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Carta lays off 10% of the workforce
Just got off company announcement, here are the key details:
- the departure affected 10% of the company
The benefits include:
- 2.5 months of severance, plus one week for every year of tenure
- 3 months of health insurance
- 1 year cliff for RSUs waived for new employees. In cases where employees did not get equity, they get a lump sum payout
- Visa holders get one 30-minute paid consultation with an immigration attorney
- Voluntary self departures accepted until 12PM tomorrow, but self-departures only get 2.5 months (tenure not factored in severance)
- qaq 4y ago"Visa holders get one 30-minute paid consultation with an immigration attorney" wow
- mathieuh 4y agoI know lawyers can be verbose but surely it takes less than 30 minutes to say “you’re fucked”
- notch656c 4y agoHey it's not "you're fucked!" It's your fucked unless your true love decided today was the day to get married!
- muzz 4y agoCompanies often keep visa'd employees on payroll so they have more time to find another job. I personally feel this goes against the temporary intent of the visa, but it's a very common practice.
- 12311231231 4y ago[dead]
- nvdnadj92 4y agobetter than nothing, in my opinion. At least they were considered.
- throw1230 4y agoalmost equal to nothing.
- qcic 4y agothis is worth, like $500. would have looked better if they didn't even have this at all.
- pigtailgirl 4y ago-- $500 is a lot of money --
- cryptonym 4y agoit depends in which pockets you put the money
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- all2 4y agoI'd consider this a blessing, tbh. Just the fact that there's an attorney on call that I can ask questions of, and I can talk to my friends who also talked to the consultant instead of hunting down an attorney for myself -- or more likely not and just going it alone and reading the documentation myself (I know guys who do this). There's a lot of benefit here for those who need guidance.
- dandellion 4y agoLet's say there's 15 people with visas, they're probably going to have very similar conditions. The company pays a lawyer for two days of work, one full-time work day to look carefully into what options people with visa have, and another day to spend 30 minutes with each person individually to explain the situation and answer any question they might have. If each individual goes to a lawyer and they want the same treatment, it's not going to cost them $500, it will cost them significantly more.
- 4y ago
- themitigating 4y agoSeriously? Look at their other severance benefits. Besides if you need an attorney for an immigration case it would be a massive amount of hours. The 30 minutes consultation is helpful to decide if you need to pursue a case. I can't believe with all they are giving you still had to shit on it somehow.
- qaq 4y agoTell me you never dealt with US visa system without telling me you never dealt with US visa system
- paulgb 4y agoI've had at least half a dozen US visas (J-1, TN, H-1B, plus renewals, then EAD and now permanent residency). I would have appreciated this benefit if I'd been laid off.
- qaq 4y agoThe only tangible benefit would be to keep people on payroll instead of severance which would more than double the time they have available to find the next job
- 4y ago
- prepend 4y agoI think it basically means they can’t answer visa related questions so anything they can’t answer gets punted to this consult. It’s a consideration that they’ll have lots of questions that would have been “I don’t know, go find an attorney.” So now it’s “we paid this attorney to answer you up to 30 minutes.” Visa holders are extra hosed during layoffs, but there’s not really any way to avoid this as you can’t favor visa holders to not be laid off.
- notch656c 4y agoThe attorney may have even paid the company. Getting 1:1 contact with hundreds of recently highly-paid clients that need your services is likely worth not only doing free but paying the company laying off for the privilege. The 30 minutes is enough for the commercial, not the actual services.
- jejeyyy77 4y agoUS residency being tied to employment is still so funny/ridiculous to me, as a non-American. What a raw deal for the immigrants.
- chimeracoder 4y ago> US residency being tied to employment is still so funny/ridiculous to me, as a non-American. What a raw deal for the immigrants. That is quite common, especially in the developed world. The US is a little stricter in the timelines and thresholds it applies, but not as much more as people seem to think. Immigrants get a raw deal everywhere, especially immigrants from developing countries.
- qaq 4y agoNot true for Canada and most of EU.
- chimeracoder 4y ago> Not true for Canada and most of EU. I don't know where you get this idea but that is absolutely not the case.
- sithlord 4y ago2.5 months severance is pretty low compared to the other layoffs that have happened recently.
- donsupreme 4y agoElon disagrees
- snihalani 4y agoAs an immigrant who got laid off this year, I am hating on every company that doesn't offer to keep you on payroll with the severance money
- bushbaba 4y agoLegally if you are on payroll but not doing work the visa issue remains. Now will the government actually enforce that who knows. I’m not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.
- pjdemers 4y agoIf you are still on the payroll, the company is committed to paying you, which means they don't get to recognize (accounting-wise) the cost savings of letting you go. They could convert you to a temporary FTE, but that doesn't help your visa. Severance and other costs of letting people go are recognized as soon as the employee walks out the door.
- firstfewshells 4y agoYou sound entitled tbh.
- redtriumph 4y agoOne of the founder's listed is Manu Kumar who has one of the longest Linkedin profile I've come across: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sneaker https://www.linkedin.com/in/sneaker
- nvdnadj92 4y agoBeen at the company 3 years, this guy Manu was there in the early days, but he is pretty much a ghost since the past 7 years. He's moved on, I think he is a VC now.
- jonas-w 4y agoIs there a way to view linkedin profiles without logging in?
- redtriumph 4y agoI haven't figured out the sauce for this. It is definitely possible, but is not easily reproducible reliably.
- globalise83 4y agoI find it strange that the incentives for self-departure are weaker than for non-voluntary departure. Usually it's the other way around, or maybe just where I come from. What's the logic behind incentivising people to not quit?
- m8s 4y agoI was about to ask the same thing. Why would someone leave voluntarily for worse benefits?
- dsr_ 4y agoThey want to bias the volunteers towards those who really don't like the company and those who haven't been there as long.
- ageitgey 4y agoIf a company over-hired in non-core areas during the last two years because valuations were high, they might want to shed non-core workers that they feel that they don't really "need". But they definitely don't want to lose the best people working on the core business. The people who take voluntary leave are often the most able to quickly find a new job (i.e. the best people). So it is not in their best interest to incentivize that.
- TAForObvReasons 4y agoSuppose you wanted to leave. There are 2 choices: A) Voluntarily leave and get some sort of severance. B) Wait and gamble that the company decides to ask you to leave. If you wait and are not selected to leave, you likely won't get any severance. So if you are angling to leave, it's safer to just take the package.
- globalise83 4y agoGreat explanation. Probably where I am from there are more statutory or other costs involved in non-voluntary redundancy so it makes more sense to incentivise anyone to leave who wants to do so.
- danwee 4y agoI always wondered how American companies lay off European employees (when the companies have branches in European countries). Usually, in Europe, you cannot just fire someone without a justified reason (and no, saving costs is not a justified reason). Such reason are usually: the employee did something illegal (data leaks, sell internal information, etc.) or something related to harassing other employees. Even with bad performance, they cannot just fire you without first giving you the option to "recover". I don't know Carta at all, but if they had an European branch and if I were an European employee that is being told "you're fired", well, they will have a really hard time doing it.
- baggy_trough 4y agoHow can "we don't have the money to pay you" not be a justified reason?
- aerojoe23 4y agoWhat about "We have the money to pay you but we don't want to anymore"? No idea about this case. But often it seems they're cutting cost because they think they can, not because they have to.
- theSIRius 4y agoEmployee protection. Just because the management could not balance the sheet is not a good enough reason employees should suffer the consequences. At least in theory. But if the company is shutting down a whole team without replacement, the employees should still get the option to relocate into another role. They can be let go only after that fails.
- mardifoufs 4y agoI think there's a legal difference between laying off employees "in bulk" by shutting down teams/divisions versus firing individual employees .
- kaesar14 4y agoHow is saving costs not a justifiable reason? Maybe all of this is why European employees have such a hard time finding US salaries.
- adrr 4y agoFor the RSUs. Is there a buy-back program for shares? Taxes on these far out weigh the benefit. Carta with $150m of revenue is not worth over $1B and is closer to $500m if it went public right now. Use other fintechs that went public for comparison like Robinhood, Coinbase, Toast etc.
- dilyevsky 4y agoI could be wrong but carta should have much better margins than the two you mentioned so it should be closer to traditional 7-10x saas multiplier. Sometimes there are tender offers for rsus but usually you have to wait for trigger event, I don’t think RSUs are worse than say NSOs
- umeshunni 4y agoMost RSUs are double trigger and don't trigger taxes till an actual liquidity event
- eggbeater5000 4y agoNot here. Single trigger.
- adrr 4y agoI think you'll find that they are rare like NCOs with long expiration dates.
- naandanaan 4y agowhere are you getting the rev figure?
- softwaredoug 4y agoAccording to Blind the CTO was also fired and is being sued by the company > eShares Inc. d/b/a Carta Inc. filed a breach-of-contract and trade secrets lawsuit against former CTO Jerry O. Talton III on Friday in New York Southern District Court. The suit, brought by Dechert, accuses the defendant of leaking private, privileged and confidential info to outside parties in order to induce and assist legal claims against the company. Counsel have not yet appeared for the defendant. The case is 1:22-cv-10987, eShares Inc. v. Talton. https://www.law.com/radar/card/eshares-inc-v-talton-iii-47321855-0/ https://www.law.com/radar/card/eshares-inc-v-talton-iii-4732...
- pigtailgirl 4y ago-- tc article confusing - https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/10/carta-previously-sued-for-gender-discrimination-is-now-suing-its-former-cto/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/10/carta-previously-sued-for-... --
- henning 4y agoCarta always talks about how it imagines itself as a sports team. When the team is doing badly, don't they usually fire the head coach? I guess they aren't willing to take the analogy that far, they just like the bit about expecting everyone to be a superstar.
- beambot 4y agoWho said Carta was performing poorly? A more apt analogy is that the franchise's budget just got slashed by 10%, so now they need to rearrange the talent budget... This happens all the time in sports teams too.
- frollo 4y agoThey fired and sued the CEO, which means they should probably have noticed something before having to fire 10% of the company.
- cableshaft 4y agoCTO[1], not CEO. Still C-Suite, but not the top dog. [1]: https://www.teamblind.com/post/Carta-announcing-layoffs-and-CTO-fired-BEKpGeL3 https://www.teamblind.com/post/Carta-announcing-layoffs-and-...
- rvz 4y agoAnother day, another downsizing. The warning signs were right in front of you: [0] And now everyone and including their cats and dogs are all talking about a 'recession'. You're too late, it has already happened and it is lagging behind and taking effect. Should have prepared for that in November 2021. You were warned. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29508238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29508238
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- henning 4y agoI've been waiting for the other shoe to drop for a decade.
- muzz 4y agoIt would be interesting to see the uptake on the last bullet point, ie the percentage of people who didn't get laid off but took a voluntary severance
- sicp-enjoyer 4y agoWhy did this get removed from the front page so quickly?
- olivetan 4y agoLiquifi ("Carta for crypto"), is hiring across all roles. Liquifi helps companies automate their token vest plans & also manage their token cap tables. We're actively hiring & would love to chat with anyone that was affected by these layoffs. If interested, feel free to apply via our website at: https://www.liquifi.finance/ https://www.liquifi.finance/ Or reach out to me directly at oliver@liqufi.finance