15 ms·

Hey pc, if you're around: > John and I are fully responsible for the decisions leading up to it. What are the two of you doing to show accountability? Are you

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

strikelaserclaw 4y ago
i hate this trend of ceos saying they take responsibility. Reminds me of lord farquuad, "some of you may die, but that is a price i'm willing to pay"
- bryant 4y ago
  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.
  - joegahona 4y ago
    Do you have an example handy of a CEO who has provided acceptable accountability in a situation like this?
    - bryant 4y ago
      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.
      - shuckles 4y ago
        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.
        bumby 4y ago
        >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.
        shuckles 4y ago
        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.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- colechristensen 4y ago
  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.
  - ryandrake 4y ago
    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.
    - cbreynoldson 4y ago
      > 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.
- cko 4y ago
  "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."
  - swyx 4y ago
    always a relevant quote in tech from one of three things: xkcd, silicon valley, and shrek
    - xnx 4y ago
      s/shrek/arrested development/ for me
- tootie 4y ago
  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.
- pbreit 4y ago
  What do you suggest?
  - strikelaserclaw 4y ago
    just don't use that word, just state the facts.
ulfw 4y ago
There's zero responsibility. Just empty words that frankly are unnecessary in the situation.
- nsxwolf 4y ago
  What would make it better in your eyes? A year's severance? 2 years?
  - ulfw 4y ago
    What does severance have to do with it? 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.
  - groffee 4y ago
    It's not about the severance. It's about the empty platitudes they and all people like them spew. "they take responsibility" what does that even mean? It's meaningless. Are they taking a paycut themselves? Letting themselves go instead of their employes? Cutting down on bonuses to keep their people employed?
    - CosmicShadow 4y ago
      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.
    - l33t233372 4y ago
      Why is taking responsibility the same as taking a punishment in your eyes?
      - andrekandre 4y ago
        because responsibility without consequences is pointless?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tempsy 4y ago
I would honestly be more annoyed as an employee that the company didn’t go public at a $150B market cap when it had the chance. I believe the company’s revenue is heavily tied to Shopify whose stock is down -75% ytd…
memish 4y ago
That's in the email: Severance pay. We will pay 14 weeks of severance for all departing employees, and more for those with longer tenure. That is, those departing will be paid until at least February 21st 2023. Bonus. We will pay our 2022 annual bonus for all departing employees, regardless of their departure date. (It will be prorated for people hired in 2022.) PTO. We’ll pay for all unused PTO time (including in 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.
- eganist 4y ago
  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.
  - lefstathiou 4y ago
    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".
pmoriarty 4y ago
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.
- wnolens 4y ago
  > sometimes even get rewarded with huge amounts of money from the very companies they screwed over. This is the norm I've witnessed. They're rewarded for making bold bets, whether or not they pay off.
  - RestlessMind 4y ago
    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.
    - wnolens 4y ago
      The reward is the oodles of money you get when you succeed.
  - ThrowawayR2 4y ago
    > "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.
- ericb 4y ago
  What did they screw up, though? Their psychic abilities failed? A coin flip came up tails but they bet on heads?
pastor_bob 4y ago
- orzig 4y ago
  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. https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=meditating%20collison%20stripe https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=meditating%20collison%... Gives nothing at a glance. Do you have anything?
- boeingUH60 4y ago
  More like 1,000-acre mega-mansion - https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/stripe-co-founder-john-collison-to-buy-historic-1000-acre-irish-estate-228437 https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/stripe-co-founder-joh...
gunapologist99 4y ago
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.
- chasd00 4y ago
  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.
czbond 4y ago
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.
- eganist 4y ago
  Responsibility and accountability are different things.
- TomBombadildoze 4y ago
  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.
  - tomnipotent 4y ago
    How can the share price of a private company be falling? > They could afford to dip into cash Why should they risk cash reserves with an uncertain future? So that they can layoff 30% later on if things get worse?
    - TomBombadildoze 4y ago
      Their own internal price target, the FMV they assign to shares. https://www.wsj.com/articles/stripe-cuts-internal-valuation-by-28-11657815625?mod=hp_lead_pos4 https://www.wsj.com/articles/stripe-cuts-internal-valuation-...
shuckles 4y ago
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?
- SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
  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.
  - shuckles 4y ago
    My understanding is that Japan is a really bad place to be a worker.
    - SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
      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.
gizmo 4y ago
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.
- l33t233372 4y ago
  And even still, why act like taking responsibility is the same as taking a punishment?
  - gizmo 4y ago
    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.
zug_zug 4y ago
> 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.
- YPCrumble 4y ago
  > 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.
  - tasuki 4y ago
    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").
    - YPCrumble 4y ago
      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.
55555 4y ago
> 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.
l33t233372 4y ago
You ask what they did to take accountability but then list ways they could take an arbitrary punishment. That doesn’t make sense. They took responsibility by responsibly doing well by their former employees.
dgobaud 4y ago
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.
hintymad 4y ago
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.
gryBrd1987 4y ago
My guess is something like this: https://youtu.be/15HTd4Um1m4 https://youtu.be/15HTd4Um1m4
tschellenbach 4y ago
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.
Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago
Unless you're new to this game, you quickly realize that with statements like that, consequences are things that happen to other people.
tikhonj 4y ago
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.

strikelaserclaw 4y ago

i hate this trend of ceos saying they take responsibility. Reminds me of lord farquuad, "some of you may die, but that is a price i'm willing to pay"

bryant 4y ago
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.
- joegahona 4y ago
  Do you have an example handy of a CEO who has provided acceptable accountability in a situation like this?
  - bryant 4y ago
    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.
    - shuckles 4y ago
      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.
      - bumby 4y ago
        >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.
        shuckles 4y ago
        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.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
colechristensen 4y ago
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.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  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.
  - cbreynoldson 4y ago
    > 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.
cko 4y ago
"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."
- swyx 4y ago
  always a relevant quote in tech from one of three things: xkcd, silicon valley, and shrek
  - xnx 4y ago
    s/shrek/arrested development/ for me
tootie 4y ago
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.
pbreit 4y ago
What do you suggest?
- strikelaserclaw 4y ago
  just don't use that word, just state the facts.

ulfw 4y ago

There's zero responsibility. Just empty words that frankly are unnecessary in the situation.

nsxwolf 4y ago
What would make it better in your eyes? A year's severance? 2 years?
- ulfw 4y ago
  What does severance have to do with it? 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.
- groffee 4y ago
  It's not about the severance. It's about the empty platitudes they and all people like them spew. "they take responsibility" what does that even mean? It's meaningless. Are they taking a paycut themselves? Letting themselves go instead of their employes? Cutting down on bonuses to keep their people employed?
  - CosmicShadow 4y ago
    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.
  - l33t233372 4y ago
    Why is taking responsibility the same as taking a punishment in your eyes?
    - andrekandre 4y ago
      because responsibility without consequences is pointless?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

tempsy 4y ago

I would honestly be more annoyed as an employee that the company didn’t go public at a $150B market cap when it had the chance. I believe the company’s revenue is heavily tied to Shopify whose stock is down -75% ytd…

memish 4y ago

That's in the email: Severance pay. We will pay 14 weeks of severance for all departing employees, and more for those with longer tenure. That is, those departing will be paid until at least February 21st 2023. Bonus. We will pay our 2022 annual bonus for all departing employees, regardless of their departure date. (It will be prorated for people hired in 2022.) PTO. We’ll pay for all unused PTO time (including in 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.

eganist 4y ago
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.
- lefstathiou 4y ago
  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".

pmoriarty 4y ago

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.

wnolens 4y ago
> sometimes even get rewarded with huge amounts of money from the very companies they screwed over. This is the norm I've witnessed. They're rewarded for making bold bets, whether or not they pay off.
- RestlessMind 4y ago
  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.
  - wnolens 4y ago
    The reward is the oodles of money you get when you succeed.
- ThrowawayR2 4y ago
  > "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.
ericb 4y ago
What did they screw up, though? Their psychic abilities failed? A coin flip came up tails but they bet on heads?

pastor_bob 4y ago

orzig 4y ago
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. https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=meditating%20collison%20stripe https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=meditating%20collison%... Gives nothing at a glance. Do you have anything?
boeingUH60 4y ago
More like 1,000-acre mega-mansion - https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/stripe-co-founder-john-collison-to-buy-historic-1000-acre-irish-estate-228437 https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/stripe-co-founder-joh...

gunapologist99 4y ago

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.

chasd00 4y ago
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.

czbond 4y ago

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.

eganist 4y ago
Responsibility and accountability are different things.
TomBombadildoze 4y ago
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.
- tomnipotent 4y ago
  How can the share price of a private company be falling? > They could afford to dip into cash Why should they risk cash reserves with an uncertain future? So that they can layoff 30% later on if things get worse?
  - TomBombadildoze 4y ago
    Their own internal price target, the FMV they assign to shares. https://www.wsj.com/articles/stripe-cuts-internal-valuation-by-28-11657815625?mod=hp_lead_pos4 https://www.wsj.com/articles/stripe-cuts-internal-valuation-...

shuckles 4y ago

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?

SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
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.
- shuckles 4y ago
  My understanding is that Japan is a really bad place to be a worker.
  - SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
    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.

gizmo 4y ago

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.

l33t233372 4y ago
And even still, why act like taking responsibility is the same as taking a punishment?
- gizmo 4y ago
  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.

zug_zug 4y ago

> 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.

YPCrumble 4y ago
> 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.
- tasuki 4y ago
  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").
  - YPCrumble 4y ago
    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.

55555 4y ago

> 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.

l33t233372 4y ago

You ask what they did to take accountability but then list ways they could take an arbitrary punishment. That doesn’t make sense. They took responsibility by responsibly doing well by their former employees.

dgobaud 4y ago

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.

hintymad 4y ago

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.

gryBrd1987 4y ago

My guess is something like this: https://youtu.be/15HTd4Um1m4 https://youtu.be/15HTd4Um1m4

tschellenbach 4y ago

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.

Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago

Unless you're new to this game, you quickly realize that with statements like that, consequences are things that happen to other people.

tikhonj 4y ago

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.