It's really disappointing to see the trajectory that Brex is on. I was extremely enthusiastic about their product, they had the best business banking/credit/expense tracking in the industry. I was a very happy customer, until they decided they would only chase SV startup unicorns as their customers, and terminated my account. Brex is very much a cautionary tale for other startups.
They lied (or did not clearly inform their sales people) about their AWS credit promotion a few years ago which really annoyed me when they were trying to sell us. Went back to the safe embrace of SVB but I guess that didn't really play out well. As a startup I desperately want to see more credit card companies willing to offer cards to founders without ridiculous personal guarantees, so I hope they figure it out.
I have used SVB in the past as well, for my first startup. They were solidly OK. This is still an area ripe for disruption IMO, old Brex filled the niche but for some reason we just can't do payments and banking correctly in the US. India has UPI for instance, and even foreigners can avail themselves of this facility.
As an SVB customer, how bad was it? Did you have any delays or other issues accessing your money? Did service or perks change a lot after the takeover?
I like that they shared publicly the severance package (I missed that in a company before, the severance package was only available to the ones laid off, and you wouldn't even know if you got the same as your colleagues).
And the package itself seems alright too (and sensible, for example: the laid off can keep their laptops. What would company do with almost 300 extra laptops?). Time of the lay off also not too bad (firing people in November/December is really uncool).
All in all, not TOO bad from what I can see in the public post.
Oh, and they also said how many people first, not how many percent, which suggest they think about their human resources as actual individuals.
The laptop thing is usually less about clawing back property and more about preventing the laptop, potentially with customer PII and source code and other stuff on it, ending up sold on ebay or left laying around as a personal device to be eventually lost at an airport 3 years later, and so on. They take them back, wipe them, then either resell them to a reseller or reissue them to other employees etc.
If they are managed devices (which I hope they are at a fintech company), it should be trivial to remote wipe them before removing MDM from them to enable personal use/resale etc.
Indeed, the financial services firm I contribute at is required to remotely lock and wipe laptops when offboarding for compliance purposes, and that is somewhat consistent with the other FIs I’ve seen the inside of. How effective this is depends on an org's MDM story (people, process, controls).
I've been on both sides of the layoff discussions all too many times over the years. Even at the most disorganized or chaotic places, I've never seen the severance packages be anything other than a set formula.
That formula might consider location, level, tenure, and other relevant factors, but I don't think I've ever seen a case where it was "I like Alice more than Bob, so Alice gets more..."
Those equations intersect at 4 years of tenure. Brex was founded only 7 years ago, so most affected employees would presumably make out better with 8 + 2 * N than with 4 * N.
Looking at that list 6 months of COBRA is short, really short. In this job-search environment your COBRA is going to run out well before you could find your next job.
When I was laid off from Oracle in 2012 I got 18 months of COBRA. That sounds must more reasonable.
"Henrique and I are responsible for the decisions that led us here, and seeing so many talented folks go through this experience is never what you hope for as a founder."
I guess this is what happens 1.5 years later when you decide to kick all LLCs off from using your platform and they all go to use your competitors instead
Tone of this is just awful, reads like he's saying they've laid off a bunch of people who were slowing us down, and sort of ends it by saying how excited he is about the business now they've been let go...
Readit News
And the package itself seems alright too (and sensible, for example: the laid off can keep their laptops. What would company do with almost 300 extra laptops?). Time of the lay off also not too bad (firing people in November/December is really uncool).
All in all, not TOO bad from what I can see in the public post.
Oh, and they also said how many people first, not how many percent, which suggest they think about their human resources as actual individuals.
That formula might consider location, level, tenure, and other relevant factors, but I don't think I've ever seen a case where it was "I like Alice more than Bob, so Alice gets more..."
Well that would be a short severance for everybody who was hired in the last year.
When I was laid off from Oracle in 2012 I got 18 months of COBRA. That sounds must more reasonable.
I don’t understand this. Why is it uncool? And why is January better?
I guess it doesn’t let people enjoy their vacations. But on the flip side, isn’t that a good thing? You can curb expenses on the vacation/holidays.
Brex, valued at $12.3B earlier this year, lays off 11% of staff https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33167302 (October 11, 2022 — 14 points, 1 comments)
Would you prefer he kill himself?
~ Responsible but not accountable, got it.
source: was one of the affected LLCs. Went to Mercury and never looked back!
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