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> 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 chos

> 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?

dmurdoch 4y ago
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.
- pc86 4y ago
  Is it "really weird," though? Layoffs, especially when you start talking about entire teams, divisions, products, etc. is about revenue, profitability, and righting the ship (or safeguarding the ship so you don't have to right it 6 months from now). Whether Jim got "exceeds expectations" or "greatly exceeds expectations" is irrelevant when an EVP needs to trim $12M off their budget and Jim's department lost $9M last year.
  - imchillyb 4y ago
    - JBlue42 4y ago
      I feel like pc86 was just being straightforward about how those decisions are made. They can speak for themselves though. When I was part of a mass lay-off, it was big enough to trigger CA state law where they had to detail everything. You could clearly see that it was strictly based on who was paid the most (below the managerial level). >The 'righting' came because of shitty financial decisions made from top-down. The top should be fired first and foremost. The company wouldn't be in the position its in if management were doing their fucking jobs. Should but rarely, if ever, happens. Some even get a larger bonus when meeting next quarter targets or some other short-term indicator.
      - pc86 4y ago
        You are correct I was just saying what typically does happen, not what should happen. And when someone responds with so much misguided anger it's not even worth the effort to respond.
      - furbyhater 4y ago
        > it was strictly based on who was paid the most (below the managerial level) The "(below the managerial level)" part is the problem and the reason it is outrageous to people invested in a company but not in a position of power (such as the actual developers/engineers, even in a tech-centric company, at least once it has grown to a given size).
        pc86 4y ago
        A lot of times what you'll see done is structured more as a reorg than just a straight layoff, where if they need to trim $xM from the budget, they'll start shrinking and eliminating teams at the IC level until they reach .7-.8 of that figure, then see how many "extra" managers they have and start trimming there, typically just based on seniority rather than pay. Rinse and repeat until you're at .9-1.1x depending on how many people you think will resign after the layoffs.
  - cragfar 4y ago
    A common sentiment you see on the internet (especially from younger people who haven't experience a tough labor market) is that only the low performers get laid off. So I can see how they think it's really weird if managers aren't involved.
    - newsclues 4y ago
      If layoffs are occurring, companies or managers are going to want to cut poor performers or trouble employees at that time. So if younger employees are saying it's cutting low performers, and the rest are left as the younger and lower paid workers to pick up the slack, where senior levels are cut indiscriminately or based on salary, because they are higher paid and the goal is to cut expensive workers.
    - throwaway16273 4y ago
      I was part of lay offs some years ago. Managers didn’t know until the day of, and it wasn’t based on performance. All the performance reviews were already done months before. Some people were even due for promotions.
    - ghshephard 4y ago
      Low performers always 100% of the time get dropped during layoffs. It's the one window that companies can mostly let go of employees without being sued. (Though, if they lay off too many people in a protected class, still can get sued). What's interesting about a lot of the division or sector-downturn layoffs, that you end up seeing solid performers, and, when you are dropping a good portion of your division - very good performers let go. Most companies try to make a play for keeping their 10x developers - but, I've been in layoffs (Browser Division, Netscape, 1997sh) - where just absolutely everyone was dropped, regardless of performance.
      - scarby2 4y ago
        > Low performers always 100% of the time get dropped during layoffs. This is totally not true. Usually they make jobs redundant not people. If there's a pool of people doing the same job and that headcount is reduced then it will often be the lowest performers that go however some places have done LIFO or cut the most expensive. However if you're doing layoffs and you reduce your frontend team the it's likely low performers from the backend team get to stick around.
  - couchand 4y ago
    Yeah, and don't let anybody ask what compensation the EVP is getting, there's definitely no fat to trim there...
    - jcadam 4y ago
      Hey if you don’t pay top dollar for quality executive talent, you might end up with people who run the company into the ground slightly faster.
  - wongarsu 4y ago
    Assuming perfect information, Jim's skill being transferable, and Jim's performance eval being objective, you'd expect that the company would profit from transferring Jim and other top performers to their profitable products, and cutting the worst employees from those projects (after all, even a department making profit is likely to have some employees on the low end of the performance bell curve). Of course that isn't as easy because of morale, team cohesion, performance evals rarely being comparable across teams, and people being not as fungible as the above suggests. Not to mention all the work this takes, in a time when you probably have other worries. So maybe it's not "really weird", just "not immediately obvious"
  - throwaway292939 4y ago
    Exactly. Layoffs are done in a way order to preserve the company given less resources.
- dboreham 4y ago
  Hmm. I think we were at the same place.
mik3y 4y ago
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.
- anyfoo 4y ago
  > 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. Did you intend this to be a spit take? The sentence read about the same as “Say you’re taking a stroll around town, visit a few cafés, or decide to end the day by jumping into an active volcano.”
  - BayesianDice 4y ago
    I'm guessing a reference to Patreon in September this year: https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/09/patreon-security-layoffs/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/09/patreon-security-layoffs/
    - anyfoo 4y ago
      Wow, thanks for the link, I did not know. That's... bad.
      - isbjorn16 4y ago
        bit like seeing someone jump into an active volcano, really
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
ffggvv 4y ago
not at stripe but another similar company that recently had layoffs. ones at my company were decided by the next level manager, based on the most recent perf review
naasking 4y ago
> 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.
- jlrubin 4y ago
  that'd cause an org wide panic, and you might lose key personel in your actually profitable business units. cutting costs at this scale is not just reducing employees, it's getting rid of employees who are working in areas you need to cut. the secrecy lets management retain control.
  - naasking 4y ago
    > cutting costs at this scale is not just reducing employees, it's getting rid of employees who are working in areas you need to cut. Sure, but if people are going to leave after cost cutting is announced, then you can often shuffle people from those areas into other areas without dealing with whole hiring rigamarole.
  - idontpost 4y ago
- lazide 4y ago
  Like the court system being adversarial, it’s that way because it’s the only thing that scales, for a number of reasons. The longer a company can avoid it/bigger they can be without it, the better everything is. At some point however, it’s inevitable. To answer your second question, because the ones who leave are often the ones with the most options and lowest risk to themselves if they are unemployed, which highly correlates with those who are the ‘best’ (in most hiring managers minds). So it’s pretty common for all the ‘high performers’ to bail (happens anyway, but to a lesser extent on it’s own the moment ‘growth’ isn’t the first thing on peoples minds), and the folks left behind to be those that don’t feel comfortable finding another position. Either because they have a mortgage hanging over their heads, or don’t feel confident in their skills, or are preoccupied with other responsibilities (kids, older parents, etc) and have less free time/are less interested in doing extra hours, or just hate interviewing, etc. It’s basically the equivalent of a hot/pretty boyfriend or girlfriend. They are able to find other options easier, so tend to be the first to bounce if they stop getting what they want. If you’re a manager, that’s obviously not great. Especially if you’re shallow.
freshfunk 4y ago
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.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  My current company did a layoff, not quite 15%, but in that ballpark. They went down as far as the directors and gave them a number. I.e. pick X people to lose. This was in addition to some specific cuts where they axed the entire product and all teams associated with it. It definitely allowed management to cut a few people that had been on their short list for a while.
RRL 4y ago
The layoff was leaked on Blind 24-48hrs ago
- seabriez 4y ago
  There's an ongoing leak about layoffs just about for any company on Blind at any given time whether it will happen or not. Too much trolling to be ever reliable.
sharkweek 4y ago
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.
- truncate 4y ago
  I have a friend who worked at Stripe unit last year. He recently warned me that things are not going well, and he has heard rumors and I should avoid interviewing there. So I think they had some idea that something is going on.
bergenty 4y ago
Usually squads that aren’t totally “essential”. We ended up firing a lot of our analytics department since our new head wasn’t as data oriented.
lay0ffthr0waway 4y ago
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?
- bitbuilder 4y ago
  Give it some time. I've been the manager of multiple engineering teams that had to undergo cuts, and in most cases I found myself in a situation similar to yours: it was obvious it was coming within months or weeks, but nobody was consulting me (which of course led me to believe I was being cut too). But in every case, I was either consulted for input, or at least given a courtesy heads before the actual layoffs occurred. In one case I was looped in a few weeks out and asked to help narrow things down. In another case I was simply shown a list of names the night before and offered a token opportunity to object. The list was sound, and I'm pretty sure my boss was doing me a solid on that one by sparing me the hardest decisions. Line managers aren't always looped in for a few good reasons. Mainly, to prevent leaks. But also I think it can go a long way towards maintaining morale in a post layoff environment. There are countless anecdotes in these threads with people claiming their managers had no idea. Those same employees are now far less likely to be resentful of their managers for laying off their friends. Best of luck. I don't envy being in your position.

dmurdoch 4y ago

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.

pc86 4y ago
Is it "really weird," though? Layoffs, especially when you start talking about entire teams, divisions, products, etc. is about revenue, profitability, and righting the ship (or safeguarding the ship so you don't have to right it 6 months from now). Whether Jim got "exceeds expectations" or "greatly exceeds expectations" is irrelevant when an EVP needs to trim $12M off their budget and Jim's department lost $9M last year.
- imchillyb 4y ago
  - JBlue42 4y ago
    I feel like pc86 was just being straightforward about how those decisions are made. They can speak for themselves though. When I was part of a mass lay-off, it was big enough to trigger CA state law where they had to detail everything. You could clearly see that it was strictly based on who was paid the most (below the managerial level). >The 'righting' came because of shitty financial decisions made from top-down. The top should be fired first and foremost. The company wouldn't be in the position its in if management were doing their fucking jobs. Should but rarely, if ever, happens. Some even get a larger bonus when meeting next quarter targets or some other short-term indicator.
    - pc86 4y ago
      You are correct I was just saying what typically does happen, not what should happen. And when someone responds with so much misguided anger it's not even worth the effort to respond.
    - furbyhater 4y ago
      > it was strictly based on who was paid the most (below the managerial level) The "(below the managerial level)" part is the problem and the reason it is outrageous to people invested in a company but not in a position of power (such as the actual developers/engineers, even in a tech-centric company, at least once it has grown to a given size).
      - pc86 4y ago
        A lot of times what you'll see done is structured more as a reorg than just a straight layoff, where if they need to trim $xM from the budget, they'll start shrinking and eliminating teams at the IC level until they reach .7-.8 of that figure, then see how many "extra" managers they have and start trimming there, typically just based on seniority rather than pay. Rinse and repeat until you're at .9-1.1x depending on how many people you think will resign after the layoffs.
- cragfar 4y ago
  A common sentiment you see on the internet (especially from younger people who haven't experience a tough labor market) is that only the low performers get laid off. So I can see how they think it's really weird if managers aren't involved.
  - newsclues 4y ago
    If layoffs are occurring, companies or managers are going to want to cut poor performers or trouble employees at that time. So if younger employees are saying it's cutting low performers, and the rest are left as the younger and lower paid workers to pick up the slack, where senior levels are cut indiscriminately or based on salary, because they are higher paid and the goal is to cut expensive workers.
  - throwaway16273 4y ago
    I was part of lay offs some years ago. Managers didn’t know until the day of, and it wasn’t based on performance. All the performance reviews were already done months before. Some people were even due for promotions.
  - ghshephard 4y ago
    Low performers always 100% of the time get dropped during layoffs. It's the one window that companies can mostly let go of employees without being sued. (Though, if they lay off too many people in a protected class, still can get sued). What's interesting about a lot of the division or sector-downturn layoffs, that you end up seeing solid performers, and, when you are dropping a good portion of your division - very good performers let go. Most companies try to make a play for keeping their 10x developers - but, I've been in layoffs (Browser Division, Netscape, 1997sh) - where just absolutely everyone was dropped, regardless of performance.
    - scarby2 4y ago
      > Low performers always 100% of the time get dropped during layoffs. This is totally not true. Usually they make jobs redundant not people. If there's a pool of people doing the same job and that headcount is reduced then it will often be the lowest performers that go however some places have done LIFO or cut the most expensive. However if you're doing layoffs and you reduce your frontend team the it's likely low performers from the backend team get to stick around.
- couchand 4y ago
  Yeah, and don't let anybody ask what compensation the EVP is getting, there's definitely no fat to trim there...
  - jcadam 4y ago
    Hey if you don’t pay top dollar for quality executive talent, you might end up with people who run the company into the ground slightly faster.
- wongarsu 4y ago
  Assuming perfect information, Jim's skill being transferable, and Jim's performance eval being objective, you'd expect that the company would profit from transferring Jim and other top performers to their profitable products, and cutting the worst employees from those projects (after all, even a department making profit is likely to have some employees on the low end of the performance bell curve). Of course that isn't as easy because of morale, team cohesion, performance evals rarely being comparable across teams, and people being not as fungible as the above suggests. Not to mention all the work this takes, in a time when you probably have other worries. So maybe it's not "really weird", just "not immediately obvious"
- throwaway292939 4y ago
  Exactly. Layoffs are done in a way order to preserve the company given less resources.
dboreham 4y ago
Hmm. I think we were at the same place.

mik3y 4y ago

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.

anyfoo 4y ago
> 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. Did you intend this to be a spit take? The sentence read about the same as “Say you’re taking a stroll around town, visit a few cafés, or decide to end the day by jumping into an active volcano.”
- BayesianDice 4y ago
  I'm guessing a reference to Patreon in September this year: https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/09/patreon-security-layoffs/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/09/patreon-security-layoffs/
  - anyfoo 4y ago
    Wow, thanks for the link, I did not know. That's... bad.
    - isbjorn16 4y ago
      bit like seeing someone jump into an active volcano, really
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

ffggvv 4y ago

not at stripe but another similar company that recently had layoffs. ones at my company were decided by the next level manager, based on the most recent perf review

naasking 4y ago

> 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.

jlrubin 4y ago
that'd cause an org wide panic, and you might lose key personel in your actually profitable business units. cutting costs at this scale is not just reducing employees, it's getting rid of employees who are working in areas you need to cut. the secrecy lets management retain control.
- naasking 4y ago
  > cutting costs at this scale is not just reducing employees, it's getting rid of employees who are working in areas you need to cut. Sure, but if people are going to leave after cost cutting is announced, then you can often shuffle people from those areas into other areas without dealing with whole hiring rigamarole.
- idontpost 4y ago
lazide 4y ago
Like the court system being adversarial, it’s that way because it’s the only thing that scales, for a number of reasons. The longer a company can avoid it/bigger they can be without it, the better everything is. At some point however, it’s inevitable. To answer your second question, because the ones who leave are often the ones with the most options and lowest risk to themselves if they are unemployed, which highly correlates with those who are the ‘best’ (in most hiring managers minds). So it’s pretty common for all the ‘high performers’ to bail (happens anyway, but to a lesser extent on it’s own the moment ‘growth’ isn’t the first thing on peoples minds), and the folks left behind to be those that don’t feel comfortable finding another position. Either because they have a mortgage hanging over their heads, or don’t feel confident in their skills, or are preoccupied with other responsibilities (kids, older parents, etc) and have less free time/are less interested in doing extra hours, or just hate interviewing, etc. It’s basically the equivalent of a hot/pretty boyfriend or girlfriend. They are able to find other options easier, so tend to be the first to bounce if they stop getting what they want. If you’re a manager, that’s obviously not great. Especially if you’re shallow.

freshfunk 4y ago

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.

rootusrootus 4y ago
My current company did a layoff, not quite 15%, but in that ballpark. They went down as far as the directors and gave them a number. I.e. pick X people to lose. This was in addition to some specific cuts where they axed the entire product and all teams associated with it. It definitely allowed management to cut a few people that had been on their short list for a while.

RRL 4y ago

The layoff was leaked on Blind 24-48hrs ago

seabriez 4y ago
There's an ongoing leak about layoffs just about for any company on Blind at any given time whether it will happen or not. Too much trolling to be ever reliable.

sharkweek 4y ago

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.

truncate 4y ago
I have a friend who worked at Stripe unit last year. He recently warned me that things are not going well, and he has heard rumors and I should avoid interviewing there. So I think they had some idea that something is going on.

bergenty 4y ago

Usually squads that aren’t totally “essential”. We ended up firing a lot of our analytics department since our new head wasn’t as data oriented.

lay0ffthr0waway 4y ago

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?

bitbuilder 4y ago
Give it some time. I've been the manager of multiple engineering teams that had to undergo cuts, and in most cases I found myself in a situation similar to yours: it was obvious it was coming within months or weeks, but nobody was consulting me (which of course led me to believe I was being cut too). But in every case, I was either consulted for input, or at least given a courtesy heads before the actual layoffs occurred. In one case I was looped in a few weeks out and asked to help narrow things down. In another case I was simply shown a list of names the night before and offered a token opportunity to object. The list was sound, and I'm pretty sure my boss was doing me a solid on that one by sparing me the hardest decisions. Line managers aren't always looped in for a few good reasons. Mainly, to prevent leaks. But also I think it can go a long way towards maintaining morale in a post layoff environment. There are countless anecdotes in these threads with people claiming their managers had no idea. Those same employees are now far less likely to be resentful of their managers for laying off their friends. Best of luck. I don't envy being in your position.