 14% layed off, I’d look to replace leadership. But you see, Stripe isn’t retarded.
Be ready for your company that’s in some booming industry to use the recession and inflation as an excuse.
I have a term for this, that I think I may have coined. The pauper CEO. You'll find him during economic downturns or at the end of successful projects, turning out his pockets and shaking his head. He was rich when he wanted to hire you, fabulously wealthy during the time you put the long hours in and will be located in the poor house when it comes time for you to collect your share of the rewards.
How much this brings to mind those old black and white newspaper cartoons with the big fat cat in a suit riding on the backs of the poor pulling out his pockets to show how empty they are.
Speak volumes for the character of the people who are managing the company. Lay off people who helped you get where you are the moment you feel you won't need them in the future.
What avenues have they exhausted before laying off workers?
For example my company during COVID chose to make a temporary 3% reduction to salaries rather than laying off the people. That was that year's minimum salary increase. Basically they took what they gave that year.
Many companies are very disloyal to their workers, vice versa.
they dont need some excuse, they can do it whenever they want for whatever reason they want. they dont hire the people in the first place if they dont think they need to
I am honestly amused by this. There are so many denigrating words that have their origin in or deep connotations with intellectual disability, yet somehow “r-word” is the one that gets all the attention. Though, I must admit I’ve seen people going even further and claiming that “crazy” is an ableist slur.
And I am not sure which is worse, being selective or being consistent but annoying.
"The origins of the latest epithet in vogue are harmless." The origin of the word is irrelevant. Words mean things and can be harmful, regardless of the origin of the word. The meaning and context of words can change over time, regardless of the origin of the word.
Bringing Charles Darwin into the conversation does not help your point.
"Is it worse to have some condition of your birth used as a casual insult -- a reminder of your misfortune? Or is it worse to be constantly patronized, often behind your back by throngs offended on your behalf?"
This is a false trade-off. The whole conversation started because someone used a harmful word, knowing full well it was harmful. If they refrained from using the offensive word they knew was offensive neither condition would have happened (casual insult or patronization).
You know the euphemism treadmill right? The words moron and imbecile were once valid terms for mentally disabled, and offensive to use casually, but are no longer offensive in that way.
Conversely, people tried to introduce the term "special needs" to avoid the connotations of "retarded", and then "special" became an insult.
The word "lame" is also incredibly widely used and no longer considered offensive even though it's still a valid term for those who have difficulty walking.
I don't have a point, just find the whole thing very interesting. "retarded" is definitely in the grey area where I personally try to avoid using it, but it's still commonly used. Perhaps "crazy" and "insane" are next.
I was not familiar with the term "euphemism treadmill." Thanks for the info, that phrase does help bring some clarity and specificity to the discussion.
Is "fat" harmful? Could we say a company overspending is fat or bloated without offending? What about "impotent" or "bald," are they harmful? Can we use them abstractly without offending? What about "anemic?"
Lots of conditions of being are generally disfavored as a condition of our biology. Referencing that disfavor abstractly doesn't bring it in to being. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away.
These are all hypotheticals. Is there any serious, non-academic question about whether the word we're actually discussing is harmful? Even if there is, we all have a choice about what language we use and whether to respect the fact that certain words may hurt others. The cost of NOT using the relevant word is ... zero. This isn't an academic exercise. It's an emotional exercise.
I disagree. There's an ableist, patronizing assumption to be analyzed here: People with mental disabilities must have the language used around them carefully policed because they can't handle the implied disfavor and emotional harm that language may communicate via their own agency, not like the rest of us.
Sure, we shouldn't use harmful language and emotional intelligence matters. If you're overweight and talking with someone and they constantly find ways to derogatorily refer to your weight or even being overweight abstractly, they may be a jerk. But if someone online abstractly calls something fat, it's not directed at you. That's part of emotional intelligence in my opinion.
I do see your point and your explanation does add some nuance to my thinking on this topic. That being said, I still think it was a poor choice of words as evidenced by the fact that the majority of the replies are debating the OPs language as opposed to their original point.
He could say stupid, but that would offend stupid people. He could say crazy, but that would offend crazy people. How about insane? The expression is all the same.
There are lots of injustices happening in this world that deserve your attention. Policing the use of a word is not one of them.
What is wrong with using the word "retarded"? It means slowed down.
I could understand your objections if jesuscript called something/someone retarded, but they explicitly wrote "But you see, Stripe isn’t retarded." I think that whether a word is offensive or not depends on the context in which it is used.
About the article you linked... perhaps I'm mentally disabled, but despite its "Why Use of the R-Word Needs to Stop" title, I was not able to understand why the use of the r-word needs to stop. Would you mind to elaborate?
Nope, I still don't get it. And I'm somewhat offended that you're just sending me random links instead of clearly explaining your position.
So, there are certain... specific... groups of people with specific characteristics who are sometimes not well thought of by some other people. And there's a word to refer to this specific group of people, and it's considered a Bad Word. And then we as a society come up with a new word for these people, which is now a Good Word. But in a couple of years, it starts being used as a slur (by the other people who dislike the specific people) and quickly becomes a Bad Word. This process keeps repeating ad infinitum and you're not going to solve it by successively banning each subsequent word and coming up with a new one which is now politically correct.
I don't think the words themselves are the problem here? The problem is that some people don't think well of some specific groups of people and whatever term is being used to refer to the specific group of people quickly becomes a Bad Word. And I don't think we'll solve this problem by banning the Bad Word and replacing it with the Good Word.
Retarded, in this context, is being used specifically as an insult by using a superseded medical term to imply that a person is of lesser intellect. The condition in question, intellectual disability as it is now known, is one that cannot be influenced by a person's actions, but is a consequence of birth.
In western culture it is usually considered offensive to use a characteristic that is a consequence of birth as an insult. For example: "Don't be such a black person/jew/asian" is considered offensive because you cannot control the trait of your race any more than you can control an intellectual disability.
Compounding that, as I mentioned above, the term 'retarded' or 'mentally retarded' is no longer used medically or legally, in the same way that 'moron' and 'idiot' aren't considered diagnoses anymore.
Therefore, using the term 'retarded' is culturally associated - exclusively - with insulting a person's actions by comparing them to someone who is disabled with the implication that a disabled person would necessarily act foolishly or irrationally.
It would be the same as if you needed an explanation simplified for you, and from then on every person who then needed a simpler explanation was then said to have 'needed a Tasuki'. You can surely understand, even if you personally don't mind, how that might cause offense.
After all, you are 'somewhat offended' by someone assuming that a link might provide a sufficient explanation instead of holding your hand through the explanation like someone who lacks reason, empathy, logic and intelligence ... Or do I need to Tasuki that further for you?
> In western culture it is usually considered offensive to use a characteristic that is a consequence of birth as an insult.
The problem is the insult, not the characteristic that is a consequence of birth. "You're retarded" is offensive, while "you're Asian" isn't. What about "You don't have legs" said to a person born with no legs? It might or might not be offensive, depending on the context.
> Therefore, using the term 'retarded' is culturally associated - exclusively - with insulting a person's actions by comparing them to someone who is disabled with the implication that a disabled person would necessarily act foolishly or irrationally.
I get how calling someone retarded might be considered offensive, but jesuscript specifically said that Stripe was not retarded. How is that offensive? Would you be offended if I said you were not retarded?
> Or do I need to Tasuki that further for you?
Oh please do tasuki that further for me, I'm a simple man and not offended by you suggesting so.
Thanks, didn’t mean to offend, just thought the article could explain it better then I could .
> The problem is that some people don't think well of some specific groups of people and whatever term is being used to refer to the specific group of people quickly becomes a Bad Word.
If a group of individuals actively find a word offensive and ask others not to use it, I think it’s generally kind to respect their request.
Word associations may change over time, and it’s great you have that insight. I don’t have a solution, other than recognizing the words we say invoke feelings in others. We live in the now.
Finding someone whom feels targeted by the word and is open to a conversation can help you understand why the word is harmful.
Is it worse to have some condition of your birth used as a casual insult -- a reminder of the generally accepted disfavor of your condition?
Or is it worse to be constantly patronized, behind your back,
by throngs hell-bent on pretending away that generally accepted disfavor (and even Darwin himself)?
For what it's worth, when I was a kid, I objected to the idea that I was legally compelled to attend public school, I did and do believe it is unconstitutional on a number of grounds and thus I refused to participate. In retaliation they placed me in special education classes and I spent my time in school being called a retard by the other kids on a daily basis. I'm not offended.
Isn't the whole problem with being in a marginalized community that people treat you differently? If people ran around calling you the N word on a daily basis would it be a comfort to you that you aren't actually black?
Even if it were though, it seems obvious being on the receiving of that slur would have significantly less impact on you, as it didn't actually target anything you saw as part of your identity. I don't see how your experience puts you in a position to absolve others for their use of the term.
Personally, I think we should give significantly more weight to folks who are actually in the impacted community (those with intellectual disabilities, their loved ones, etc). The vast majority of whom _do_ object to the use of the word as a derogatory slur.
To be fair at no point have any of the educational experts or administration ever claimed that I am not retarded. It was never retracted I simply left school when I was older. If we trust the experts on this I'm severely handicapped. Who's to say I'm not a retard?
Special education you got is not reserved for those diagnosed with retardation. You did not even said that you was diagnosed with retardation. The other kids who called you retard are not experts in this particular diagnosis.
There is no reason for school or experts to retract that claim, because they never made it. The claim was done by other kids.
> as it didn't actually target anything you saw as part of your identity
The parent comment already covered this. You don't believe you are, based on how you've talked about this experience. At no point do you say you identify with the word, just that it was used against you.
By this logic, wouldn't people the state labeled as felons, who don't believe they are guilty, be unable to speak about discrimination against felons, even though they personally experienced it at both a institutional and societal level?
I get your frustration here, but keep in mind: your use of that word is not harming Stripe any more than alternatives you could use, but it does harm an unrelated and oppressed group.
People who are overweight should not be accused of being similar to corporations that misallocate and overspend (i.e. fat corporation, bloated spending, etc.).
Anemic, impotent, bald, and on and on.
Language is abstract. Some conditions are generally disfavored. Referencing that disfavor abstractly can be meaningful.
Come now. At the root of all of this is an ableist, patronizing assumption: People with mental disabilities must have the language used around them carefully policed because they can't handle the implied disfavor and emotional harm that language may communicate via their own agency, not like the rest of us.
How would you define adult humor? Surely we have some latitude to be a little off color without being straight up racist, (blank)phobic, and vile? We aren’t kids, we have somewhat of a sophisticated ability to be at another level of sarcasm, humor and dark humor.
The problem is how you're using that word. You're using a word that is used to describe actual people in your search for a "vicious" word. Would you feel as comfortable swapping that word out for a different slur targeting a different demographic?
Your anger at Stripe is reasonable, why are you belittling an entirely unrelated set of people in your attempt to express that anger?
Use of terms like “be better” or “do better” arouses far more resistance in people than the original use of slurs. What leads you to believe you’re endowed with moral authority to tell strangers to be better?
This always cracks me up. Handicap, disabled, retard, and on and on. The origins of the latest epithet in vogue are harmless. But as soon as a term gets co-opted as an insult, we all agree to ditch it. And why? From what I can tell it's just to placate, to pretend Darwin doesn't exist. Reminds me of my two favorite quotes from The Office:
"There is one person in charge of every office in America, and that person is Charles Darwin..."
"You don’t call retarded people retards. It’s bad taste. You call your friends retards when they are acting retarded."
Is it worse to have some condition of your birth used as a casual insult -- a reminder of your misfortune? Or is it worse to be constantly patronized, often behind your back by throngs offended on your behalf?
The answer depends on your culture and outlook on life I suppose.
These don't happen because they're fun fashion choices. They happen because people are becoming aware. The dynamics may resemble whimsy, but it's more than aesthetics underlying.
Can we abstractly use the terms "bald," "stupid," "fat," "anemic," or "impotent" abstractly and negatively?
All describe generally disfavored conditions folks don't have much control over. Referencing that disfavor abstractly doesn't bring it into being. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away.
This isn't about awareness in my opinion. We're pretending status doesn't exist. We're assuming folks with some condition will be offended and won't be able to handle those emotions with their own agency, so we're patronizing them by carefully policing language. That is, in my opinion, as ableist as it gets.
"The origins of the latest epithet in vogue are harmless." The origin of the word is irrelevant. Words mean things and can be harmful, regardless of the origin of the word. The meaning and context of words can change over time, regardless of the origin of the word.
Bringing Charles Darwin into the conversation does not help your point.
"Is it worse to have some condition of your birth used as a casual insult -- a reminder of your misfortune? Or is it worse to be constantly patronized, often behind your back by throngs offended on your behalf?"
This is a false trade-off. The whole conversation started because someone used a harmful word, knowing full well it was harmful. If they refrained from using the offensive word they knew was offensive neither condition would have happened (casual insult or patronization).
Are the terms "bald," "stupid," "fat," "anemic," or "impotent" harmful when used abstractly and negatively?
Come now. At the root of all of this is an ableist, patronizing assumption: People with mental disabilities must have the language used around them carefully policed because they can't handle the implied disfavor and emotional harm that language may communicate via their own agency, not like the rest of us.
Who are you to say to be better? Policing people's language doesn't make you better, it just makes you feel better. Entirely performative just like woke people using "Latinx" when 90% of Hispanic people preferring they didn't[0].
I’m officially an adult, not a young adult, definitely not a kid. I’d be a little careful around kids with that word, and certainly parents with children that may be dealing with it. Kids struggling with a shortcoming and having other kids attack it can be hard.
I like to think we’re not kids here, and some level of off color talk can be somewhat interpreted as humor at best, sardonic, sarcastic, dark humor, and at worst, appropriately inappropriate - as in, we aren’t kids, and I hope you got me.
So for example, let’s not worry that I used the word, because those who are truly retarded are actually retarded enough to not be offended. Imagine if you took what I just literally. Or did I say it to make a point?
What is adult levity, I guess, is my question? What is non pc, non safe for work (within reason) conversation, among adults? Is it a constant “watch what you just said, but I won’t even consider the context of it”.
Adults also know what tact is and what is considered socially appropriate and not. You don't have to be a kid to not be needlessly insulting to a wide swath of people just to show it to a company who isn't going to read or care about what you said.
Because tech companies underwent an unprecedented hiring spree the last two years. Tech companies were so flush with cash due to the stock market (which also seeped into private valuations) that they basically green lit any headcount request that sounded remotely plausible. This allowed middle managers to grow their fiefdoms so they could add a little line on their resume: "Managed team of X at Stripe." Such spending is totally wasteful and unnecessary.
Heh, the average forum poster, I believe, drives their car at 100MPH and turns 3 feet before a large hole in the road. :D
As much as people complain about businesses only looking at the next quarter, they do typically have a longer horizon than that. When you have the US fed raising interest rates every meeting and outright saying "unemployment is going to increase" then you should expect pretty much every business to take note of this and adjust appropriately.
Speak volumes for the character of the people who are managing the company. Lay off people who helped you get where you are the moment you feel you won't need them in the future.
What avenues have they exhausted before laying off workers?
For example my company during COVID chose to make a temporary 3% reduction to salaries rather than laying off the people. That was that year's minimum salary increase. Basically they took what they gave that year.
Many companies are very disloyal to their workers, vice versa.
"Breaking records" is just how normal people think about "growth". If they weren't constantly breaking records, we would already call them failing or dying because it means they're stagnating. To be considered successful they need to not only grow but the rate at which they grow needs to increase over time or at least not decline.
The decision to lay off must be made months ago. The point about setting a new record is to convey and reassure future growth potential to investors and employees (who are also stock holders).
They look at _trends_ as opposed to where they are now. And perhaps each transaction currently loses them money, so the more transactions they have, the more money they lose. There are lots of factors that go into this than just one metric
They've been doing "layoffs" for quite some time, they've just been trying to keep it quiet. I know multiple people (including engineers) that were let go in the past two months.
> 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 getting their funding in the first place, now how easy is it to just say 'oops, no take back-sies'
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.
And a refreshingly honest statement. Too often these layoffs are put on external factors. Having someone admit the actual mistake is due to human optimism (greed maybe) just +1’d my respect for Stripe.
It's a somewhat humorous misappropriation of a mathematical term being applied conceptually.
Roughly speaking, a Fourier transform takes as input a signal (like audio) and produces a spectrogram (the signal's component frequencies).
So "Idea Fourier" is a roundabout way of saying "take the component ideas from a statement". But really, GP just suggested making inferences or deductions, which has nothing to do with Fourier transforms.
Layoffs are not an indication of failure. Not on those who get laid off, those that remain, or senior leadership.
The universe is a dynamic, changing place. People [should] move in and out of jobs and industries in response to those changes in the world. This is a good thing, and much better than blindly doing the same thing forever, in the face of changes.
I don't know the specifics of Stripe's business at all, but they may have been correct to hire a lot early in the pandemic, and then correct again to lay off many people now.
> Layoffs are not an indication of failure. Not on those who get laid off, those that remain, or senior leadership.
I appreciate the sentiment, but think it is hard to believe when you are in it.
As someone who got laid off, it sure doesn't feel that way. I felt like a failure, and was angry. It took me about a year to get over it.
I've also been part of the "go forward" group (to use the parlance of our times) and that is difficult in a different way. I missed coworkers and worried about the long term stability of the company.
I've never been in a position to have to lay folks off, but have been in positions where reports departed. That's tough too.
On the other hand, I've survived several layoffs in my tenure in the industry, and for at least one of those was pissed off that I wasn't one of the laid off (would have gladly taken a paid vacation when I was burnt out on the job anyway)
Hahah, a while ago I was having dinner with some friends. One was at a company where there were layoffs happening and there was lots of speculation on the right way to get on the severance list.
It's hard to see colleagues who are good folks be laid off. It makes leadership seem out of touch.
I've seen three "mentors" get laid off in my career, and it really reinforced in me this idea that leadership doesn't necessarily care about your technical abilities. Sometimes the best people get cut.
The hypocrisy of HN is mindblowing. I have seen thread after thread people vouching they won't hire candidates who jump multiple times to optimize their paycheck and benefits, but have no problem with mass layoffs in name of optimisation. You can't have two different scales for the two sides.
The shaming of employees when they jump multiple times while simultaneously celebrating companies doing mass layoff is the textbook definition of hypocrisy.
I believe hyperscaling is a factor here. I don't see how a company can successfully multiply their head count and integrate thousands of employees a year (unless you're already at massive scale like Amazon).
When it falters, you're stuck with swarms of confused employees who havent been trained / integrated / given meaningful work and who may not even be in the office due to WFH which is difficult to recover from [I am curious what % were WFH in the layoffs]. At that point, whether you're growing or not, it's tempting to just get them off your payroll and start anew, only more slowly this time.
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 on Stripe too much.
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
How do you do that when Stripe holds your subscription / recurring revenue? Keep that recurring revenue base independent of the CC processor? I used to use Recurly and stuff like that but it seemed like I was paying double just for the benefit of maintaining my own recurring charge list, not to mention not integrated with many of the payment features.
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.
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]
Airwallex is another good choice now, their API/ sdks aren't as mature as stripe but are catching up. If you are charging in multicurrrncy can actually end up with a much better deal on Airwallex.
doesn't stripe do daily payouts? i don't wat to say losing a day of revenue would be fine, but it shouldn't be a real existential risk to your business.
Daily payouts isn't the issue. Of course we get the payouts daily. But when they lock your account and you have $5M+ in recurring revenue from subscriptions on recurring revenue then you have a real problem.
> 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.
> - We grew operating costs too quickly. Buoyed by the success we’re seeing in some of our new product areas, we allowed coordination costs to grow and operational inefficiencies to seep in.
That first point is key, and I think they're being... less than honest.
The reality is there's very little evidence for an actual "broader slowdown". GDP growth in the US was decent in the last quarter despite a huge decline in home sales and headwinds from inflation, and unemployment remains at record lows. There's certainly some signs for concern, but the only real, persistent decline has been in the stock market (which, honestly, is why this whole period is kinda weird).
The truth, when I look at these stories, is many of these tech companies expected the major changes during COVID, which lead to huge boosts in revenue for a lot of tech companies, to persist post-COVID, and that simply didn't pan out. The result is a lot of businesses with bloated workforces predicated on long-term financial projections that haven't panned out.
But, Stripe can't admit they made a major strategic blunder--the exact same blunder made by companies like Peloton--so they have to blame it on "a broader slowdown" since then they have an exogenous factor they can point to rather than admitting they were just caught up in the techno-optimism of a transformed post-COVID society.
> But, Stripe can't admit they made a major strategic blunder
They quite literally say 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.
We grew operating costs too quickly. Buoyed by the success we’re seeing in some of our new product areas, we allowed coordination costs to grow and operational inefficiencies to seep in.”
There has not really been a broader slowdown in credit card processing volumes. Visa and MasterCard had good earnings and guidance last week. What’s really happened is exactly what BaseballPhysics said - the pace of Stripes share gain has slowed dramatically post-COVID.
What senior management says publicly, what they say internally, and what the actual truth is are not necessarily the same thing. The GP I think is suggesting what they're saying publicly is not necessarily the truth.
Why would I look outside? That's how you find out the weather.
I looked at the data. US GDP growth was positive in the third quarter. Unemployment is at record lows.
Again, there are headwinds. Inflation is high and as a result consumer confidence is low. That's bad. But the only people crying "recession" are people paying too much attention to the stock market. The real story is far more complex, and there's very little sign of a broad based economic slowdown.
Would you care to provide the data you're using to back up your claims?
For example, Lyft and Shopify who are one of the largest customers of Stripe is slowing down in their revenue growth. You can just look at their financials in the past few quarters. They even have layoffs themselves.
That majorly has negative impact on stripe's revenue.
Cool, two companies, one (Shopify) which saw a huge bump in revenues during COVID thanks to a rise in internet purchasing and is seeing the numbers slump back to normal as shopping habits revert to the mean, and the other (Lyft) that's in an industry that declined throughout COVID due to pandemic concerns and hasn't surged back in the face of competition from both Uber and traditional cabs.
Again: I have data about the entire economy. That data tells a story that's mixed but relatively positive.
You have two specific examples, each of which represent a corner of entire economic sectors, and those sectors represent only a fraction of the total economy.
And I'm supposed to conclude that you're the one who has it right?
> Cool, two companies, one (Shopify) which saw a huge bump in revenues during COVID thanks to a rise in internet purchasing and is seeing the numbers slump back to normal as shopping habits revert to the mean, and the other (Lyft) that's in an industry that declined throughout COVID due to pandemic concerns and hasn't surged back in the face of competition from both Uber and traditional cabs.
Why would your explanation matter?
The conclusion still remains. Their revenue slows down. Therefore, stripe's revenue slows down.
For sure, it is not growing faster.
You didn't contradict my point at all.
> Again: I have data about the entire economy. That data tells a story that's mixed but relatively positive
Stripe's revenue growth does indeed slows down. There is no dispute of that.
If Stripe was making 1 trillions USD more, they wouldn't have laid off people, obviously.
Now I or the founders claim it is because the macro economic is bad. You might contradict this part.
Well you have been taunting it for 2 comments now. Can you share your evidence? Or we should continue quibble a bit more first?
Yes, Stripe customers have seen slowing growth post-COVID which is why Stripe’s pace of share gain has slowed. Macro, ie nominal consumer expenditures, has remained strong.
You threw out random metrics and claimed it is still growing therefore Stripe's revenue should not slow down.
I claimed that two of the largest Stripe customers have their revenue slowing down, and this slows down stripe revenue. These 2 are just examples. Uber, Doordash, and many more companies who are Stripe customers also have their revenue slowing down.
Do you think you metrics is more relevant than stripe customers' revenue?
Stripe earns when their customers earn. My metrics is the most direct one.
Also, online purchase is only 15-20% of all purchases by volume. And we haven't accounted for Paypal, Square, and etc. Your metrics is crap...
You’re saying Stripes growth slowed because their customers growth slowed. Given the nature of Stripes business, this is tautological.
I’m saying, Stripes deceleration is not due to macro (ie overall macroeconomic conditions), but a result of post-Covid normalization in the business results of its customers. This is obvious, as overall nominal PCE have not slowed.
> The reality is there's very little evidence for an actual "broader slowdown". GDP growth in the US was decent in the last quarter despite a huge decline in home sales and headwinds from inflation, and unemployment remains at record lows.
I thinks as a payment processor, they are in a better position than most to predict sales trends. This effect might be restricted to their segment of the market. But if the payments they process are down significantly, then does it matter (to Stripe) if parts of the economy that they aren’t involved in are more robust?
I’m not excusing actions, but they have more data on the economy than most, just from their position in it. They may have thought (their part of) the market was going to keep growing (the mistake), but that doesn’t change the fact that it isn’t.
Stripe’s reach as a processor probably isn’t broad enough to see those kinds of trends. Their processing fees are quite high so there’s huge industry sectors that will just never touch them.
Stripe processes in the area of $350-400bln annually, which is equivalent to about 1/10th the GDP of the U.K. That's absolutely enough volume to see macro trends as it relates the classes of merchants they support.
Who said anything about being the largest? The question was whether they have sufficient data to make predictions about future trends, especially as it applies to their business.
Beyond pc explicitly admitting that they made the mistake you're saying they didn't, Stripe and other payment processors, especially internet payment processors, are extremely sensitive to economic forecasts. I can think of three obvious reasons that current market conditions would tell them to prepare for a macroeconomic downturn:
1) The housing market is the largest asset base in the world's wealthiest country and changes in that market reliably predict macroeconomic downturns (1).
2) E-commerce transactions are supported more than the economy as a whole by discretionary income. Interest rates drastically change consumers' spending habits; when rates rise, discretionary spending drops as consumers save more (2). You can infer that the GDP of e-commerce decreases at a rate higher than the larger economy because of that drop in spending.
3) Stripe has a very high retention rate for its customers. That counterintuitively increases the volatility of its stock because of increasing interest rates (3)
Beyond the appeal to intuition you made around tech companies assuming that post-COVID demand would remain, there are plenty of reasons that a payment processor that primarily services e-commerce would need to downsize. They are simply more sensitive to macroeconomic conditions.
> The reality is there's very little evidence for an actual "broader slowdown".
I wish I could be in your bubble. In mine, people have been spending more on less month after month. Businesses are seeing slowdowns. Things are going to be even worse when the winter heating starts.
>The reality is there's very little evidence for an actual "broader slowdown".
I'm not sure about 'broader slowdown' but in the industry I'm in we've seen a massive slowdown in signups and expansions in the existing customers. When we speak with our customers, especially banks, they are seeing massive slowdowns on their side.
Someone has bad metrics here, and when most of our customers across a wide range of industries are laying off, then I'd say that's pretty broad.
I always wonder if the chicken or egg comes first. Maybe I'm living in a bubble, but I didn't see any broad slowdown until companies started laying off, saying there's this broad slowdown that's totally coming soon. Now, with people being laid off and tightening their spending, leading to an actual slowdown, the prophecy is fulfilled!
The last recession had a pretty clear cause you could point your finger at: The collapse of subprime mortgages. This one (presumably we're about to experience one) and the first dot-com crash didn't seem to be caused by anything besides a critical mass of businessmen agreeing "Well look at that, we're headed into an economic slowdown!"
Inflation goes up, cost of borrowing money goes up (cars, mortgages) -> less money to spend on non-essentials and the essentials get pared down to the minimum.
One thing that i think hits Stripe harder than most is all the people who quit their jobs to do their own thing. You know they all setup Stripe accounts for e-com and other invoice/payment functionality. I think reality is pushing them back to regular day jobs and those new Stripe accounts are going to sit with zero transactions.
The blog post literally says Stripe has higher transaction volume than ever.
Anecdotally my indie friends all report modest revenue growth this year while my big tech friends report more work for less money (due to equity grants decline).
From the data I see, the “reality” is not the failed indie dev but the failed inefficient big tech company.
I think the fact that they used "internet economy" and not "economy" in their letter is basically a shorthand way of conveying exactly what you say here, though in a less self-flagellating way.
Agree 100% with you. Also having talked to recruiters there I found them absolutely disorganised. At least here in APAC. Might be better stateside.
They gave me the impression of not really knowing what org to build and job descriptions/titles/org changed wildly during talks (and then abruptly ended, leaving me with a terrible impression).
The one thing they kept going on about though is how they're the biggest bestest most promising of unicorns and how much they'd be in 'super growth mode'
>GDP growth in the US was decent in the last quarter......and unemployment remains at record lows.
That is correct. However, I work as a consultant and deal with a lot of senior execs at large companies (mostly non-tech) and I can tell you that they are all in a panic right now and expect an absolute economic bloodbath next year. It's going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It really feels like Wile E Coyote after he's run off a ledge but hasn't realized it or started falling yet. Very weird.
Anecdote here, but I sell vintage clothing, electronics, and furniture on the side and have noticed a substantial downturn in sales this year. Lower than pre-pandemic levels.
The stock market didn’t really decline. There was a speculative play at the beginning of the pandemic that allowed the shitheads that run that game to do a reallocation of capital from “pandemic hit” industries to tech. That’s why tech ballooned to stupid levels. I say speculative because while it may have been right to reallocate away from, say, Airlines stocks, there was no good reason to run up tech to those absurd levels.
Tech didn’t get hit by interest rates, it’s just a reallocation of that influx of money back to other sectors. People didn’t stop using tech. Now they reallocated out of tech (the way it was supposed to be around 2019), and all these shithead companies are saying “we’re fucked, our stock tanked”. No, your stock went back to healthy levels, your stock was just a bank for two years, that’s all.
Yup, good points. The stock market has been pretty damn volatile, which is to be expected given the broader geopolitical context, the chaos of the post-COVID recovery, etc, but the stock of a ton of these tech companies just reverted to the mean, which is exactly what you'd expect if the changes during COVID failed to persist.
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-generating teams, are only problematic for PR purposes.
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.
It seems to me they are moderately open about it. "We expected things to keep growing, acted on that, it didn't, now acting on that."
I suppose they could say "we thought the economy might contract in 2022 as it would eventually, but that risk was more palatable than not growing and missing out vs our competitors if the contraction didn't happen."
> We were much too optimistic about the internet economy’s near-term growth in 2022 and 2023
A lot of this was driven by covid-cautious WFH culture. Someone working from home in the Bay Area in January 2022 might not realize the extent other industries are back in the office and other regions are done with covid.
IDK, there seem to be plenty of big tech jobs still open. I just got one. Overall, there are about 1.9 open jobs in the US for every person unemployed.
Only a few pay the $400k-$500k Google level salaries you hear about for mid level employees.
It might be relatively easy to find a $120k job but that doesn’t mean every laid off person can now walk into Google with ease when even big tech is laying people off or freezing hiring.
Not everyone needs to make $500k? I don't understand this argument. Many companies are hiring seniors right now for $200k base. Small, medium, and large companies. That is a great salary.
Don't compare yourself to the .1% of software devs.
I would be jumping with joy to make 200k a year with where I live now. However if I was in offered the same job in the bay area for 200k a year I would not be nearly as happy.
We are talking about a hypothetical situation where someone was asked to be content with a $200k salary in a high cost metro.
In this scenario the person has made the decision that it isn’t really that great of a salary considering cost of living, yet you’re on here getting angry this person is being “entitled”. No decision was made to accept this salary as a good one in this scenario.
They are for several reasons. They are lying about the price of rent, saying it is higher than it is. They are insisting that you need to live in Manhattan, when there are places about half as cheap very close to Manhattan.
I'm not saying the area is inexpensive. Don't argue with a strawman.
>They are for several reasons. They are lying about the price of rent, saying it is higher than it is. They are insisting that you need to live in Manhattan, when there are places about half as cheap very close to Manhattan.
>
>I'm not saying the area is inexpensive. Don't argue with a strawman.
Don't misconstrue what I am pointing out what you're doing. They are not lying about how expensive rent can be there, this is simple to verify.
People want to live where they want to live. Get over it.
Totally ridiculous and also untrue. Living in Manhattan is a luxury, there are affordable options 20-30m from NYC. You can get a 2br for under $<2k <30m bus ride from NYC. $1600-1700 if you look and get a little lucky.
Even in Manhattan, there are plenty of 2br available for <$3k. Zillow is bringing up hundreds of results. You're not living large, but you'll have money for savings.
Most people who live in Manhattan don't live there alone, anyway. That luxury apt for $6k is a great place to live with 1-2 roommates.
the fact there exists 2 bedroom apartments for under $3k doesn’t mean that’s the norm in Manhattan. there’s very few and it’s clearly nowhere near the median when the median 1 bed is over $3800.
and you’ve mistaken what I said if you think I’m suggesting it’s “hard” to live on $200k in NYC. the point is more that it’s just a normal salary in a high cost area at this point, and after taxes and retirement savings and regular monthly expenses you’d be lucky to save $30k a year. hard to save for a house or start a family and care for dependents without being close to paycheck to paycheck at that income.
First, I'm looking at apartments on the market RIGHT NOW that are under $3k. You can apply for these right now.
We're also using an extreme, living in Manhattan is a luxury. It is one of the most expensive places to live on the planet. Even using this extreme your argument doesn't hold water. You would do well on $200k paying $3.5k/m in rent. That's high, but shouldn't kill you.
I would argue that using the median or average in an area that has so much luxury housing is also dishonest. I know people paying over $5k for STUDIO APARTMENTS in NYC.
They love the building, I dunno!
JC median 1br is $3k, north bergen nj 2br is $2,400.... but there are plenty of 1 and 2br in JC and NB that are under $2k on the market right now. Thousands of units, actually.
Including kids, or if you have a stay at home spouse or something, you're right. You can't really live in the area on $200k. That is a problem. Your wife needs to work and bring in at least $80k, especially if you have more than 2 kids. But we're kind of moving the goalposts here, aren't we?
I continue to find it funny that we’ve come to the point where workers are guilted and shamed because they demand more for themselves.
Even if you’re somewhat disciplined about spending you are probably spending $40k a year easily in a higher cost metro on normal everyday expenses/personal travel, leaving you with maybe $20k-$30k to tuck away. Difficult to save up for a family or house on $20k/yr to save/invest.
I demand more for myself. I would also be ashamed convincing people I don't have enough as it is. It's possible to prefer to make $500K over $200K and not argue that $200K is peanuts to live on. Argue that you prefer the even more lavish life that $500K can provide you for the skills the market deemed you have.
Demand more for yourself, but don't pretend like you can't live on $200k. You're worth a lot but making up shit about rents is not going to help your argument.
or if you’re talented and have in demand skills don’t settle for a $200k salary because people online told you you were entitled for asking for higher comp in high cost of living areas.
> 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? Since you have no intention of cashing out, the valuation cut is ineffectual as a consequence to you, and the support/severance package will probably have minimal impact on your own bottom line since it's all largely been accounted for (payouts of planned bonuses, existing unvested stock etc)
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 that’s not legally required).
Healthcare. We’ll pay the cash equivalent of 6 months of existing healthcare premiums or healthcare continuation.
RSU vesting. We’ll accelerate everyone who has already reached their one-year vesting cliff to the February 2023 vesting date (or longer, depending on departure date). For those who haven’t reached their vesting cliffs, we'll waive the cliff.
Career support. We’ll cover career support, and do our best to connect departing employees with other companies. We’re also creating a new tier of extra large Stripe discounts for anyone who decides to start a new business now or in the future.
Immigration support. We know that this situation is particularly tough if you’re a visa holder. We have extensive dedicated support lined up for those of you here on visas (you’ll receive an email setting up a consultation within a few hours), and we’ll be supporting transitions to non-employment visas wherever we can.
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)
As a European the severance for a large company doesn’t sound all to different to what I am used to. Normally you have 3 months by contract plus some add a month per year tenure. Healthcare costs, career support etc is normal for larger/successful companies. Then certain countries (not the company) will pay 80percent of your salary for 2 years to find a new job.
Happy that some companies also start to do this in the US, but yeah it sounds that this is not a given. It will generate a better transition and avoid serious mental problems/personal issues.
> As a European the severance for a large company doesn’t sound all to different to what I am used to
Note that Europe is a big place, and laws are not standard for layoffs/redundancy. I got laid off this year, and basically got one week's severance pay, plus my two weeks notice.
In Ireland, I believe the standard amongst larger companies is one month per year served, but the cap is very low so generally tech companies will make much of the payout conditional on an NDA.
For Norway it's usually three months both ways. For bigger layoffs it can be "anything" from three months and up. I was outsourceed once, and got nine months pay from day 1.
So I got doubly paid as soon as I found a new job. Good times. :)
>As a European the severance for a large company doesn’t sound all to different to what I am used to.
IME 14 weeks minimum is really generous in the US.
I've been at 2 companies where it was 1 week per year of employment. At one company they added on 1 month of severance during a really large layoff. The tenure at tech companies in the US tends to be quite short, so getting 14 weeks probably unusual at typical tech company.
In the silver league of US tech, which is broader than most people seem to think, the standard severance pay is a nice cool 0. Usually the only conversation is about all the agreements they try to convince you that you have to sign for no compensation as they’re escorting you out the door.
In my social circles we roughly categorize the tech industry into faang, gold tier, silver tier, and wood tier.
Faangs are obvious, good tier is up and coming businesses who pay and act like faangs. Examples are brex, stripe, Uber(at least back in the day, no idea what they’ve been up to the past year.
Silver tier are the places that still pay well above average jobs but don’t go into the mega compensation and suffer a talent drought as a result. Places where they’re paying 120k total comp for a senior engineer and won’t part with any equity because the leadership can’t emotionally handle the investment needed to compete for engineering talent for reasons that I could go on for hours about.
Wood tier are the companies that need tech but still try to pay <80k because they’d never pay high wages to any employee or still think they don’t need software and end up with some real shit engineering
How does this work at companies that are very distributed geographically? The WARN act talks about "mass layoff affecting 50 or more employees at a single site of employment."
I'm genuinely asking this question - I'm not trying to be a smart ass.
I worked at a tech company (~3500 worldwide) that had an office in almost every major US city area (e.g. Bay Area, NYC, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, and a bunch of Tier 2 cities as well (Atlanta, Raleigh, Houston, etc), and remote workers (e.g. sales) as well.
They had a big layoff and in theory they could laid off 500/15% people worldwide without laying off 50 people at each site. Would that still trigger the WARN act?
Depending on the political environment of the state one is in. It could be capped at a useless amount, or the unemployment department minimally staffed. I know someone in NJ that has a pending status for 2 years with no response or ability to contact the state, and they have 8 years of W-2 showing they paid unemployment insurance.
No, you can see tons of Reddit posts about people not being able to speak to anyone at NJ unemployment. You can try calling at anytime of day and the machine will say (after 130 seconds of automated prompts) that all agents are too busy and to call back the next business day.
In the event you do get through, you reach a line level agent, and they say a supervisor has to look at the case, and to wait 6 to 8 weeks before calling back. That’s it, nothing else.
I worked with a person that was laid off with 6 months severance that was not reported to the state. They immediately filed for unemployment, and then the company hired them back as a contractor 4 or 5 weeks later. We labelled him the triple dipper and he said getting laid off was the best thing that ever happened to him and that he's basically rolling around in money coupled with a one month paid sabbatical.
In Texas, severance pay has no bearing on unemployment insurance. I did same thing but told unemployment office about severance pay, since I was too worried about breaking any rules.
They told me I could win jackpot but they would still legally owe me unemployment pay. It is all about actually woking. If you work and then get paid for that work, that's when you cannot claim unemployment pay.
So, technically, if you do contract work and still claim unemployment, then you are breaking the law.
Yes, I believe he was technically breaking the law by under reporting. My limited understanding was that he was able to avoid issues by billing as an LLC versus an individual and didn't draw a paycheck from his LLC while on unemployment, he just let the money stack.
This is pretty normal in my experience. Having experienced layoffs (never as a target, always from the side) for the last 25 years. There are probably edge cases, but some amount of severance (based on time with the company, typicall), healthcare coverage, bonus acceleration, etc, is all completely normal.
On HN, of course, you're mostly only going to see the edge cases posting, so it's easy to get a distorted view of normal.
Yeah I have been laid off once, at Fortune 15 company. We got, at least, 2 month of severance pay. And 2 weeks extra for each year with company after first 4 years. It wasn't a tech company, so I always assumed that this is pretty common in mass lay offs.
They're only paying this much severance because 90 percent of it is legally obligated by the state of California, where the vast majority of their employees work.
60 work days must be paid out, which is 12 weeks of work. So essentially they're giving people only an extra 2 weeks of severance to sign away their right to a wrongful termination lawsuit.
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
Morale for the remaining employees would drop and attrition would jump if they all watched their fellow employees get kicked to the curb by their current employer.
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.
Tone aside, asking if op thinks Stripe have done the maths is an interesting question.
How did Stripe end up with expenses they need to reduce if they did the maths? Yes, their world changed, but at some point they made choices that were incorrect.
They take the hit but the payouts eventually end. What’s described would not have been that uncommon for big companies back in the day. They take a financial in a quarter and they hope they can move on with a lower cost structure. Often doesn’t play out well of course.
It's simple, they aren't bleeding cash, the business isn't in trouble, but they aren't seeing enough growth to justify employing all those people for another few years. It's exactly what the email said, they over-hired.
Yeah this is pretty good. Would make me feel good about getting a job at Stripe for sure. My current company I'm sure would pay NOTHING and we don't get bonuses anyway, so...!
Goodness, I’d voluntarily take that deal anyday. 3.5 months of paid vacation at the salaries Stripe pays? Yes please.
I just read the rest. On top of 3.5 months pay, they get accelerated vesting, cash payment for healthcare benefits, all unused PTO paid, and more. That’s incredible.
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.
Maybe if you're the janitor, but based on the quip about the salaries Stripe pays, the parent is presumably looking at this from a developer's perspective. That's a payout of around $73,000.
If you are handed $73,000 and still need to frantically look for a new job, something strange is going on.
i’m not referring to running out of money, just the idea that it’s harder to interview during the time around the holidays and immediately after, and we are in a period where these layoffs are macro driven so lots of people are competing against you for the same roles
If you're not out of money, why the frantic search? It isn't going to sustain you forever, but if it takes you six months to find a new job... oh well?
You've got taxes on that so 40% and then health insurance at Cobra rates. Granted it looks like they said they will pay that for 6 months. Not sure if that is taxable as well also not sure what the individual contributions are.
> You've got taxes on that so 40% and then health insurance at Cobra rates.
Your taxes would only be 40% (actually 47%) if you make beyond $500k a year. Cobra rates are quite affordable. I was on Cobra when I was laid off due to covid, and it was $550 a month for top tier healthcare.
The tax rate is only that high for amount earned after $500k too. And only for those in a few states like California.
$550 for gold level insurance is expected for someone young, which I guess you are.
You can ballpark almost anyone’s premiums based on the figures in link below. I would use Omnia Gold or Omnia Silver HSA numbers, and plus or minus 20% for your state.
If it's a one time payout (to be clear, I'm not that will be the case here? It was for me the only time that I was laid off), I think the withholding would be calculated as though that single payment were a regular salary extrapolated to the entire year. This is similar to what happens if you receive a bonus; to compute the withholding they assume your annual salary is $BONUS * $PAY_PERIOD. So you'd likely be taxed at a much higher rate on that single payment than you would be amortized over a year like a salary is.
You'd get that withheld money back after filing taxes, but most people who are laid off would prefer to have that money now.
If Stripe is making regular salary-like payments instead of one lump sum, then the taxes would be pretty much the same as always.
> Cobra rates are quite affordable. I was on Cobra when I was laid off due to covid, and it was $550 a month for top tier healthcare.
Those two statements are in odds with one another. $550 is quite a large sum of money to put out each month, particularly when you don't have an income.
Yes, you should have quite a bit of cash as an emergency fund. There are government subsidies available for health insurance, but they phase out if you earn more.
Generally, decent insurance costs anywhere from $400 to $1,200 per month, depending on age of insured, plus up to $9k out of pocket maximum for individual and $18k for families, per calendar year.
So to adequate insure one’s self for healthcare expenses, you would need $18k or $36k for out of pocket expenses (since things can happen at end of calendar year), plus $400 to $1,200 per person per month minus any premium tax credits. For a young family, I would guesstimate $24k to $30k per year in premiums minus any tax credits.
Basically, be poor enough to qualify for free healthcare, or earn enough to be able to spend a few tens of thousands of dollars for a healthcare emergency, but try not to be inbetween.
> I thought the open enrollment period was already over for HealthCare.gov. Can I still enroll?
> Yes, if you have just lost your health insurance, you are eligible for a 60-day special enrollment period. You can work with an enrollment assister, an insurance agent, or use HealthCare.gov to enroll in a new insurance plan. You may also qualify for a special enrollment period if you have experienced a life event such as moving, getting married, having a baby, or adopting a child.
You're not wrong that it is strange that we would force one to be completely uprooted from their home only because they didn't have a job for a few months.
Compare that to the average experience of the vast majority of people who aren't a software engineer and a person might be forgiven for thinking it looks like an incredibly privileged vacation.
There are lots of tech companies hiring too. The hard part is finding them, and convincing them you are the one. Most of the resumes I see for a "senior" programmer don't have the experience.
Yet... we still see ageism in hiring too. I'm continually surprised at people advertising for 'senior' positions that require 3 years of 'foo' experience. If that's how you label 'senior'... don't be surprised when people with little experience apply for senior positions.
Not poking at you directly. I've got 25 years of experience. I was on a team a few years ago with people with... 2-4 years experience. We were both labelled to the end client (contracting company) as 'senior developers'. It's just weird all around. When everyone is 'senior', it loses any useful meaning.
Although 3 years is a little low, I work with plenty of people with 5 years of experience who are just as good as the best programmers with 25 years. The early years experience matters a lot, but the difference between 5 and 25 years is insignificant.
The levels are fresh out of school, have learned enough to not need hand holding, and able to make good decisions about code. You cover them very fast. There is a staff level about that, but most people don't reach that level. There just isn't need for too many of them.
Yeah. You need six months of emergency fund, minimum. I would say close to 1yr honestly, depending on your risk tolerance, for senior tech roles, unless you're willing to take a real shit job while you look for something else.
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.
In my experience, if you’re job hunting and don’t have an offer in hand by November 1st, you’re probably not going to get one until mid-January.
The “normal” interview process takes 4-6 weeks in my experience from application to offer/rejection. That is doubled between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day.
Why not just collect the paycheck and chill with some open source work for a bit while casually interviewing? If you have expenses that don't let you do that fine, but the stripe severance is more than my yearly spend.
On average US software engineers make much more money so even after any deficiencies like not paying holiday pay we still come out ahead. And even then, most companies will pay out holiday pay anyway regardless of state law, just as a matter of company policy.
We are specifically talking about Stripe workers. But yes, I’ve chosen a contract job with even less rights than a full time employee at certain times in my life for more pay.
For what it's worth, Stripe is the only place I've ever worked that did not pay out accrued PTO. It does so only in jurisdictions where it is legally required.
My company switched from PTO to “unlimited time away” to avoid paying out accrued PTO upon departure. Their original home state didn’t require it, so they didn’t. But then they acquired some companies in states that did require it and also let us all work remotely. It was cheaper for them to drop formal PTO and replace it with hand-wavy “time away”.
Wow. Can’t do that here (Australia) - I think to have an unlimited leave policy, you’d still have all employees accrue annual leave (PTO) at the legal rate, and then just let employees take free leave once their annual leave balance reached zero. Any balance you have when you leave (or are made redundant) then has to be paid out.
In California, accrued vacation is part of wages and must be paid out as part of wages. However, unlimited PTO policies typically don't accrue vacation.
In Washington, it's "read your contract." If your contract doesn't say that they pay out accrued PTO upon separation, they don't.
It should be in your contract, which means it was up for negotiation. Unless that's what you mean. While there's such high demand for tech workers, I would expect to see people being smarter with their contracts and picking up on things like that, start setting precedents.
At the moment the precedents are still heavily employee biased, but you ask for whatever you want in your contract during negotiations. Negotiate your sick pay, negotiate your PTO, negotiate your vesting schedules and exit terms, negotiate your hours and time in lieu policies. Negotiate your Intellectual Property terms. That one is super common to see lopsided toward the employer. We don't have unions or award rates, so we also miss out on some of those protections, hence why we need to make sure it's in the contract.
Even the nicest, fairest business owners I've worked for will start with industry standard contracts that do their best to shaft you, because it's industry standard and they don't see it as lopsided. But I've never had trouble negotiating for this stuff to be made clearer and fairer.
> It should be in your contract, which means it was up for negotiation.
Generally, employees in America do not have contracts. While plenty of things are open for negotiation during the offer/hiring process, I doubt you'll get an exception to a corporate policy on paying out on PTO if it's not something they already do.
That said, IME, accrued PTO has always been paid on departure (voluntary or not). For this reason, most of the places I've worked heavily encourage (or even require) taking PTO, because it's a liability on their books.
It seems common in the tech world, though? Amusingly, my current contract is from when the company was small, and explicitly guarantees provided lunch.
> Generally, employees in America do not have contracts.
Is that true? The company surely has terms for you, like expected working hours, terms about your sick leave, performance and health terms, out of office expectations, intellectual property disclosures and NDAs? Non-compete clauses? When does all that become binding if not through a contract?
A typical American tech worker's "contract" covers IP assignment and NDA. None of the other stuff is legally binding, and either side is free to change it or walk at any time.
I wonder if this is partly why upper-end salaries get so sky-high when compared to other country's tech sectors. It might be accounting for a level of risk that you could be cut off at any moment, especially in at-will states.
> It should be in your contract, which means it was up for negotiation
I've never seen this in the US. The only things typically up for negotiation is the sign on bonus/equity and base pay. If you start trying to negotiate vacations and holidays, you're going to look pretty silly.
I'm doing my best to understand this and be empathetic. Best of my brief research you haven't got any law bound entitlements so whatever the "status quo" is has been set by employers. So what I'm understanding here is that it's not even an agreement, it's just an understanding? Trying my best not to be inflammatory, as I understand this is a cultural thing for the US. But in a country with so little workers rights and entitlements, that high end workers are not even able to protect themselves with contracts seems silly.
> The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) does not require payment for time not worked, such as vacations, sick leave or federal or other holidays. These benefits are matters of agreement between an employer and an employee (or the employee's representative).
> The only things typically up for negotiation is the sign on bonus/equity and base pay. If you start trying to negotiate vacations and holidays, you're going to look pretty silly.
Everything is up for negotiation. Just depends whether or not you have options. I have seen PTO negotiated in the US.
This is better than standard in the US but I'm not sure I'd be happy if I was one of the laid off employees.
That 3.5 months and healthcare buys them some time to start interviewing and line up new work. However, they're competing with everyone else that's been laid off recently. There's another article on HN right now about Lyft laying off staff. Meta is getting pummeled in the stock market right now and Google has recently had hiring freezes. I'm not sure now is a good time to be looking for tech work in SF.
Unused PTO should be paid out. That was already earned by the employees.
Accelerated vesting is only good if you can afford to use it. How long do they have to exercise their options? What's the secondary market like right now for Stripe stock? Are they allowed to sell stock currently or required to hold it? In a worst case scenario, people could be unable to exercise their options because they don't have the savings to cover the tax bill and want to hold onto cash because they're unemployed and need the liquidity.
As for healthcare benefits, that's a result of a very broken system in the US and not something that should be celebrated.
I have no horse in this race, but an observation: the extraordinary value of this severance package is not a response to the GP's question. They asked how Stripe's leadership is personally demonstrating accountability, not what the corporation is doing to soften the blow.
That's how they're supporting their employees, but this would've already been accounted for anyway (the vesting, potential bonuses, pay through Feb 2023, etc), so this isn't accountability so much as it's "we'll, we won't see the immediate benefit until March"
Would've been a different story for instance if pc/jc were diluted with new grants to departing and existing employees.
What more do you want? They are paying out millions in cash ("out of the goodness in their heart"... ie they don't have to and people shouldnt expect) which is directly reducing the value of the equity, which impacts them more than anyone else by a huge proportion. Handing out equity grants makes no little sense to me and is unlikely what these employees want... "hey you're fired, here's some stock at our latest valuation pre correction".
I think the issue comes from the idea that in tough times, good leaders take their lumps before they expect it from their team. There's lots of colloquialisms that seem to fit this:
"Leaders eat last"
"We cut the fat starting at the top"
"Leaders need to have endurance beyond their troops"
I have no skin in the game either. The severance packages are commendable, but I don't think it actually answers the OP's question about accountability. I don't want to speak for the other commenter, but I think what they're looking for is some indication that the leadership has personally sacrificed something equal to or exceeding what they expected out of their subordinates. Giving out millions in severance, while commendable, isn't a personal sacrifice.
> Giving out millions in severance, while commendable, isn't a personal sacrifice.
Do y'all expect them to cut their arm off? I'm not defending pc but the OP's comment wreaks of corporate SJW.
> but I think what they're looking for is some indication that the leadership has personally sacrificed something equal to or exceeding what they expected out of their subordinates
Millions (and billions) come out of their valuation as a result. It's not like they're getting whisked away on a golden parachute.
> Millions (and billions) come out of their valuation as a result. It's not like they're getting whisked away on a golden parachute.
It's the exact opposite. They're more likely to stem the bloodletting of their valuation with layoffs extending runway or boosting profitabiliy than see it get worse.
Not at all. But we seem okay with management having a larger upside, given how the pay structure ratio has continued to evolve over the last few decades. I think it's only reasonable that, with outside rewards, management expects to take on outsized risk.
It feels like the social norms have shifted to accept one but not the other. In other words, we're only supportive of an asymmetrical risk:reward ratio that favors management.
> In other words, we're only supportive of an asymmetrical risk:reward ratio that favors management.
Actually we have, the risk:reward ratio is generally consistent across founder/management vs IC.
Are you simply saying that because CEO to IC pay ratio has expanded drastically in recent years that it's not accurately accounting for the risk? You realize that ~x% cut in workforce includes managers right? In fact, often times cheaper more productive ICs stay and expensive middle management is first to go. Seems like that is accounting for it no?
I thought this discussion was centered on the CEO pay. To that extent CEO pay has ballooned and I see very little evidence that their risk has been commensurate with that growth. If anything, the structure of contracts seems to indicate the opposite.
The company is not a charity. I expect no more from a company than to pay me for every hour I work. I can leave anytime I want and they can let me go anytime that the relationship is not mutually beneficial.
I keep a go to hell fund, an updated resume, an updated career document, a strong network of former coworkers, managers, and external recruiters and make sure my skillset is in line with the market.
I expect nothing from managers. When the pay/bullshit ratio starts going in the wrong direction, I have just as much agency to leave as they do to let me go.
You don't expect them to pay you? Treat you with respect? To observe labor laws? Surely, you expect something from them. Being willing and able to walk away is not the same thing as saying you have zero expectations.
I don't want anything; I have no intention of working for stripe.
But in the face of fundraising headwinds, a decision to cut costs like this only improves (or stabilizes anyway) their ability to raise at a valuation closer to what they're looking for in this down market. The severance package here only deferred the benefit to the bottom line, but it wasn't a consequence for over-hiring and potentially disrupting lives.
In other words, the layoffs actually benefit the founders directly, and it ends up becoming a perverse incentive to over-hire and lay off again with the next boom/bust. Successful accountability means people actually avoid doing shitty things.
> The severance package here only deferred the benefit to the bottom line, but it wasn't a consequence for over-hiring and potentially disrupting lives. In other words, the layoffs actually benefit the founders directly...
This is all complete nonsense. They're handing out millions of dollars they have no obligation to pay. Unlike cheap talk on the internet, this actually costs them quite a lot. This is extremely generous.
For the sake of argument, let's just assume that all of this is true and they are acting in self interest and everyone is horrible all the time.
I would still take the deal. I would work there if they hired me. If there are enough people like me to continue the business, then this thing turns out to not be shitty. Only time will tell.
> the layoffs actually benefit the founders directly, and it ends up becoming a perverse incentive to over-hire and lay off again with the next boom/bust. Successful accountability means people actually avoid doing shitty things.
This is exactly how business works. You should not be surprised. Their job is to ensure the company survives and that is really it. Everyone is expendable. None of these employees were guaranteed a long leisurely employment at Stripe.
Businesses change overnight. But it's always a cyclical market. As the founders I would expect them to benefit themselves. There doesn't have to be consequences, only change and adaptation. It's just business, they aren't your family.
To add to this, the lack of commitment is reciprocal. Employees can walk out the door any second... Stripe pulled these hundreds of employees from somewhere (I doubt they were all college grads). It's just business on both sides.
It's not out of the goodness of their heart. Stripe has to retain its existing employees and still attract talent, and the economic situation we're experiencing is only temporary. If they screw people over as they are leaving, they are shooting themselves in the foot.
No, the shareholders and the board are paying that out. It’s still dodging the original question.
It’s something a lot of us are sensitized to these days because of all the narcissists who “take full responsibility” which seems to mean to them that taking the blame is a dire punishment and no other consequences are necessary.
Being the scapegoat is not a real consequence. Not getting that villa you were talking to an agent about is a consequence. Not getting your bonus at all is a consequence.
This seems extremely generous to me. We don’t have to torture the founders because of economic conditions. It’s risky enough being a founder and this’ll have a downwind impact on them as well. For example, paying all these benefits means fewer hires, means less output, means their stock options might be worth less.
If you're getting rid of 14% of your staff I expect you to be making a lot fewer hires and having less output, as a result of having less employees, is also not surprising. Those are completely unrelated to the severance they pay their employees.
The general argument for high CEO pay is that it is a reward for their skill in the job. By that argument, if there is evidence that they're making mistakes that negatively impact the company shouldn't that directly impact them in terms of their compensation?
That is a remarkably generous severance package. My COVID severance when my company's local office went under was 2 weeks pay for 8 years of service. Healthcare terminated at the end of the month and they were sure to lay me off in the middle of the last week of the month.
Well done stripe. Maybe others can follow your example.
The 14 weeks of severance alone is probably worth ~$60 M [1]
Scrounging on the web suggests that Stripe may be EBITDA-profitable but not GAAP-profitable. $60M (perhaps double that with all the other benefits laid out here) is easily enough to delay GAAP profitability by a quarter or two. That may not seem like much, but it has a huge impact on investor sentiment.
How does this delay GAAP profitability? They paid out 3.5 months severance and their full 2022 bonuses. If they hadn't laid these people off then in the next 3 months (1 quarter) they would have paid them 3 months salary and their full 2022 bonuses.
To parent's point: no actual consequences for the people making the decision despite the claims that they are "fully responsible".
"Feeling super bad about this" is not actually a consequence.
I worked at a company that had massive layoffs, leadership claimed it was the hardest day of their life, two weeks later they were literally laughing about the people they laid off when they realized they already had to rehire for some of the positions.
Saying "we take full responsible" here doesn't translate to accountability, it means they want to start the conversation by absolving themselves of any guilt.
As has often been Stripe's way as a company, they are setting the bar for what other companies should strive toward. Has there ever been a more generous severance package posted to HN?
As the owner of a (much, much) smaller company, I'm inspired by how the Collisons run their business, especially under adverse circumstances. Yes, they fucked up in estimating the future market, but they are in good company among CEOs and non-CEOs lately.
That's not the founders taking personal responsibility unless they are paying for those benefits themselves. That's the company taking care of the employees, which is great. What GP was asking is how are the founders demonstrating accountability.
Maybe you need to reread the question. I think he's asking how this will affect you personally, not what you're doing for the people being layed of. This doesn't answer that question at all or at least comes across as a politicians answer.
I was in a somewhat similar situation - got laid off in 2020, with a great severance pay etc. I was on a working visa which got canceled within a couple of weeks (not sure how it works in the US, I was working in a different part of the world). The market was low so it was difficult to find something quickly to get another job visa. On top of that I couldn't get back to my home country, since the borders were closed due to COVVID. I had to live for several months on short-term visitor visas and had to renew the visas constantly - it was a separate bueracratic hell. Eventually I found a job and got a permanent visa, but these months cost me and my family a lot.
So here's the question - would it be (legally?) possible to put the visa holders on garden leave and pay them i.e. $1/m until they found a new job? Or at least do it temporary, for like 3 months or so. Because honestly, I didn't care at all about the money and stuff, the visa problem was absolute hell.
I want to say the same thing... this is a very generous severance package.
At one startup... I got called into the HR office on Monday morning, laid off with no advanced notice, and was only offered two weeks severance provided I signed a non-disclosure agreement that banned me from saying anything negative about the company for two years (and there was a lot I could've said).
That company also lied big time about their financials to get me to join in first place. So I learned some valuable life-lessons...
while this is certainly great (at least in the us standard), it's still different from "John and I are fully responsible for the decisions leading up to it."?
Immigration support should read like this if it is to align with even a grain of truth.
"We know that this situation is particularly tough if you’re a visa holder. Basically you are fucked. Here is a dildo sign to show you in picture what your situation is. There is nothing called non-employment visa. So here is a picture of two dildos if you are still reading this"
if you walk out on Friday and start a new job on Monday does the severance still apply? This setup is incredibly generous in my mind to the point where there's a lot of incentive to get laid off. If you got another job in a couple days and severance was still paid by Stripe then that+PTO+RSU+typical signing bonus is one hell of a payday.
> if you walk out on Friday and start a new job on Monday does the severance still apply?
If you "walk out" i.e. quit, then severance doesn't apply. Severance is for people they're laying off. But, yes, if you get let go on Friday, you can work elsewhere on Monday, unless Stripe has specific non-competes in place (which aren't legal a lot of places).
> This setup is incredibly generous in my mind to the point where there's a lot of incentive to get laid off. If you got another job in a couple days
When we're in an economic downturn, and a lot of other companies are conducting layoffs or hiring freezes that is easier said than done. Definitely was a rough experience in 2007/08 during the last big one.
Severance is usually one large lump sum, but I suppose you could set it up that paychecks keep coming even though you're no longer at work. Depends how they set it up.
But either way, they should still come even if you get hired immediately (except I guess hired back at Stripe).
This is what I hate about the internet rage machine. No research was done by people automatically assuming that the company was just going to send the employees packing with “thoughts and prayers”.
That’s very generous severance and the company doing right by its employees.
I don’t know how long the process is for non US citizens. But in my over 25 year career, and changing jobs eight times as a software developer, it has never taken me more than a month from actively looking to having a couple of offers. 14 weeks and bonus and paid out PTO is more than enough.
>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 response, the manager gets a massive bonus.
(2) A manager fires half their workforce, but gives them a generous severance. In response, the manager forgoes their salary for a year for being the one making that decision.
The second has personal accountability because they are making a personal sacrifice beyond what they expect from their subordinates, even though the employees are affected equally. I'd be willing to bet one organization has more institutional trust than the other.
My ex worked in a tiny office, the company got into trouble and her boss was asked to cut $###K from payroll. He had to cut at least one person that they really needed. It was bad.
In theory he had to cut her too, because he was something like $30K short of the goal and her salary as an office admin would have more than covered that. But then he’d have to do her job. His solution was to cut his own salary enough to hit the target to the decimal point.
They landed a new contract a handful of months later and were eventually able to hire back one of the people they lost.
I think he may have even backdated some raises they missed out on. He was her best boss.
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.
No, any job is just a method to exchange labor for money. I expect nothing from them but to keep their end of the bargain. I keep myself in a position where I just need a job, not the specific job.
A job is not a marriage. I’ve been through many “uncertain times” in over 25 years.
I depend on my savings, network, skillset, updated resume and updated career document, not “trusting” a for profit company.
Do you not expect anything out of your teammates? Do you have no expectations from customers? From politicians?
At a certain point, how you manage interpersonal relationships can limit your path. Sure, you can just devolve everything down to a transaction (even a marriage) and maybe that works for you. And you can create a life free from any obligations or commitments, outside what you want for the aesthetic life of your choosing.* But it doesn't seem like it would be the type of existence many people envy.
* David Brooks book "The Second Mountain" does a good job explaining the downsides of this approach.
> Do you not expect anything out of your teammates?
I expect the same from my coworkers as I expect from myself - that they do their best work for 40 hours a week.
> Do you have no expectations from customers?
I work in the cloud consulting department of BigTech. The expectations of my customers are spelled out in detail by high priced lawyers.
> From politicians
Hell no.
> At a certain point, how you manage interpersonal relationships can limit your path. Sure, you can just devolve everything down to a transaction
A for profit business and your relationship with your company is transactional. Especially in any large company. The CEO of my company wouldn’t know me from the other 1.6 million people that work at the company.
I had "trouble" finding work over the summer. But the actual details are that I was asking for $275k and $300k at two companies. Both gave me a verbal offers, but hiring froze. The third company, gasp, wanted me to come into their office (20 minutes down the street).
I also lived through 2001 and 2008. I think the last 12 years of perpetual growth have created some amazing expectations from people. I can only hope that, once I get laid off, I'll have to "settle" for some $175k job in an office after my 3 months of severance runs dry.
I have some health issues that started in the 2008 recession. So every time they flare up I think about that trauma.
I kept my job through that but it was a very head-down situation. Just put up with this shit until the market recovers. Then the company had a good year and so a bunch of us stayed to get the bonus. So February 2010 saw nine of us who had quit in 8 weeks, sitting in a bar celebrating our exodus. I asked if it was worth it (staying for the bonus).
One person said yes. Another said maybe. Seven people regretted staying. The bonus amounted to less than 20% of salary and we were under market at the time.
We used to have coffee and discuss how much we hated our boss Mike (not a pseudonym. Fuck you Mike, you brown nosing ladder climber). My peer called our favorite table the Conspiracy Table.
Listen, Software Developers should not give up whatever we got so far. If we pushed for these salaries and quality of life, hold on to it. Don’t sit here and tell the tribe “some of you want too much”.
Few professions earned this quality of life, doctors and lawyers, and I can promise they aren’t sitting around going “maybe we’re spoiled, maybe we oughtta curtail our expectations”.
No, take the life you have and don’t go backward. Most people working aren’t given an ounce from their industries, many of them still fight for basic stuff to this day.
Tech should not be okay with these levels of lay offs and still revere these companies. This is the stuff the car industry did when they just offshored jobs, and collapsed entire cities (Detroit). Why should we be okay with the same playbook?
Absolutely! I declined multiple offers this summer because they would have been pay cuts. We agree.
> Few professions earned this quality of life
Well that is a can of worms. I'm going to guess Doctors deserve much better. I think the unfortunate reality is that, maybe, tech workers haven't earned this quality of life. Instead, we are the lucky recipients of decades of growth. This is something that isn't even shared in Canada or Europe, much less Asia, in terms of salary.
> This is the stuff the car industry did when they just offshored jobs,
Agree, this is going to be bad. Now that we have shown productivity with work from home, how tied are companies to these high USA salaries?
I'm not ok with it. But I also remember that when I'm running around looking for a job, the people with that job are making the demands. This is something that tech workers haven't actually experienced for a decade, but every other industry has.
> okay with these levels of lay offs and still revere these companies
Revere these companies? Founders are taking risks to make a LOT of money. They aren't here to make employees money. I don't revere these companies, and I don't put any stock in their Family Friendly or work life balance encouraged, marketing nonsense.
> Absolutely! I declined multiple offers this summer because they would have been pay cuts. We agree.
This is financially nonsensical. Every month you delay working you have to make more to get the same amount over the course of the year.
Just to make up a number, if your target was $120K and they offered you $110K and it took you a month longer to get $120K, you would need to make over $130K just to reach $120K.
I would take close to what I wanted and then change jobs if something better came along.
> PTO. We’ll pay for all unused PTO time (including in regions where that’s not legally required).
I'm sorry, but the wording rather funny. That sort of suggests that it was somehow an option to not pay for used PTO, even if they are legally required to.
There are rarely if ever any serious consequences to top execs screwing up wealthy companies.
Such execs are usually already so wealthy that they never have to work another day in their life, no matter what happens or how much they screw up.
They can always find other prestigious, high paid jobs, and sometimes even get rewarded with huge amounts of money from the very companies they screwed over.
"Their psychic abilities failed? A coin flip came up tails but they bet on heads?"
Isn't it interesting how we want to absolve execs of all blame when they bet wrong and get unlucky, but declare them geniuses and masters of business when they bet right and get lucky?
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone here express the sentiment that execs and CEOs are geniuses for leading a profitable company. If anything, it seems like it’s us engineers who like to consider ourselves brilliant, and that the simple-minded management should be so lucky to have us.
Like creating a company that gives thousands of people jobs? Or creating infrastructure to enable millions of web based businesses the ability to mindlessly process payments? God, I miss the old HN. This place is reddit now.
Who built the railroads? J. P. Morgan, or the millions of people who worked for him?
Not surprising to see execs and founders on here patting each other on the back and trying to convince everyone that they deserve their millions because of how innovative they are all the "value" they create. Looks like the old HN to me.
“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.”
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.
That's what I've seen (from the outside, with some friends who work at Stripe) as well - it's the old investment banking / management consulting work culture, i.e. your job is your life.
preparing for an eventual end to the free money rally instead of over-hiring isn't exactly something I'd consider to fall into the realm of psychic abilities.
is "we're a fast growing business but this cannot last indefinitely, let's not overexpand" ´really too much to ask for? It's constantly happening to tech companies because of their internal fantasies.
If they under-expand, people will similarly complain when their stock languishes compared to other stocks and the board will replace them with someone telling a growth story. The only thing the stock market rewards is growth, so is it really their fantasy?
> There are rarely if ever any serious consequences to top execs screwing up wealthy companies.
That is because any exec worth her salt would negotiate a generous golden parachute even before starting the job. And why is she able to do that? Because there are very few competent candidates available in the market. If you think the job is easy, just go and get one of those exec positions and you will learn.
Yes, but that is not possible to know a priori. So people rely on heuristics. And if things go wrong, execs want to make sure that they have a golden parachute.
Do you have an idea to judge exec competence effectively? If so, you can have a very successful company based on that.
Isn't that how things should be in a society? We should encourage people to make bold bets and start real companies like Stripe which offer valuable services. I am happy that they made a bold bet, just like I am happy people start companies when they can easily join an established company and have a comfortable life.
Just to be sure, there is a big difference between a bold bet based on your market or product insights vs putting everything on black on the roulette table.
> "They're rewarded for making bold bets, whether or not they pay off."
If leaders were rewarded for being conservative instead of making bold bets, Linux and open source would never have taken off, nor would most tech startups.
"Today, effective immediately, I, Gavin Belson, founder and CEO of Hooli, am forced to officially say goodbye to the entire Nucleus division. All Nucleus personnel will be given proper notice and terminated. But make no mistake. Though they're the ones leaving, it is I who must remain and bear the heavy burden of their failure."
They know what accountability is. That's why they never use the word.
Yeah we know you're responsible for it, but how are you being held accountable for it?
No one will remember in two years time, but my hope is it'll factor into candidates' decisions around whether to pursue a career with Stripe. If I've got senior executives without accountability, it's a distraction to my ability to deliver the product as well as to lead my own teams supporting their vision because it means I can't rely on them, and this outcome with absolutely no accountability behind it is a good enough reason for me to never want to join Stripe in the future.
Not a CEO, but I'm reminded of the incident on a Navy vessel that struck a fishing boat and resulted in a number of fatalities. The captain was actually off the vessel at the time and not in charge. He still resigned because he was accountable to the decision on who he left in charge.
(Tbf, I'm sure he was told to resign. But that's largely because the Navy has tried to institute a culture of accountability, albeit imperfectly)
The salaries of Japanese execs are indeed tiny by US standards. However, as Kalzumeus says, instead of paying money so you can buy status, Japanese companies give status directly: company cars with drivers, company villas, very generous expense accounts, etc etc.
Remember, “companies don’t exist to make you happy. You know that, right? The business doesn’t exist to serve you. The business exists to serve your customers,” reminds McCord.
Good examples of self accountability? Sadly not. (Edit: see huffmsa for a good example)
Good examples of accountability to the board? All over. But boards care (by mandate) only about profit unless specified otherwise. There's no incentive for a board to care about whether people are put out on the street either; it's one of the major reasons for why unions exist and are successful: they provide a mechanism for accountability that ties adverse employee decisions back to future revenue loss.
Tl;Dr: nope, and that's sadly by design because why would anyone be self-accountable when the consequences hit the wallet? I was hoping for a ray of light to pierce the dark.
Unions have a range of outcomes for business success. Yes, some may hold management accountable and ultimately help companies; others screw over everyone besides long tenured employees. Suppose Stripe was unionized and somehow the union had convinced management to stop hiring in February 2022 which is the level they’re reducing headcount to now. Would the laid off employees been better off in that world without a year of Stripe employment, income, and benefits? It’s very unclear.
>somehow the union had convinced management to stop hiring in February 2022
Why would the union do this? It seems like a contrived example to prove a point. Unions would conceivably benefit from more hires because they would have more union membership.
My anecdotal experience is that unions are a massive benefit to laid-off employees. Laid off employees were given 80% pay while they waited with a known re-hire date. In other cases, they are given priority when the company is looking to rehire with an unknown rehire date. Unions have downsides, for sure, but I don't think your example points them out here.
There are plenty of unions that keep supply low. Nearly every labor union in California, for example, has underfunded apprenticeship programs for exactly this reason. I’m surprised you aren’t aware this is a phenomenon. Unions answer to their current members, and there’s plenty of incentive to keep the current membership smaller.
And my example was simply continuing the original poster’s insinuation that a union could have helped management avoid the over hiring mistake they were about to make by making the consequences of that mistake greater.
To be clear, I was technically a non-union employee in a union shop so that may explain some of my ignorance. (Most of the white collar employees were non-union. The controls engineers were in a quasi-union status without actually joining the union. It was a weird situation because of some ongoing legal battles.)
What you said does make sense though. The union apprentiships were extremely competitive, possibly because they were constrained to low numbers.
I read it as "this was our decision" as opposed to "this is our fault". Basically they are saying not to blame and middle managers, investors, board members or whatever.
I think whatever a leader does which isn’t ritual suicide when announcing layoffs is going to get criticism. People in power hired when expecting an uptick and fired when expecting a downtick.
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 Zuckerberg's personally lost $76B in the last 12 months, more than the entire shareholder value loss of Enron's collapse. Zucc still has so much money that an uncountable number of generations of his offspring will still never need to work again in their lives.
Why do people keep working and earning more when they are set for life--what actual practical purpose does megawealth serve once you've guaranteed your standard of living for you and your offspring? The purpose is lack of accountability. Megawealth means you can spend every remaining day of your life screwing up, and besides doing something illegal that lands you in jail, you'll never suffer a consequence.
> Why do people keep working and earning more when they are set for life--what actual practical purpose does megawealth serve once you've guaranteed your standard of living for you and your offspring?
I think this is the wrong question to ask -- "what end is this a means to anymore". One of the largest challenges in life is pursuit of meaning, and Zuck has, at least he thinks, found it. He still has consequences, but they are higher up on Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
You could argue that those in charge should have enough at stake to feel the burn of a layoff like this, but this issue isn't dissimilar to biology. We often make local (and temporary) sacrifices on behalf our own bodies, knowing "we" will still be around afterwards to enjoy life and the removed parts won't (removing limbs, wiping out blood cells, organ removal, etc.). This isn't 1:1 with Zuck, because Zuck is more than just his role in Meta, but close enough.
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.
No, they’re making a business decision and they should simply treat it as such and avoid the whole “please understand how hard this is for me, the guy who will continue getting a very large paycheque” thing, that makes it worse.
If they just give it to you straight, there’s no bullshit - the people fired may be mad or upset but they'll be mad or upset regardless because being fired sucks. If they start hand-wringing, talking about how painful it was for them and how they take full responsibility people will ask “hang on, how exactly is this painful for you? how are you taking responsibility, what are you doing about it?”
Ya know.... Founders and CEO's are responsible every day. They created the business for people to have jobs, they have to deal with it when the business cannot support the jobs. When things in the macro economy change, sometimes the business can't operate at the same level it was before.
People like to <poop> on CEO's & leaders in good times, but employees often forget that while the employee can just go get another job, the leaders have to keep hundreds, thousands, of people employed while also retaining customers and dealing with investors. They have to deal with keeping those hundreds/thousands employed every...single... day.
Please. Stripe is privately held so let's look at a market comp, SQ.
SQ 2021 Revenue: $17B
SQ 2021 cash and short term investments: $5.3B
Stripe 2021 Revenue: $12B
Similar businesses, operating in the same market, with the nearly the same number of employees (about 8000). Barring exceptional circumstances, we would expect their financial health to be roughly similar.
You said it yourself:
> the leaders have to... [deal] with investors
The economy is contracting and their share price is falling. They could afford to dip into cash and keep everyone on board but their investors are more concerned about propping up the valuation. They don't have two shits to give about the people they're letting go.
Disagree. A CEO does not cut employees during a time when others are laying off unless business doesn't need / can't support/ not prudent to retain those employees.
Why? Because periods like now is the absolute best time to steal market share from established companies - which would grow the team and business. Startups (competitors) begin to post less risk because they'll be hard to find financing.
So - if growing the business is a CEO's top responsibility...if the leadership felt they could steal business from others that experience attrition - they would. My guess is they don't seem to feel that way about the current moment.
> The economy is contracting and their share price is falling. They could afford to dip into cash and keep everyone on board but their investors are more concerned about propping up the valuation.
They're worried about surviving the contraction, nobody knows how long it will last and that cash only goes so far.
> They created the business for people to have jobs
No, the created the business in attempt to get wildly wealthy and unfortunately they can't do this without also having to hire a bunch of people. They certainly don't create the business for the sake of employing people.
> People like to <poop> on CEO's & leaders in good times
In my experience the opposite is true, in good times people can't help but <polish the nob> of CEO's & leaders, since easy employment and good pay make the fundamentally exploitative nature of their relationship less visible.
> employees often forget that while the employee can just go get another job, the leaders have to keep hundreds, thousands...
of thousands of dollars in their account even when they "fail".
The key difference is that if I don't get another job, I lose my house and ultimately the ability to feed myself. If I don't play the game I quite literally am sentenced to death. The CEO of that lays off thousands can very easily spend the rest of their days in comfortable retirement at any given point.
I need to sell my labor to live, CEOs need my labor to get richer.
I don’t understand responses like this. They are returning to February headcount. The executive team also made the long term planning decisions which gave those people jobs for the last 9 months (and income for the next 3). Would the right thing to do have been not choosing to give more people a living for 13 months at least? Are companies to never speculatively invest in growth?
A lot of people would genuinely prefer for companies to never make risky investments in growth, yes. If you’ve ever wondered how the Japanese norm of lifetime employment can be sustained, this is why; many employees prefer it to a system where they might discover one day that their job was dependent on a speculative investment that didn’t pan out.
In a lot of ways it is, and it's my understanding (although I can't claim any personal knowledge of this part) that in the past couple of years things have been changing. But I've had conversations with people who know their job is worse than it would be at the Stripes of the world - worse pay, worse office, worse benefits, worse hours - and yet they're still not interested in applying elsewhere because they're confident they can stay in their first job until retirement. Some people really do value stability and job security above anything else in their career.
Why are any of those things necessary? Are those people unable to get other jobs or go launch their own startup (putting that massive severance package to good use)?
These risks come with the territory; there's a whole rest of the world outside of Silicon Valley where things move a lot slower; beyond that, there's still another rest of the world where people are literally struggling to put food in their mouths.
Working in a startup and getting big salaries and stock options, but possibly losing said options, are all part of the risk of doing a startup, and the people who took the initial risks will always deserve a bigger piece of the pie.
Given the labor market you could even argue those getting laid off are coming out ahead of those they're keeping. Getting laid off into a super tight labor market with that kind of severance package is almost like winning the lottery.
I want to make it clear that i'm 100% supportive of what Stripe is doing though. It's exceptionally generous and unorthodox to do this for your (soon to be former) employees.
You think there should be negative consequences to the founders for expertly managing the business...?
To many it looked like covid, wfh, etc resulted in a new world with a permanent step level increase in the internet economy that caused Stripe's business to dramatically increase and thus the founders grew the company to support the activity and continue being the best and most innovative internet payment service.
It turns out unfortunately the growth was temporary, inflation skyrocketed, and the world is probably heading into a recession that will further decrease or slow the growth of the internet economy and thus Stripe's business, so the founders are acting quickly and responsibly to cut costs in order to maintain a position of financial strength and continue growing the business and being the best and most innovative internet payment service.
In time, if Stripe continues to succeed and have exceptional business performance, the consequences to the founders should be financial reward for taking quick and effective beneficial action that grew the business.
> 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? ...
They don't owe you anything. Not an action. Not even an explanation. The world doesn't owe you anything either.
Why act like the founders have to grovel and beg for forgiveness? They don't. If they had been extra cautious during covid in expectation for the economy to take a dive would stripe be in a better position today? Absolutely not.
They are taking responsibility by admitting their strategic error. That's enough. They have not performed poorly as executives they are not going to punish themselves in the manner proposed by OP.
I thought "fully responsible" means that the decisions were theirs and came from them. It was not from some other executives, nor from their investors or their board of directors. If there's any consequence from the layoff, the consequence will be on them. Given that layoff is not necessarily evil as many perceive, their claim of taking full responsibility seems fair.
You could have made billions on the stock market by accurately predicting this.
It's good to see leaderships take responsibility and change course in the best possible way. But the whole this is our fault, we should have seen this coming story is a bit nonsense. They are just being nice about the messy situation and taking responsibility even though its outside their control.
Personally, what I want out of "accountability"—in general, not just here—is not consequences for their own sake (or for punishment) but rather taking actions to address the problem and bearing the natural costs of those actions. This should include immediate as well as long-term actions:
1. Some way to help with the immediate layoff. Reasonable severance/etc is about what I'd expect.
2. Concrete action to prevent the problem in the future. The post identifies specific errors in judgement and at least pays lip service to avoiding layoffs in the future.
I'm not sure how serious they are about 2—given the structure and incentives of large corporations, how serious they even could be about it—but at least they're talking about it. I would not be surprised to see growth pressure overwhelming any strategic or cultural changes they make today if business conditions pick up again, with the whole cycle repeating over the next 5–10 years.
> 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 thousands of people. I suppose the fear is that without any "Shame" these companies will hire and fire spuriously without repercussion?
Relatively speaking I think Stripe handled this well. Yes it was a mistake to hire these people, but now that you're here it would be a bigger mistake to keep people you don't need.
I wonder if every company would be so forthright about this or whether many would just "cut" "low performers" at an accelerated rate over a year with no severance.
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.
> the thrust of the remark is to put some sort of public "shame" on companies that perform layoffs
I don't think that's what he meant. He is asking whether the CEO is just blowing hot air when they say "we take full responsibility..." or whether there are consequences to their bad decisions, i.e., responsibility for those decisions.
I'm not a native speaker, but I think taking responsibility does not necessarily imply consequences. The opposite of taking responsibility is assigning blame (eg "our underlings hired too many people it was their mistake").
That's probably true, and likely why the commenter finds that a CEO "taking responsibility" is so obnoxious.
Either the CEO is implying that they aren't always responsible, which is bogus, or they are stating an obvious fact as an empty platitude, which is most likely the case, or perhaps they're implying that to them "responsibility" means more than just "taking the blame" which is probably not the case here.
not even necessarily CEOs... just the phrase "taking responsibility" seems to have been diluted to usually mean nothing in most corporate settings.
software dev here - was working with a client, and a pm was pushing some not-great idea. I pushed back - "this is not core, not important, shouldn't be a focus, other things are more important, and already decided".
Pushback from them: "no no no, this is vital. Look... if there's a problem, I'll take responsbility".
6 months later, there's a lot of complications that I'd foreseen (and documented) earlier which were summarily ignored at the time. The "I'll take responsibility" person isn't on the project any more - they left. I'm fielding a bunch of "why was this done? this wasn't agreed on - what were you thinking?"
Well... when I don't do what they ask for, I'm stubborn/obstinate/roadblocking/etc. When I do it... it's wrong. Even if that original person was still around, I would be the one fixing all the bad data, having to reverse out the changes, revert to earlier state while keeping newer code in place. The "I'll take responsibility" is essentially meaningless in many situations. And I called that out too at the time and was told I'm too negative/cynical. It's just experience.
Lest this be seem like doom and gloom, I've experienced the opposite situation from above, where 'ownership' and 'responsibility' and whatnot were more enforced and honored across an organization, but it's been very rare in my experience over the last 20 years, and seems to be getting even less common. Having seen both situations, it's easier to tell the difference.
More and more folks having shorter tenures makes it harder for any org/team ethos to 'stick' for any meaningful impact, and absent that, it takes a lot more organizational effort to keep a commitment to stated corporate values. Not impossible, just hard to do, and often slips...
>taking responsibility does not necessarily imply consequences
I guess that's the problem? These days leaders have no problem "taking responsibility" to make themselves look good when there's no consequence("hey I did what all good leaders do").
I think the ball is in your court when launching an ad hominem attack (before we even get to the question of whether it is relevant) It seems like that should be easy enough to provide some evidence for, if it’s true.
> "they take responsibility" what does that even mean? It's meaningless.
It means they're not blaming anyone else for this. The opposite of taking responsibility is assigning blame. They aren't assigning blame, they're taking responsibility.
They have to live with it and feel like shit and still run THEIR business. You make a mistake, you don't fire yourself and give up everything you work for, you do the best you can and move on. Don't like how they operate? Build your own business and hire thousands of people and then when you make a mistake fire yourself instead.
I was talking about the alleged 'responsibility' by the billionaire owners. Yet said responsibility doesn't lead to job loss or anything. It's empty words.
> Though the bottom 14% is a pretty big amount to cut, almost certainly some decent performers in that group.
I don't think you can only cut "poor performers" in any sort of bulk layoffs. You can avoid it in aggregate, but there will be enough mistakes, enough teams that need to cut a number but don't have enough poor performers, or even enough high performers who are just on teams that are deemed no longer necessary.
I've seen a company's culture effectively be killed overnight because one "low performer" was cut off. Not every impact an employee has is directly represented in their own bottom line.
The company in question was able to stomach this because it would go on to undergo significant structural changes anway but it basically had to start building a new company culture from scratch and doing it top-down is much harder than building on something you've developed organically via your early hires.
EDIT: Since I'm rate-limited right now, I'll elaborate here: it was a company with a number of employees in the low 2 digits at the time and the employee in question had been involved (indirectly via another venture in the same office space and later directly) since before the company even got off the ground. They were in a non-technical role at a tech company but on good terms with most employees and genuinely cheerful about company branding and everyone being "the company" rather than just working on cool tech that happened to be sold by that company. Basically they acted as social glue, both between other employees but also between those employees and the company. Some other (higher performing) employees left after them but I doubt most could point at what it was that pushed them to quit even though this employee's departure was likely a major contributing factor. I could go into more detail but I want to preserve the anonymity of everyone involved, especially those no longer working at the company.
I've seen individuals who are the primary connection between two important departments; say IT and sales, speaking both languages enough to translate. On paper, not much work done; in reality, critical for smooth operation.
That is true at a company level but if you want to have an authentic company culture, you need more glue, not less. Managers can fulfill that function to some degree but the key difference is that managers are in a position of power towards the rest of the team, which changes the social dynamics and makes it harder for them to create cohesion within the team the same way someone at the team's level can. This is also extremely difficult to hire for.
So what you usually end up at 3 or 4 digit companies is astroturf and mandatory fun days. The adhesion to the company will be fueled by sales and marketing, the cohesion within teams will be imposed by team building techniques. It's all very artificial and superficial because you can't grow social bonds top-down.
It can be profitable and when you've grown this large employee churn will likely be less of a problem (see Meta) but it's a much less pleasant environment to exist in as a human being.
I'd hope so, but it's a lot harder to identify the high performers, figure out where to transfer them to, cut low performers from the teams they're moving to, etc. Unfortunately much easier to just cut teams as the company cuts scope.
It’s very easy to have people who are widely regarded as high performers. But transfers are often limited when layoffs are happening and, in practice, execs often don’t want to transfer headcount to other teams even if it’s probably the right thing to do from an overall company perspective.
Identifying high performers can be subjective, just look at Google's promotion practices. Productive engineers also tend to get paid more, making them an attractive target when reducing payroll spend.
Yep. You have someone who the mythical company “they” think is awesome but their team was disbanded, there’s no ideal and obvious role for them, transfers are mostly on hold anyway, etc. At some point a bunch of people are sorry they couldn’t find a way to keep the person but they can’t really do anything. And parking them somewhere they aren’t really a good fit isn’t ideal anyway.
When the infighting gets serious enough to be obvious to an outside observer is my threshold.
If it's just some folks getting miffed because someone from another department stepped on their toes or made some unkind comments about their team, then that shouldn't be too serious.
Very good question. As I said before, the time to IPO was in 2019 [0] and Stripe should have hastened and IPO'ed then and now it had it's valuation slashed [1] and instead had to postpone and wait, just like the rest of the other startups who were too late. [2]
So, not really a surprise that this happened to Stripe.
> after the huge hiring spree in the last 2 years.
Would be useful to see some charts of all those "hiring sprees" that happened during the last 2 years at the big US tech companies, and how the curves on those charts would compare to "normalized" charts had the pandemic/hiring sprees not existed (i.e. if the headcount in 2020-2021 would have increased following the same hiring trends of 2019, 2018 etc).
This is my take on it. Everyone went crazy on hiring. Nothing is crashing, it's just the market returning to normal. Well, except for Meta. They're having a bad time lol.
You should see the financials from some Indian unicorns that raised hundreds of millions in 2020-22. $5-6M in revenue, $50M in expenses. No money anywhere.
VCs were way too exuberant and founders were more than happy to mop up the capital.
And here I was, working with a startup that had difficulty landing $500K. It was my first foray into being a founder, but I learned that I do not understand the investing landscape at all.
Matt Levine of Bloomberg has a quote about Adam Neumann that is just... amazing. It's about selling in a sellers market and basically about how he sold We Work shares to Softbank (and taking money out of it).
I see stocks as fundamentally two things. A statistical thing (something that tracks the underlying fundamentals of a business, and a probability (a belief in that company). Yes, this alludes to classical frequentist statistics vs Bayesian statistics interpretations.
It's impossible to cut 14% and making sure those are only bottom performers. You'd have to reorg the whole company if that were the case because some 8 person teams might have 1 bottom performer (and thus become 7), others might have 2 or 3 and thus become (5 or 6 people. They'd then want to add more people to be a big enough team again etc etc, so those would have to come from other teams that then get merged)
Is it? They probably just haven't had time to update it. Also a lot of times online job listings mean nothing. They are just left up even if they are not actively hiring.
I think it is. Firing is horrendously expensive, so most companies will follow a progression of cuts before resorting to layoffs. They'll typically start with perks (e.g. travel / team entertainment / office space) and then progress to a hiring freeze, and then move to layoffs.
In Stripe's instance it seems like they went directly to layoffs. I heard that they did institute a PIP process last year but not sure what percent they cut.
14% seems like a very high number to me to axe at once, how have you got 1 in 7 employees that your business doesn't need to function when it is growing.
Ah. It all makes sense now. It is cheaper for them to layoff with a decent 3 month severance than it is to pay high interest on the debt that is funding their salaries (interest rate will stay high > 1 year, going by Powell’s comments).
I am glad they did it transparently, but I wish they had been more open about this fact. Shifts the entire perspective IMO.
With 3x growth during the pandemic it seems that the layoff would be avoidable by reducing future growth factor. So what the letter doesn't say is that they layoff people to have better numbers to show to investors, not because it's not sustainable.
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.
Not how it works from a financial analysis point of view. When interest rates rise money further down the line is rapidly devalued and cash flows in the near future are reprioritized. And firing people today and taking small layoff costs is much more accretive to the bottom line than growth down the line.
Also: Seems like the whole of VC is now on the FCF/Opex control train.
People own companies. Just like people own tvs, computers, phones. Do you ever go to someone and say "hey, are you using your phone in the way that's best for humanity?"
They're paying severance, bonus, healthcare, etc which is the only way to do an ethical layoff. CEOs that wait until the last minute to do layoffs and then pay little to no severance are shitty people, and no one should trust to work for them ever again. CEOs that provide a softer landing for laid off employees should be rewarded by not having their reputations destroyed in the mind of current and prospective employees. It's a display of ethics and competence.
1) Any Stripers looking for work we have plenty (https://publicdomaincompany.com/) and it's as meaningful as it gets. breck7@gmail.com or 1-415-937-1984
2) Saving this in case I ever need to tell a portfolio company how to do a layoff.
As someone who went through the process at Stripe, I recommend giving managers more awareness ahead of time and perhaps some forewarning to the company at large ahead of time
Speaking of layoffs: Meta needs to layoff 12% because they hired a lot of non-value-add, low-skilled, nontechnical employees just to meet DEI goals. They hangout in vast, empty offices and chat like they're on vacation and have nothing better to do. It's difficult to tell what most people do because they hired way too many people too fast without a clear understanding of how they're supposed to map to building the business. They need to cut 80% of building leases and 50% of CapEx spend too.
Stripe has barely trimmed their internal valuation. Their best public comp, Square, has lost 80% of it's market cap since the peak. Stripe on the other hand, has trimmed theirs 22%. The people most hurt by this are employees at refresher and offer time given their yearly vest schedule.
> The world is now shifting again. We are facing stubborn inflation, energy shocks, higher interest rates, reduced investment budgets, and sparser startup funding. (Tech company earnings last week provided lots of examples of changing circumstances.) On Tuesday, a former Treasury Secretary said that the US faces “as complex a set of macroeconomic challenges as at any time in 75 years”, and many parts of the developed world appear to be headed for recession. We think that 2022 represents the beginning of a different economic climate.
To justify the move, Stripe is pointing in every direction except their own operational situation. What's going on at Stripe?
> ... We provide an important foundation to our customers and Stripe is not a discretionary service that customers turn off if budget is squeezed. ...
Ok, so are you saying that business has taken such a dive so quickly that you're trying to get in front of it? Or are there more announcements like this on tap?
Yikes, that's a huge cut. Hopefully this is part of defaulting alive and they won't have to make another cut like that. Layoffs are painful for everyone involved.
I've been laid off twice, and it's always painful, hurtful and damaging to my mental health. Take care of yourself the best you can, there is a fair amount of research now that says layoffs can have lingering mental health affects for years to come. [1]
Some resources that might be helpful: flexjobs.com is a good curated job board for remote work. teamblind.com is a professional social networking site for engineers, it's generally super toxic, but the community comes together for layoffs and a lot of people will offer referrals.
This is a phenomenal severance package and I hope one that will set the standard for companies doing layoffs. So many companies in the US do two weeks or less, with nothing else (not even healthcare) or even use it to claw back shares.
In addition to normal things that suck about layoffs another thing I don't like about the layoffs from Lyft, Coinbase and Stripe is their equity policy. All of them went from fixing the 4 year grant on day one to a fixed yearly dollar value making the # of units you get every year variable. Obviously this only applied to ICs and not directors. Stock goes up you get fewer units, stock goes down you get more units. They said this is to help the employee during a downtime, but during downtimes they just end up laying people off.
Reading this letter, seems like they're also going to try to cut cloud costs. A consultant who wanted to travel around companies and help them lower cloud costs could make a KILLING right now.
I am suddenly seeing articles about multiple US tech companies doing layoffs / pausing hiring on HN as well, not sure why and how all this relates....Has global recession started???
Long ago. It's going to get worse before it gets any better, IMO.
Companies have to be forward looking, not backward or just present looking. If there's tough times ahead, you want to be ahead of, not behind market headwinds.
All these companies have way more employees than they need. 90% of employees mostly add complexity and the remaining 10% spend most of their time trying to refactor all the unnecessary complexity. So I'm not surprised by this.
I hope these layoffs will be good for the industry as ex-employees join competitors... Maybe in such competitive environment, people will care about writing maintainable code again. The effects of the corporate employment bloat are visible all around us.
As a general comment about fears of layoffs and being rehired. Keep in mind the scale of these layoffs vs jobs reports. Sep Jobs report 263000[1] jobs added. The layoffs this year (according to layoffs.fyi) are about 195000-- less than a single month's added. Yes they're not the same job, yes they're likely at a lower total comp. But we're not talking about everyone having No job like in the great depression. We're talking about people having to shift into the sectors that are growing and maybe tighten up their budgets.
Now, as for where my real concern is imagine making even $15 an hour and finding out that necessities[2] are outpacing your already pay check to pay check life? I really feel for those folks who didn't over leverage themselves and are suffering despite working full time.
Remember that fear is a tool the capital class uses as leverage against those without options (or who believe they dont have options). Things like getting you to accept lower pay than they know they can offer, scaring you to take on excess load so they can fire your friends, and controlling the narrative and getting in front of it so they can profit when the masses shift sentiment. Focus on making yourself independent, resilient, and generally informed, and you'll have far more negotiating power.
In many EU countries if you are fired without being your fault or there is a mass lay-off, the law demands the company pays you some compensation. The law also demands the company to give you a notice period, so you are able to find another employment.
It seems many people are woved because Stripe has the generosity of granting severance pay to people they laid off.
It doesn't seem like a generosity to me, it's more PR on one hand and on the other hand they want the developers good will if there is going to be a market growth in the near future and they will go again on a hiring spree.
It's Stripe's management fault they did wrong calculations betting on explosive growth, going on a hiring spree to support that falsely accounted growth and the going to fire some hard working fault. But somehow they manage to turn this into a PR success and painting their mess as a win. It's not a win, it's a loss. And I would think twice before applying to Stripe in the future.
Stripe is a great company. I interviewed there once and they passed, and I still think it’s a great company.
Pat Collison is one of the great hackers of our age, and he embodied the YC motto better than most: “Make something that people want.”
I’m sure the cuts are painful, but as a person who is quite literally bereaved: life goes on, and Stripe will still be a great company 5 or 10 years from now.
>"Earlier today, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison sent the following note to Stripe employees."
>"Today we’re announcing the hardest change we have had to make at Stripe to date. We’re reducing the size of our team by around 14% and saying goodbye to many talented Stripes in the process"
We are "reducing the size of our team" and "saying goodbye"? I'm of the opinion that words matter and more so when they are from the company CEO. Is there some reason why a CEO who is "announcing the hardest change we have had make" is unable to use the language that reflects the reality? Can the person who is paid the big bucks to make the big decisions really not bring himself to use the word "layoff" in announcing layoffs? Is he really that cowardly? A CEO is supposed to be a leader. It takes him 8 paragraphs before he uses the actual word "layoff."
1) Any Stripers looking for work we have plenty (https://publicdomaincompany.com/) and it's as meaningful as it gets. breck7@gmail.com or 1-415-937-1984
2) Saving this in case I ever need to tell a portfolio company how to do a layoff.
Folks from Stipe and other companies!
I know that layoffs are brutal. We are primarily at tech-winter.
At the same time, we, Wise (formerly TransferWise) - actively looking for engineers, product managers, and engineering managers, designers.
Many roles are open, and we are growing quite a lot!
We have a product our customers love, and we care about our employees a lot!
We are pretty good financially and have a clear vision of which one we are executing.
If you are interested - you can browse the list of open roles here: https://grnh.se/1f3d39a91us and apply for them.
You can write me directly, and I will try to answer anything as much as possible.
I'd wait a week or so to see how that changes. If you tell recruiting to pull down all of those job postings it kind of tips your hand that a big change is coming
>For candidates or potential candidates based in Colorado, please reach out to colorado-wages@stripe.com to request compensation and benefits information regarding particular roles. Please include the city in Colorado where you reside and the titles of the applicable roles and/or links to the roles along with your request.
which seems to be a violation of the CO law[0]:
>Effective January 1, 2021, Part 2 of the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, C.R.S. § 8-5-101 et seq., requires employers to include compensation in job postings
So I doubt they care either way. I'm guessing they'll pursue a similar strategy if challenged.
Situations like this are part of my thesis on scaling employees vertically.
People get into growth mode and overhire and then have to lay off when the bill comes due. Or permanent attrition which is also stressful.
Productivity improvement via expensive tools and training is easier to pull back from when you get to the end. It slows the headcount ramp, which resides the fishtailing at the end.
Plus I just feel far better when I can say that the team can produce more functionality per month today than six months ago. Teams that slowly grind to a halt are one of my personal Hells.
The Fed is telling you as explicitly as they're allowed to that they'll induce a recession to halt inflation, yet many tech cos aren't getting the message and continue to hire frantically.
Doing their new hires a disservice, when in many cases they'll likely have to be laid off within the year. Looking at big tech here, primarily
They way Stripe is handling this is orders of magnitude better than how Twitter will do. Elon once said something along the lines of "It's not just important how smart one is, but also how good a person they are". So far I see he's handling it poorly.
How come CEOs never get fired during layoffs? Laying off this much of the workforce is an indicator they have done their job poorly (I.e. failed to adequately forecast industry trends and demand). Any normal plebeian would be out the door in two minutes if they did something similar.
When the CEO is the majority shareholder of a company it's a different calculus. Shareholders and the board are the two entities that can hold CEOs accountable. If they are one and the same nobody can hold the CEO accountable except customers via boycott.
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.
We’re hiring frontendy full stack engineers here at Farallon capital, located in the SF Financial district. If you’re departing Stripe and looking for new opportunities drop me a line at gw@farcap.com
A bit surprising considering they had 3x growth since 2020 according to this post. THen why the need to cut ? THe only answer could be "need higher returns for shareholders" because I honestly doubt their growth is at risk.
So is Stripe saying that they are cutting because they grew much faster during Pandemic and now are not growing as fast so they need to slash 14% of workforce to keep the same returns for shareholders ? Would love to hear from Stripe CEO directly.
Looking forward to the released creativity though.
Remember: especially when getting laid off in tech - eventually this will commonly be very good for personal growth. Lots of opportunities in the coming downturn as in full tandem with ever-ongoing neoliberal capitalism: software is still eating the world.
Don’t be sad. Take the ticket - and maybe do something that’s more interesting / pressingly needed than… payment processing…
The world is literally on fire, you are smart and hard working why not do something about that instead?
> Remember: especially when getting laid off in tech - eventually this will commonly be very good for personal growth. Lots of opportunities in the coming downturn as in full tandem with ever-ongoing neoliberal capitalism: software is still eating the world.
This is true when you don't have a family to support and/or have a second more reliable income, but it is extremely stressful if you don't have a decent cushion and have responsibilities. I mean, you are partially right, but it depends on the situation.
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), things could be tight for awhile. This is true even for a FAANG or Stripe employee.
Also, being laid off usually means being in a down economy where not much hiring is going on, so recovery takes longer.
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.
No, not next; "eventually," maybe. I think they are still holding out hope that the ~15% they'd like to layoff will "self-select," and I fully expect them to send those people a message next perf cycle.
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-able), and job stability (we're funded by philanthropists and don't need to make a profit).
If anyone hit by the recent layoffs is passionate about good education and would like a change of pace, feel free to email me (address in profile) to start a conversation.
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 to be subject matter experts for the Instructional Designers?
I sure hope you are not trying to get programmers to design and build top-notch educational content. That's like asking a programmer to also do the work of a graphic designer. They are two entirely different skill sets.
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 student questions/pitfalls?
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.)
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).
what kinda positions are you looking to fill? I currently work for less than industry rates by far but I enjoy the work life balance and generous PTO, and I wouldn't mind doing some more interesting work for the same.
New Zealand gets the unfortunate legacy of having to share the "zero COVID" mantra with a small group of fellow partners like China (which the NZ PM promoted harder than any other leader via speaker circuits). But otherwise I don't know much about NZ to critique.
Zero Covid may actually be plausible for small, isolated island nations with limited entry points, like NZ, even without locking everyone inside their homes like in China.
And it's probably wise for countries to be using COVID as a test run for something worse. We live in the age of pandemics now, and will probably get hit by something worse eventually. Something like an airborne Ebola strain (50% mortality) or airborne Rabies strain (100% mortality) are going to require a rapid, whole-of-society response to shut it down. If anything like that happens, the US and other countries that made a complete wreck of our response are going to be fucked.
> Zero Covid may actually be plausible for small, isolated island nations with limited entry points, like NZ, even without locking everyone inside their homes like in China.
So why doesn't Japan and Sri Lanka and Hong Kong and Taiwan and every island Caribbean/Pacific nation not have limited zero-COVID policies right now? It works right? The data shows Delta is still kicking.
At least be honest they made a very serious gamble with their citizen's freedoms, the economic well being of the poor, and the livelihood of small businesses and it didn't work. And every time a compromise is made in the future it will be easier to make the second time.
You can argue it might have worked, people were scared, they were working with limited information, the media cheered them on for acting boldly, etc, etc. But that's how we evolve. We learn from mistakes. Which is critically important for discourse going forward.
Pretty much everyone here lives in dense areas like the rest of the world. Limited entry points probably helped though, and being small more to do with faster, more regional decisions rather than the China way of there is COVID? Lock everything down.
>If anything like that happens, the US and other countries that made a complete wreck of our response are going to be fucked.
A 50% or 100% mortality rate would keep even the most pro-liberty people home. The issue is that COVID was nowhere near the civilization killer that is was made out to be. Some countries/states recognized this and rightly decided to not lock society down.
The problem is, COVID19 was essentially a zero-day, an exploit against human physiology we had never seen in the wild before, and didn't know how bad it would be in foresight.
Any response to a novel outbreak that spreads rapidly, like COVID, needs to err on the side of caution initially, until we have better knowledge of the short and long term effects.
And it wasn't a civilization killer, but US excess mortality rate during COVID exceeded total US deaths of WWII, among other great cullings. It was worth taking seriously and striving for a competent response.
NZ does not have a zero covid strategy, and never did. Pretty much all of NZ's covid restrictions have been removed, and there are thousands of reported cases at the moment.
> The country moved to a nationwide lockdown on 17 August 2021, after the detection of one new local case outside of quarantine in Auckland.
This is the very definition of "zero-COVID".
They didn't abandon zero-COVID for another 5 months (Oct 21) when they finally admitted the data showed it didn't work.
Of course it's good they stopped using the strategy. But I remember vividly how the NZ PM promoted zero-COVID (and this was cheered by the media in Canada) as a working strategy until it no longer made sense politically or scientifically.
China has the bulk of the blame for continuing this failed strategy, but they were far from alone in the reasons why it was adopted it in the first place.
> They didn't abandon zero-COVID for another 5 months (Oct 21) when they finally admitted the data showed it didn't work.
This doesn't sound right to me. I live in Australia, and we adopted a very similar policy. Lock down migration until a large percentage of the population was vaccinated. When the vaccine was rolled out, the restrictions eased. It wasn't because "the data showed it didn't work".
And fwiw "lockdown" for the most part meant restrictions on international travel. Most residents got to lead very regular lives for theozt part.
So Auckland didnt lockdown their entire city after a single case?
That's exactly what China has been repeatedly criticized for doing in Shanghai and Bejing and elsewhere (and is still doing today).
Of course NZ stopped doing it after 5 months, after reviewing the data (I mean I hope they were reviewing data and evaluating the human costs).
From what I can tell the initial order (after a single case) was for 7 days in Aukland and 3 days for all surrounding cities. How long it actually lasted I'm not sure, but this merely is one example of an idea that was promoted globally.
You can pretend an entire city spending 7 days locked in their house, after a single COVID case in a city of 1.6 million, is not much to ask of people. But we might have different value systems.
> You can pretend an entire city spending 7 days locked in their house
You do understand that people were not actually locked in their houses in NZ? There were reports of people literally being locked in to their apartments in China, but don't confuse "lock down" with "locked in" when it comes to NZ.
In practice lock downs (at least in Aus) were stopping people going into offices or non-essential places of business, or congregating in parks or other places. Whilst definitely an imposition on people, it wasn't equivalent to what was described as happening in China.
Of course they stopped it eventually because the costs were unsustainable, and it was never intended to be a permanent solution.
The whole point was to go hard at the start, get the population vaccinated, then open back up.
I haven't checked recent numbers, but last time I did, the number of deaths in NZ/AU per capita were far lower than in the US. Which you might not consider worthwhile, but we might have different value systems.
> 14 weeks of severance for all departing employees
> will pay our 2022 annual bonus for all departing employees, regardless of their departure date
> 6 months of existing healthcare premiums or healthcare continuation
Yeah, so you're going to go march in there and do something? What exactly are you proposing here?
It's a layoff. It happens. It's ironically a sign of them being good executives and doing what they need to do to keep their company viable so they can keep the ship running going forward for the remaining sustainable head count.
It is far better to be a massive underperformer at three jobs than be a good employee at one. Layoffs that are large usually have nothing to do with performance as if they did, word would leak.
This is why I feel no guilt over letting my teams down repeatedly. It doesn't matter unless you are bad enough to fire.
No amount of money would make the stress of 3 jobs worth it to me. To constantly be letting down people around me would be depressing, don't care if I'm making 500k/yr.
You may not believe it, but people are fickle. It’s that old Eddie Murphy bit about “What have you done for me lately”. Believe it or not, you have pleased and disappointed your company over and over, back and forth, based on things you did, and they only look at the last thing you did.
It's not about caring about the employer, it's about living my own life. Your work life is most of what you do for several decades of life. I don't want to suffer, barely squeaking by, stressed and at the brink of being fired by multiple employers for decades. I make a fraction of what some people here make and I still make more than I need. Money beyond a certain amount doesn't make you happier, in fact I'm pretty convinced it makes it harder to be happy.
Looks like on average an L3 SWE at Stripe gets paid 215k stock, 218k stock, 34k bonus. So ~53% of pay is liquid (cash), the rest equity in a private company.
That's not their fault. If they're doing the job well enough at all 3, they've satisfied the requirements for employment. Who cares what others think about their "remote sentiment"?
They are the same. You want to be a 30th percentile employee. Bad enough to do little work and never be trusted with anything important or with hard deadlines, but just good enough not to fire.
He is saying that if I am not getting fired, I am good enough to continue working there.
There is a difference between being good and efficient enough to handle number roles, and the borderline scam of "get a remote job and try to stay under the radar and drag it out before they fire you".
I'm honestly not 100% sure which of those you are advocating for.
This smacks of "not their fault, they are just making an economically rational decision" justification to me.
If they signed a contract to the effect they would work exclusively for one company, their choice to lie is unethical. It might be profitable as well, but "not their fault because it's profitable and they can get away with it" shamelessness, writ large, is making everything worse.
Or maybe intentionally screwing people (coworkers, your employer) over is an unethical thing to do even if we lean into the extreme credulity you profess here and say, "hey, we don't know if this poster signed one of those special 'FYI I will be screwing you over' contracts, it is not for us to make assumptions, we haven't reviewed the contract."
Nobody owes their employer any more than the minimum that is guaranteed by the employment contract. Sucks, but that's life.
If you feel like the quality of your coworkers that give minimum effort is screwing you over, talk to your employer.
If an employer can be picky enough that they require you to only have them as your only employer, they would need to specify that in an employment contract (it's not enforceable, you have a right to privacy from your employer).
If you want to be "ethical" (ie, servile to your employer) to the detriment of your economic survival, that's fine. That's your choice. Everyone else is going to play the game to the rules.
This process as Stripe reads as exceptionally cold and distanced to me. There's an ongoing downsizing at my workplace as well right now, and it's going a little like this:
* Change in strategy and its consequences announced together in all-hands
* Company strategy changed to focus less on rapid growth (something we'd been structured for) due to major changes in capital markets
* All personnell changes are made directly to support and enable this change in strategy
* No departures outside of C-suite had been determined at the point of announcement
* Immediately after announcement, groups of teams gathered in breakout sessions to learn of changes to their structure
* All changes are based on roles and not specific individuals
* Everyone gets to be considered for new roles if their existing role changes, or if they wish to change roles
* New managers to be decided about one week after announcement
* Changes to IC positions to be determined within two weeks after that
* Nobody will get a notice before a consultation meeting
* HR and leadership are holding all-hands about every third day during the process, for QA and updates
--
Mass layoffs by email just seems so immensely inhuman by this comparison. I wish everyone leaving Stripe as part of this all the best, and I hope you find great and inspiring opportunities <3
I just went through it and I think they did it properly. Effectively the process went like this:
At 9am PST we received the email, a minute or 2 later we received another email, "If your role is being impacted you will receive an email in the next 15 minutes." Then, 15 minutes later, we received another email "If you haven't received an email, you haven't been impacted."
There was only 15 minutes of uncertainty for everybody. It felt well considered. Cold, maybe, but quick.
I was impacted in a different manner. A small group of people were logged out of everything, including email, around 8am ET. This was before Patrick’s email went out. I thought I wasn’t going to get to say goodbye to my coworkers. It was not fun.
