12 ms·

This is the part I don't like. Stripe is a hugely successful company and they have no urgent material need to let people go. This is an optimization effort. I

by jasmer 4y ago

This is the part I don't like. 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.

p0pcult 4y ago
[flagged]
- dang 4y ago
  "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Please avoid generic ideological battle especially - it just makes threads predictable, therefore boring and eventually nasty.
  - p0pcult 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - pvg 4y ago
      It's a generic tangent because you can attach it to almost anything - it's just a short, shallow reflexive trope comment and not a meaningful critique of anything. The latter is totally fine, the former is something that's bad for the forum.
jelling 4y ago
> 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.)
LudwigNagasena 4y ago
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.
- kyleee 4y ago
  May as well shoot for both actually
jedberg 4y ago
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.
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  > keeping that person around doesn't help anyone, including that person. Seems to me it obviously helps that person, but I generally don't understand corporate-speak so I might be missing something.
  - theptip 4y ago
    It’s better to get generous severance than to have to come in and do bullshit made-up work.
    - whimsicalism 4y ago
      At any time, you could choose not to do it and instead search for other jobs with basically the same result.
      - nyuszika7h 4y ago
        no, you'll be worse off if you do that because then you won't get severance. especially if you're not able to quickly land another job.
        whimsicalism 4y ago
Axsuul 4y ago
It goes both ways. Keeping under-performers around starts to muddy the culture and push away your high-performers.
twblalock 4y ago
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.
- LightG 4y ago
  Japan isn't the only other example of difference out there. Odd that you should have chosen such an extreme example.
  - twblalock 4y ago
    I didn't choose Japan as an example. The person I was responding to did.
    - LightG 4y ago
      My bad. Same question to them then!
- FpUser 4y ago
  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.
MuffinFlavored 4y ago
> they have no urgent material need to let people go Why doesn't the company reserve the right to optimize/choose to focus on profit?
- guax 4y ago
  They do, but it would be novel if for once, they choose decency instead of profit.
  - twblalock 4y ago
    That could easily turn out to be suboptimal for "decency" in the long term. If the company does not operate efficiently, it might have to lay off more than 14% of its workforce a year from now.
anm89 4y ago
It's a business, not a charity. Their goal is to optimize.
- guax 4y ago
  - Axsuul 4y ago
    The employees are also technically shareholders, no?
bogomipz 4y ago
>"I feel that the whole 'California' project elides the negatives: ..." What is the "California project" here?
midhhhthrow 4y ago
It’s not about the people that get laid off. 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
- musha68k 4y ago
  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.
moonchrome 4y ago
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.
spbaar 4y ago
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.
draw_down 4y ago

by jasmer 4y ago

p0pcult 4y ago

[flagged]

dang 4y ago
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Please avoid generic ideological battle especially - it just makes threads predictable, therefore boring and eventually nasty.
- p0pcult 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - pvg 4y ago
    It's a generic tangent because you can attach it to almost anything - it's just a short, shallow reflexive trope comment and not a meaningful critique of anything. The latter is totally fine, the former is something that's bad for the forum.

jelling 4y ago

> 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.)

LudwigNagasena 4y ago

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.

kyleee 4y ago
May as well shoot for both actually

jedberg 4y ago

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.

whimsicalism 4y ago
> keeping that person around doesn't help anyone, including that person. Seems to me it obviously helps that person, but I generally don't understand corporate-speak so I might be missing something.
- theptip 4y ago
  It’s better to get generous severance than to have to come in and do bullshit made-up work.
  - whimsicalism 4y ago
    At any time, you could choose not to do it and instead search for other jobs with basically the same result.
    - nyuszika7h 4y ago
      no, you'll be worse off if you do that because then you won't get severance. especially if you're not able to quickly land another job.
      - whimsicalism 4y ago

Axsuul 4y ago

It goes both ways. Keeping under-performers around starts to muddy the culture and push away your high-performers.

twblalock 4y ago

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.

LightG 4y ago
Japan isn't the only other example of difference out there. Odd that you should have chosen such an extreme example.
- twblalock 4y ago
  I didn't choose Japan as an example. The person I was responding to did.
  - LightG 4y ago
    My bad. Same question to them then!
FpUser 4y ago
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.

MuffinFlavored 4y ago

> they have no urgent material need to let people go Why doesn't the company reserve the right to optimize/choose to focus on profit?

guax 4y ago
They do, but it would be novel if for once, they choose decency instead of profit.
- twblalock 4y ago
  That could easily turn out to be suboptimal for "decency" in the long term. If the company does not operate efficiently, it might have to lay off more than 14% of its workforce a year from now.

anm89 4y ago

It's a business, not a charity. Their goal is to optimize.

guax 4y ago
- Axsuul 4y ago
  The employees are also technically shareholders, no?

bogomipz 4y ago

>"I feel that the whole 'California' project elides the negatives: ..." What is the "California project" here?

midhhhthrow 4y ago

It’s not about the people that get laid off. 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

musha68k 4y ago
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.

moonchrome 4y ago

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.

spbaar 4y ago

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.

draw_down 4y ago