* 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 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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?
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....
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.
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.
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.
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?”.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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?
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 :)
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.
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
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.
Readit News
I went through about 15 interviews and applied to maybe 50 positions.
- Higher interest rates = Less access to capital for tech companies
- Remote work = More out-of-state and international competition for jobs based on tech hubs
- Easier to use technologies = Lower entry barrier to engineering jobs = More people switching careers and becoming software engineers
- More people opting to become software engineers
- Stacked ranking and mass layoffs
Dead Comment
Round 3+ really gets frugal.
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.
Get ready for the definition of 'decent' to get a lot more scary...
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.
Dead Comment
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.
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?
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
ones at my company were decided by the next level manager, based on the most recent perf review
The things I would have done with 14 weeks paid vacation + bonus + equity vest....
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.
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.
It shouldn't be the case that people can be laid off just like that - particularly if their work was obviously needed.
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?”.
People online are daft.
Sorry to hear that. Why were you working nights and weekends?
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
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.
Just in October? Has this happened before?
Dead Comment
Usually, these 14% lay off happens to get rid off weaker folks. It is data driven.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
> 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.
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!
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..
This is not a 'model' to brag about.
I think we can do better.
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.
Odd that you should have chosen such an extreme example.
Dead Comment
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.
Seems to me it obviously helps that person, but I generally don't understand corporate-speak so I might be missing something.
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.
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
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.
Why doesn't the company reserve the right to optimize/choose to focus on profit?
What is the "California project" here?
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.)
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
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.
Delaying going IPO this way, amongst other things, is about retention.
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.
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
While it might have been nicer to IPO by now, early employees are doing extremely well.
Folks who are getting screwed are the ones that joined in ~2017 when they started issuing RSUs instead of ISOs.
So you wish they would have got to dump overpriced shares on the public to further enrich insiders?
It's not like Stripe engineers were earning minimum wage digging ditches for 10 years...
Deleted Comment
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?
• 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
* 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.
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.
This is required in California.
Deleted Comment
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.
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.
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.
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.
Look at all the openings they have: https://stripe.com/jobs/search
You Inc.
I inferred that you meant record ^low^ unemployment?
https://www.verywellfamily.com/what-is-the-r-word-3105651
Your post brings up interesting view points, thanks for sharing.
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.
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.