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Brex layoffs
- ch4s3 4y agoSo they had: lay-offs 2 years ago Switched tech stacks 11 months ago to among other things be able to hire more devs Acquired Pry for $90 million 6 months ago Were tossing out long standing customers 4 months ago and now they're having lay-offs again. Quite the ride...
- kevin_thibedeau 4y agoMBAs have hopped on the agile bandwagon. Business plan? That's not scheduled for this sprint.
- formerkrogemp 4y agoNo business sense? Probably a software "engineer" in charge wanting to be the next Steve Jobs.
- ch4s3 4y agoWe do LEAN and “agile” where I am now, and if you can’t explain how your work makes it saves money you’ll be gotten up to speed on that quickly. Our business folks are very sharp and focused, and tech tries to match that, in a good way.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y agoNickel and diming all business decisions is a great way to run the whole thing into the ground.
- necovek 4y agoIsn't the goal of any business to make money? Saving some should be in the service of the former, and only as one of the tools in your arsenal (obviously, creating a product or service people would pay for should be the first).
- adamnemecek 4y agoWhat stack did the switch from/to?
- throwawaymaths 4y agoElixir to kotlin
- 29athrowaway 4y agoElixir to Kotlin https://medium.com/brexeng/building-backend-services-with-kotlin-7c8410795e4b https://medium.com/brexeng/building-backend-services-with-ko... Note that Brex founders are Brazilian and the Elixir author is Brazilian.
- okdood64 4y agoAre you suggesting that Japanese founders might be more likely to use Ruby?
- adamnemecek 4y agoThey definitely are.
- ch4s3 4y agoNot only that, but a number of Brazilian banks use Elixir.
- Apocryphon 4y agoMissed opportunity to use Lua with that logic.
- ch4s3 4y agoLua is pretty nice, especially if you can use the JIT. I think there were some elixir consultancies in Brazil other than Plataformatec that did a lot of work in finance so it spread around.
- NhanH 4y agoI'd love to see the internal explanation on how hiring kotlin for BE devs is easier than hiring elixir devs. That's like trying to pivot from finding unicorn to finding pegasus.
- mr90210 4y agoMuch, much easier.
- kotlin2 4y agoKotlin in is very similar to Java. There are tons of Java devs. And tons of Kotlin devs who program for Android. There has to be an order of magnitude of magnitude (at least) more Kotlin devs than Elixer.
- RhodesianHunter 4y agoHiring Kotlin devs is easy because you can just hire open minded Java devs.
- TillE 4y agoSeriously, there are so few circumstances where a good developer absolutely requires deep experience in a specific language (or framework) on day one. Smart people can learn, and they can learn pretty quickly if it's not radically different. I'm currently doing a ton of C# work and it's great - my relevant professional background is basically all C++, with some Java in the very distant past.
- RhodesianHunter 4y agoI think it really depends. If all you're doing is slinging JSON over an API then sure. If you're dealing with concurrency and distributed systems at medium to high scale you really want your senior people to be familiar with the language.
- jonathankoren 4y ago
- 29athrowaway 4y agoAnd massive ad spending in SF a few years ago. They had ads everywhere.
- mliker 4y agoit was the most successful marketing campaign targeting developers. And now you're writing about it. I would say that's anecdotal evidence of success.
- 29athrowaway 4y agoYou mean they used it as a recruiting magnet?
- wly_cdgr 4y ago
- mind-blight 4y agoThis honestly seems like an example of how to handle layoffs well. After the repeated messes of Better, the non-layoff layoffs at Meta, and a bunch of smaller examples over the last year and a half, it's actually nice to see them handled well. They always suck, but being transparent, ripping the band-aid off, and giving the people laid off as much support as possible is the way to go. They're also far enough from the holidays that people can still job search, but close enough that most people in tech could eat a few weeks of savings to take an extended holiday. Don't know if that was deliberate, but it seems well timed
- ok_dad 4y agoYea, if you look at the benefits for those laid-off, it's pretty supportive (at least from my American experience). They are paying at least 2 months severance, you keep your hardware, you get 6 months healthcare, and they weren't dicks about doing this. I would say this is better than most recent layoff announcements and the fact that they even state that they will re-hire anyone later on as a priority shows that they aren't trying to blame "low performers" or something, it's just some colleagues that they can't keep on right now due to business reasons. Now, maybe their business reasons are dues to their own ineptness or bad luck or whatever, but they handled this pretty well. I say this all because we tend, on HN and other places, to focus on the shitty aspects of every bad news story, and rarely speak up when something goes right that is still shitty, like this.
- londons_explore 4y agoThe real question is is it too supportive? Will the shareholders be keen to see so much of their money go to ex-employees for not much gain in PR or morale of existing employees?
- Icathian 4y agoPerhaps the shareholders' feelings are less important than the financial and emotional security of the employees and their families? Your priorities seem very, very backwards to me.
- moneywoes 4y agoRead that it was around 20% of eng on blind yikes. is ramp eating their lunch or is the market just not that favourable?
- debacle 4y agoThey are an "X for Y" startup in a space that...really doesn't need disruption? Normal banks with tellers named Maud are likely the ones eating their lunch.
- BowBun 4y agoAFAIK, typical banks don't provide virtual cards you can spin up on a click to give to your employees for expenses, right? My company uses Brex and the few times I've had to use the card, it was really convenient.
- yawnxyz 4y agoSince they fired us, we found Relay which has been fantastic. I can't imagine ever switching away from Relay back to Brex lol
- spaceman_2020 4y agoI'm not a user, but from the marketing, it seems like a product that's "nice to have", not a "must have". Normal banking and corporate cards can pretty much do all of what they do, albeit with a slightly worse user-experience. Businesses like this are skating on thin ice. People are willing to pay a premium for design and user-experience when the times are good. But when they're not, these "nice-to-haves" are first on the chopping block.
- datalopers 4y ago
- readthenotes1 4y agoMaybe they had that many people they couldn't see worth their cost ($ and/or headache). Laying off people is a lit easier than firing them.
- kelnos 4y agoI don't think 11% is tiny at all. According to the article, that's 136 people. At an extremely low-end conservative cost of $200k per employee (I'm sure it's more than that), that's nearly $30M per year. If they truly believe that $30M wasn't being spent well, that's good money saved.
- datalopers 4y agoThey will now have a second larger round of layoffs by summer of 2023.
- bushbaba 4y agoOof. That's painful for moral. Much better to do a single deep cut, with a shift back to growth.
- whoooooo123 4y agoIs that your speculation or has that actually been confirmed somewhere?
- ARandomerDude 4y ago11% Brexit
- borski 4y agoOkay, this legitimately made me giggle. Dark, sad, but hilarious. Thanks.
- zeroonetwothree 4y agoEvery company is now blaming the “macro environment” for poor strategic business decisions. Meanwhile unemployment is still at an all time low.
- klardotsh 4y agoEspecially companies which claim to have solid runway blaming "the macro environment" is perplexing. But then, venture capital backed companies generally (arguably by design) are not profitable, so their ability to weather storms is likely weakened and maybe the boards get squirrely when faced with the threat of bad weather.
- singron 4y agoPromising but pre-profit VC-backed companies don't want to raise in the next 2-3 years since there is a huge risk of down-rounds. Everyone is trying to squeeze their runways out over that time period. Unfortunately, if your customers are mostly other tech companies, they are doing the same thing. It seems like a bunch of healthy companies are putting on the brakes hard enough to collectively cause the recession they are trying to avoid.
- endorphine 4y ago> But then, venture capital backed companies generally (arguably by design) are not profitable I've heard this before but I don't get it. Why are they not profitable "by design"? Edit: not sure if it was the reason this is downvoted but this was an honest question
- jiveturkey 4y agoThey spend every cent (and then some) on growth. The model is to capture the market. You have to spend to do that. Once you do that, you can set the terms. Also, it happens to bring growth company valuations and a nice exit. What happens after that (ie if the entire thing was unsustainable), honey badger VC don't care. You also don't have a choice but to play the game. If you don't, your VC funded competition will outspend and destroy you.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- spoonjim 4y agoIt's a good racket if you can pull it off. Start some kind of "disruptive" company, raise a shitload of money off being 6 foot 4, hire 1,000 people to "disrupt" shit (they don't even have a banking charter!), cash out tens of millions of dollars at the Series D, write a tearful mea culpa when it all falls apart, buy the estate in Hillsborough and the Bentley Continental and try it again in five years.
- DethNinja 4y agoI’m very jealous of people capable of pulling this off. I guess there is no way to do something like if you are not in the right circles.
- kelp 4y agoI met with the founders sometime in the second half of 2017, I think before they had launched. I was looking for an eng leadership job and the just wanted / needed ICs. So it didn’t go anywhere. But I came away with a strong sense that they would be quite successful. They just had this confidence and clarity of vision, that also didn’t seem like bullshit. And past experience building a company in the financial services space. One funny thing I remember was Pedro (I think) saying their tech stack was Elixer, “maybe that’s crazy”. And interesting to see they have since started moving away from it. Seems they had some doubts about it from the start.
- ch4s3 4y agoI wish I were a little bit taller.
- spoonjim 4y agoI wish I had a girl, if I did, I would call her.
- kuwoze 4y agocant try it in five years though: no more cheap $$$$ you actually have to do stuff now
- Ancalagon 4y agoHope everyone hired there chose the all-cash compensation option.
- smcin 4y agoWhy is this title not "Brex lays off 20% of Eng; 11% overall"? Facts before feelings and opinions, please.
- tuttletuxas 4y agoMX in Utah lost nearly triple % of workforce as Brex.
- candyman 4y agoI think they also pivoted from doing individual cards to just corporate. I had a Brex account and card and they ended up closing all that off. I never got around to using it. I did find Mercury Bank to be pretty good for a business account FWIW.
- ChrisRR 4y ago"Hmmmmm Brexit is a term that is associated with financial instability. Shall we call ourselves Brex?"
- dhbradshaw 4y agoNo layoff is fun. But props to the company for the 7-year option extension and removal of the one year cliff.
- evtothedev 4y ago> Equity: For those with less than one year at Brex, we’re waiving the equity cliff. For those with options, we’re offering to extend the exercise period to seven years. I wonder how they could have arrived at "seven." Why not go with the max allowable of ten? This seems a bit miserly in an otherwise pretty decent package.
- CedarMills 4y agoSucks for those who were affected but when Brex pivoted from small businesses to well funded startups and shut down 10s of thousands of accounts, I think the market lost all trust. Ramp & Mercury provide way more value now. Absolutely no reason to use Brex anymore.