相比于 Stripe CEO 的裁员信，马斯克简直就是个…
最近硅谷的裁员信息有点多，马斯克在收购 Twitter 后除了产品层面的一些大动作外，更是开启了大裁员模式，据说最多可能会裁掉 50%的人。而在今天，估值曾达千亿美金的 Stripe 也开启了裁员，并且裁员的比例高达 14%，这倒是有点出乎意料。
两家公司的 CEO 都写了裁员信，如果要做一下比较，可以说差距是天壤之别。Stripe CEO Patrick Collison 不只裁员信不仅有对自身的反省，对于被裁掉的员工的补偿，可以说是给得非常到位了。
Patric Collison 在裁员信里说，迄今为止他们在 Stripe 做出的最艰难的改变，对于即将离开的人，他和联合创始人 John Collison（兄弟）要负全部责任。而做出这个决定在于世界已经发生了巨大变化：
- 受疫情的影响，世界一夜之间进入了电子商务时代，在 2020 年到 2021 年，Stripe 的收入和支付量增长了 3 倍多；但现在的世界又发生了巨大的变化，目前面临着通货膨胀、能源问题冲击、高利率、企业投资预算减少以及创业公司融资环境变差等问题，2022 年可能代表着一个不一样的经济环境的开始；
- Stripe 本身的业务相对来说经受住了严峻的环境考验，虽然 Stripe 一向以非常高的资本效率而自豪，但也需要根据外部环境的变化做相应的调整，因此需要降低成本。
对于离开的人，Stripe 给出的补偿包括：
- Severance Pay 遣散费：将为所有离职员工支付 14 周的遣散费，任职更长的员工会更多一些；
- Bonus 奖金：所有离职员工都会拿到 2022 年的年度奖金，不管他们的离职日期（2022 年才加入的员工将按比例给）；
- PTO（带薪假期）：所有未使用的 PTO 都会给到现金补偿；
- Healthcare（医疗保险）：公司将支付相当于 6 个月现有医疗保险费或医疗保险延续费的现金补偿；
- RSU（股票期权）：将加速处理员工拥有的可兑换部分股份期权；
- 职业支持：尽可能与其它公司联系，帮助被裁的员工联系工作；
- 移民签证支持：尽可能提供签证方面的支持；
对于此次裁员的决策，Patric Collison 认为他们管理层犯了两个重大错误，一个是对互联网经济在 2022 年和 2023 年的短期增长过于乐观，低估了大范围放缓的可能性和影响；第二个就是运营成本增长太快了，而这主要受到一些新产品所取得成绩的鼓舞，进而大量招人导致整体效率降低。
Patric Collison 认为，未来世界会如何很难预测，但对创新企业和 Stipe 的前景还是比较乐观，在 2022 年第三季度，Stripe 签约的新客户比 2021 年同期增加了 75%，增长率仍然非常强劲，每日处理的交易总量还在不断创下新的记录，其中小客户总体上增长非常迅速。下面是 Stripe CEO 的全员信：
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
相比来说，马斯克写的裁员信很简短，基本上就是一个通知，而且对于被裁掉员工的可能补偿，没有任何的提及。马斯克在邮件里说，周五开始在全公司范围裁员，会通过电子邮件告知他们是否被裁。
同时，公司将暂时关闭办公室，所有的胸牌将暂停发放，以“帮助确保每个员工以及 Twitter 系统和客户数据的安全”。下面是马斯克的全员信：
Team,
In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday. We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.
Given the nature of our distributed workforce and our desire to inform impacted individuals as quickly as possible, communications for this process will take place via email. By 9AM PST on Friday Nov. 4th, everyone will receive an individual email with the subject line: Your Role at Twitter. Please check your email, including your spam folder.
If your employment is not impacted, you will receive a notification via your Twitter email.
If your employment is impacted, you will receive a notification with next steps via your personal email.
If you do not receive an email from twitter-hr@ by 5PM PST on Friday Nov. 4th, please email xxxxxxxx.
To help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data, our offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended. If you are in an office or on your way to an office, please return home.
We acknowledge this is an incredibly challenging experience to go through, whether or not you are impacted. Thank you for continuing to adhere to Twitter policies that prohibit you from discussing confidential company information on social media, with the press or elsewhere.
We are grateful for your contributions to Twitter and for your patience as we move through this process.
Thank you.
