CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

[The Sybian]

I would get coffee first and be seated. Avoid the awkward standing in line together.

That was my plan, but she beat me to it. Sent me a text 10 minutes early letting me know which table she was at and asking for my coffee order. It felt like being on a first date but talking about our theories on how to handle different work situations. I don't think it could have gone any better. Just 3 more people to interview with...

[brian]

Just accepted a position with a new company based in the Quad Cities, so I'll be spending about a week a month out there for the foreseeable future (send those dining and nightlife tips about Moline, IL or Davenport, IA in!)

Congrats!

We really like Los Agaves in Moline. It'll be our go-to Mexican spot if we end up that way. Galesburg is about 30 minutes south and they have a pretty great little downtown with pubs and restaurants.

I'll be sure to let you know when we're thinking of our next trip there either way. Maybe you'll be around.

Went to Los Agaves last night and it was definitely really good. Looking forward to sampling more of the menu. (I got the fish tacos, which were good, but everything on the menu looked good.)

[mister d]

Sent me a text 10 minutes early letting me know which table she was at and asking for my coffee order.

Legitimately curious what it was.

[A_B]

Sent me a text 10 minutes early letting me know which table she was at and asking for my coffee order.

Legitimately curious what it was.

"I've got a table in the corner. What kind of coffee would you like this morning?"

[Nonlinear FC]

I would get coffee first and be seated. Avoid the awkward standing in line together.

That was my plan, but she beat me to it. Sent me a text 10 minutes early letting me know which table she was at and asking for my coffee order. It felt like being on a first date but talking about our theories on how to handle different work situations. I don't think it could have gone any better. Just 3 more people to interview with...

I once interviewed to be the comms person at a major law firm in DC. My first round of interviews, they had me meet with 5 different partners. They wanted me to come back in and meet with a half dozen more and I told them thanks but no thanks. Just the dick-swinging on that first day convinced me it was going to be a terrible gig.

That law firm was subsequently mired in some incredibly high profile nonsense and I've thanked Yahweh on a fairly regular basis I didn't go for the money grab with that position. No amount of money in the world...

[mister d]

Sent me a text 10 minutes early letting me know which table she was at and asking for my coffee order.

Legitimately curious what it was.

"I've got a table in the corner. What kind of coffee would you like this morning?"

God dammit. Is this what its like being on a message board with me?

[Giff]

Just accepted a position with a new company based in the Quad Cities, so I'll be spending about a week a month out there for the foreseeable future (send those dining and nightlife tips about Moline, IL or Davenport, IA in!)

Congrats!

We really like Los Agaves in Moline. It'll be our go-to Mexican spot if we end up that way. Galesburg is about 30 minutes south and they have a pretty great little downtown with pubs and restaurants.

I'll be sure to let you know when we're thinking of our next trip there either way. Maybe you'll be around.

Went to Los Agaves last night and it was definitely really good. Looking forward to sampling more of the menu. (I got the fish tacos, which were good, but everything on the menu looked good.)

That's what Kelli typically gets. Glad you enjoyed it.

[The Sybian]

Sent me a text 10 minutes early letting me know which table she was at and asking for my coffee order.

Legitimately curious what it was.

"I've got a table in the corner. What kind of coffee would you like this morning?"

God dammit. Is this what its like being on a message board with me?

Yes, you are the worst...

Are you asking what my coffee order was? Regular coffee with milk. My first thought was it'd be funny to send a text with an embarrassingly convoluted order and make her order that for me and sabotage the interview because she'd assume I'm a royal pain in the ass. Is there something wrong with me that my first thought in most situations is what would make an SNL sketch, not a real answer? I amuse myself, but that can't be normal.

[mister d]

Acai lemonade refresher with vanilla foam #mykidsorder

That was the question because in my head there's definitely a hierarchy of drinks with anything flavored starting the downward spiral.

[Nonlinear FC]

Sent me a text 10 minutes early letting me know which table she was at and asking for my coffee order.

Legitimately curious what it was.

"I've got a table in the corner. What kind of coffee would you like this morning?"

God dammit. Is this what its like being on a message board with me?

Yes, you are the worst...

Are you asking what my coffee order was? Regular coffee with milk. My first thought was it'd be funny to send a text with an embarrassingly convoluted order and make her order that for me and sabotage the interview because she'd assume I'm a royal pain in the ass. Is there something wrong with me that my first thought in most situations is what would make an SNL sketch, not a real answer? I amuse myself, but that can't be normal.

If that's not normal, I don't want to be... that?

I have a version of this that is what would be the most cringe-inducing thing to say. So, maybe not SNL, more like Upright Citizens Brigade... Some would find it funny, most would be unsettled.

[The Sybian]

Acai lemonade refresher with vanilla foam #mykidsorder

That was the question because in my head there's definitely a hierarchy of drinks with anything flavored starting the downward spiral.

She chose an independent coffee shop, and a really cool one, so she gained some points there. I used to count on Starbucks as a place to get some work done and grab a coffee or breakfast before meeting onsite with clients. I don't know if it's a post-COVID thing, but they just aren't set up for sitting down anymore. Maybe the ones I walked past are just tiny, but they didn't even have tables, just 8 inch wide bars to stand up at and put your drink down on.

[The Sybian]

Sent me a text 10 minutes early letting me know which table she was at and asking for my coffee order.

Legitimately curious what it was.

"I've got a table in the corner. What kind of coffee would you like this morning?"

God dammit. Is this what its like being on a message board with me?

Yes, you are the worst...

Are you asking what my coffee order was? Regular coffee with milk. My first thought was it'd be funny to send a text with an embarrassingly convoluted order and make her order that for me and sabotage the interview because she'd assume I'm a royal pain in the ass. Is there something wrong with me that my first thought in most situations is what would make an SNL sketch, not a real answer? I amuse myself, but that can't be normal.

If that's not normal, I don't want to be... that?

I have a version of this that is what would be the most cringe-inducing thing to say. So, maybe not SNL, more like Upright Citizens Brigade... Some would find it funny, most would be unsettled.

Probably a better analogy, and now that I think about it, I'm usually picturing my high school friends' reactions to me saying the thought to them. Like fashion and music (and favorite SNL casts), we get stuck in that defining moment of our development.

[A_B]

Just got an email submission stating "it's the 23rd century! You should be doing more!"

Which is half right, I guess?

[The Sybian]

After another round of interviews, I got the offer today! Instant reaction is that I'm going to take it. Pay is a significant increase, but I will eventually have to go into the NYC office twice a week. At least they are a short walk from Penn Station, unlike the last interview I went to. Fully remote to start, except expectation of going in when certain things require in-person. Not a huge deal, we have a direct train in my town, just need to figure out parking. I gave up my permit years ago and pre-COVID it was a three year wait. Also hoping they reimburse, otherwise I'm dropping $24 on train tickets every day I go in. Plus side, they are listing my workplace as NJ, so I don't need to pay NY State and City income tax.

On the flip side, I am dreading telling my manager. She is arguably the best person I've ever met, let alone worked with. I know she expects people to leave, but I hate feeling like I'm placing a burden on her and I felt like I was cheating going on interviews.

They want me to start the week after Thanksgiving. Kind of perfect if I can take Thanksgiving week off between jobs and start after that. My wife thinks it's crazy to have a week off during a paid holiday. I'd rather not wait until December to leave the old job to avoid a month of COBRA medical insurance. So many thoughts swirling.

[sancarlos]

Congrats! (And, I assume you demanded that your new compensation package includes periodic road trips to San Francisco.)

[The Sybian]

Congrats! (And, I assume you demanded that your new compensation package includes periodic road trips to San Francisco.)

Firm is HQ'd in Mountain View with an office in SF, Santa Monica among others. I'll have to go to all of them at some point, but Mountain View more than the others, I'd assume. I plan on asking to continue going to the conference I've been meeting you at. Hopefully that's an easier ride down the 101 for you.

[Steve of phpBB]

That's fantastic, Syb. Congratulations.

[Johnny Carwash]

Congratulations, Syb!

[mister d]

Congrats (but also my company did a huge project on tax implications and NYC apparently isn't messing around so maybe keep a reserve).

[DaveInSeattle]

Good job Syb!

[Giff]

That’s great news, Syb!

[GoodKarma]

Congrats Syb!

[govmentchedda]

[The Sybian]

Thanks, gents. Officially accepted yesterday, just having issues with the start date, as they didn't realize I was starting on the week of the HR corporate retreat. I think it'll be great meeting everyone from other office and leadership team right away, and we get to attend the HQ holiday party (might not be a positive thing). Just got a text from my future manager inviting me to a team dinner (at 12:30) next Tuesday. Nice to be invited, but it feels weird taking a train into NYC in the middle of the day while I'm still working at my current job. I'm not giving notice yet either, as it'll be another 4 weeks before I start. Lunch is at Union Square Cafe, and if I can get someone else to pay for my meal there, that is quite tempting...

[govmentchedda]

Reply with "See you next Tuesday!" or you're a coward.

[The Sybian]

Reply with "See you next Tuesday!" or you're a coward.

Damnit, opportunity missed. Best to get that in before I give notice.

[DaveInSeattle]

Our CEO sent out the video message...95 people are getting laid off.

I'm hiding at my desk, hoping not to see my boss walking towards me.

[EnochRoot]

Our CEO sent out the video message...95 people are getting laid off.

I'm hiding at my desk, hoping not to see my boss walking towards me.

On a Monday even. Cold.

[DaveInSeattle]

Our CEO sent out the video message...95 people are getting laid off.

I'm hiding at my desk, hoping not to see my boss walking towards me.

I avoided the Grim Reaper...

[govmentchedda]

Nice!

[sancarlos]

So, how does a 32year-old become CFO of a massive public corporation, anyway? I guess it might help to be the son of the Chairman of the Board.

Tyson Foods CFO John Tyson arrested for public intoxication and criminal trespass

[The Sybian]

Our CEO sent out the video message...95 people are getting laid off.

I'm hiding at my desk, hoping not to see my boss walking towards me.

Happy you were not among those let go.

Curious to hear the Swamp take on this. My wife and I had the same exact response and did not see anyone have the same take. Letter from Stripe CEO to staff 15 minutes before announcing a layoff of 14% of their staff.

https://stripe.com/newsroom/news/ceo-pa ... -employees


Today we’re announcing the hardest change we have had to make at Stripe to date. We’re reducing the size of our team by around 14% and saying goodbye to many talented Stripes in the process. If you are among those impacted, you will receive a notification email within the next 15 minutes. For those of you leaving: we’re very sorry to be taking this step and John and I are fully responsible for the decisions leading up to it.

We’ll set out more detail later in this email. But first, we want to share some broader context.

The world around us

At the outset of the pandemic in 2020, the world rotated overnight towards e-commerce. We witnessed significantly higher growth rates over the course of 2020 and 2021 compared to what we had seen previously. As an organization, we transitioned into a new operating mode and both our revenue and payment volume have since grown more than 3x.

The world is now shifting again. We are facing stubborn inflation, energy shocks, higher interest rates, reduced investment budgets, and sparser startup funding. (Tech company earnings last week provided lots of examples of changing circumstances.) On Tuesday, a former Treasury Secretary said that the US faces “as complex a set of macroeconomic challenges as at any time in 75 years”, and many parts of the developed world appear to be headed for recession. We think that 2022 represents the beginning of a different economic climate.

Our business is fundamentally well-positioned to weather harsh circumstances. We provide an important foundation to our customers and Stripe is not a discretionary service that customers turn off if budget is squeezed. However, we do need to match the pace of our investments with the realities around us. Doing right by our users and our shareholders (including you) means embracing reality as it is.

Today, that means building differently for leaner times. We have always taken pride in being a capital efficient business and we think this attribute is important to preserve. To adapt ourselves appropriately for the world we’re headed into, we need to reduce our costs.

How we’re handling departures

Around 14% of people at Stripe will be leaving the company. We, the founders, made this decision. We overhired for the world we’re in (more on that below), and it pains us to be unable to deliver the experience that we hoped that those impacted would have at Stripe.

There’s no good way to do a layoff, but we’re going to do our best to treat everyone leaving as respectfully as possible and to do whatever we can to help. Some of the core details include:

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.

Most importantly, while this is definitely not the separation we would have wanted or imagined when we were making hiring decisions, we want everyone that is leaving to know that we care about you as former colleagues and appreciate everything you’ve done for Stripe. In our minds, you are valued alumni. (In service of that, we’re creating alumni.stripe.com email addresses for everyone departing, and we’re going to roll this out to all former employees in the months ahead.)

We are going to set up a live, 1-1 conversation between each departing employee and a Stripe manager over the course of the next day. If you are in an impacted group, look out for a calendar invitation.

For those not affected, there’ll be some bumpiness over the next few days as we navigate a lot of change at once. We ask that you help us do right by Stripe’s users and the departing Stripes.

Our message to other employers is that there are many truly terrific colleagues departing who can and will do great things elsewhere. Talented people come to Stripe because they’re attracted to hard infrastructure problems and complex challenges. Today doesn’t change that, and they would be fantastic additions at almost any other company.

Going forward

In making these changes, you might reasonably wonder whether Stripe’s leadership made some errors of judgment. We’d go further than that. In our view, we made two very consequential mistakes, and we want to highlight them here since they’re important:

We were much too optimistic about the internet economy’s near-term growth in 2022 and 2023 and underestimated both the likelihood and impact of a broader slowdown.

We grew operating costs too quickly. Buoyed by the success we’re seeing in some of our new product areas, we allowed coordination costs to grow and operational inefficiencies to seep in.

We are going to correct these mistakes. So, in addition to the headcount changes described above (which will return us to our February headcount of almost 7,000 people), we are firmly reining in all other sources of cost. The world is hard to predict right now, but we expect that these changes will set us up for robust cash flow generation in the quarters ahead.

We are not applying these headcount changes evenly across the organization. For example, our Recruiting organization will be disproportionately affected since we’ll hire fewer people next year. If you want to see how your organization is impacted, Home will be up-to-date by 7am PT.

We’ll describe what this means for our company strategy soon. Nothing in it is going to radically change, but we’re going to make some important edits that make sense for the world that we’re headed into, and tighten up our prioritization substantially. Expect to hear more on this over the next week.

While the changes today are painful, we feel very good about the prospects for innovative businesses and about Stripe’s position in the internet economy. The data we see is consistent with this encouraging picture: we signed a remarkable 75% more new customers in Q3 2022 than Q3 2021, our competitive win rates are getting even better, our growth rates remain very strong, and on Tuesday we set a new record for total daily transaction volume processed. Our smaller users (many of whom are just “big customers that aren’t yet big”) are, in aggregate, growing extremely quickly, showing that plenty of technology S curves remain in the early innings and that our customers remain impressively resilient in the face of the broader global challenges.

People join Stripe because they want to grow the internet economy and boost entrepreneurship around the world. Times of economic stress make it even more important that we find innovative ways to help our users grow and adapt their businesses. Today is a sad day for everyone as we say goodbye to a number of talented colleagues. But we’re ready for a pitched effort ahead, and we’re putting Stripe on the right footing to face it.

For the rest of this week, we’ll focus on helping the people who are leaving Stripe. Next week we’ll reset, recalibrate, and move forward.

Patrick and John

[Shirley]

I'd say that's an extremely generous severance package and about as good a "we're letting people go" email as you're going to get from a CEO.

[GoodKarma]

I would agree with that… It’s not too often that you see things spelled out in that much detail including the mistakes that they made.

[sancarlos]

Co-sign

[wlu_lax6]

Former swamp citizen louthegiant rat works for stripe. .Did not get laid.off. Says good things about the company.

[tennbengal]

that's perhaps the most humane layoff plan I've run across.

[EnochRoot]

My brother’s department at Bank of America was both downsized and outsourced, and as a result, he got the axe. His severance and benefits ran 18 months.

[DaveInSeattle]

Our CEO sent out the video message...95 people are getting laid off.

I'm hiding at my desk, hoping not to see my boss walking towards me.

I avoided the Grim Reaper...

Should be interesting to see who is and who isn't in my various meetings this morning.

[The Sybian]

I would agree with that… It’s not too often that you see things spelled out in that much detail including the mistakes that they made.

I agree with all the comments, incredibly generous terms and very humble words from the founders that come across as genuine. As a little more context, the Chief HR officer at my wife's company sent it to her (as Chief marketing and Communications) saying it was the best communication she has seen. What set my wife off, and I immediately said the first thing, was I can't believe they sent this before telling employees whether they were part of the layoff. I imagine everyone reading this and freaking the fuck out, wondering if they are losing their job. I can't imagine many people were able to concentrate after the first paragraph to comprehend the rest. For employees onsite, there must have been chaos in the period between the email being sent and people starting to receive the layoff notifications. My wife was surprised the CHRO didn't think of this. Then she went to LinkedIn and saw a stream of nothing but praise.