Brex layoffs (opens in new tab)

I'd love to see the internal explanation on how hiring kotlin for BE devs is easier than hiring elixir devs.

That's like trying to pivot from finding unicorn to finding pegasus.

And massive ad spending in SF a few years ago. They had ads everywhere.

What stack did the switch from/to?

MBAs have hopped on the agile bandwagon. Business plan? That's not scheduled for this sprint.

Especially companies which claim to have solid runway blaming "the macro environment" is perplexing.

But then, venture capital backed companies generally (arguably by design) are not profitable, so their ability to weather storms is likely weakened and maybe the boards get squirrely when faced with the threat of bad weather.

> Meanwhile unemployment is still at an all time low.

That is incredibly circular logic. So companies shouldn't be doing layoffs because unemployment is low?

Are you arguing that the macro environment isn't bad? A G7 country is in a mexican standoff with its bond market and pension funds to avoid a systemic collapse in the next 3 days. How much worse is the macro situation supposed to get before businesses should worry?

The economy _is_ to blame if your business strategy is to burn VC money at a faster and faster rate, which is the goal of most billion dollar growth stage startups. I know HN likes to rip on these types of businesses, but that is literally the strategy. You can not like it, but blaming it on incompetence is foolish.

When the economy turns you have to adjust that strategy, which is what they are doing now.

I’d be curious what the numbers look like in the next quarter, also I recall that the US has some absurd definition of unemployed that conveniently undercounts the unemployed.

That said I think the real story now is that the previous recessions haven’t really impacted the big tech companies, but this time it is so we’re seeing the first mass layoffs that this generation of developers has likely ever encountered. Couple that with the “tech” companies that are essentially just advertising companies that write software (obviously FB and G, but many of the startups aren’t too different) discovering that attention based advertising isn’t as stable a revenue stream as was thought, and you get a _lot_ more “safe” jobs disappearing.

When the credit market is hot, issue more debt

When the equity market is hot, issue more shares

When the consumer market is hot, sell more product

It has nothing to do with employees unless you are trying to bribe a politician with “jobs” you’ll bring to their area

I mean the feds goal is to raise unemployment at this point (to slow down inflation) so in that sense this the fear of a recession is in fact creating a recession?

the billionaires decided that it’s recession time, so we’re gonna recess.

I’m very jealous of people capable of pulling this off. I guess there is no way to do something like if you are not in the right circles.

I’m tall and though it helps with certain things, it’s never enough to clinch a situation on its own.

I’ve heard it all, from dating, promotions, sports, and now fundraising. You still have to have all of the skills at it for anything good to happen.

cant try it in five years though: no more cheap $$$$ you actually have to do stuff now

I wish I were a little bit taller.

Since they fired us, we found Relay which has been fantastic. I can't imagine ever switching away from Relay back to Brex lol

They are an "X for Y" startup in a space that...really doesn't need disruption?

Normal banks with tellers named Maud are likely the ones eating their lunch.

I'm not a user, but from the marketing, it seems like a product that's "nice to have", not a "must have". Normal banking and corporate cards can pretty much do all of what they do, albeit with a slightly worse user-experience.

Businesses like this are skating on thin ice. People are willing to pay a premium for design and user-experience when the times are good. But when they're not, these "nice-to-haves" are first on the chopping block.

Yea, if you look at the benefits for those laid-off, it's pretty supportive (at least from my American experience). They are paying at least 2 months severance, you keep your hardware, you get 6 months healthcare, and they weren't dicks about doing this. I would say this is better than most recent layoff announcements and the fact that they even state that they will re-hire anyone later on as a priority shows that they aren't trying to blame "low performers" or something, it's just some colleagues that they can't keep on right now due to business reasons.

Now, maybe their business reasons are dues to their own ineptness or bad luck or whatever, but they handled this pretty well.

I say this all because we tend, on HN and other places, to focus on the shitty aspects of every bad news story, and rarely speak up when something goes right that is still shitty, like this.

100%. I think this is the best / "least bad" layoff message I've read.

Okay, this legitimately made me giggle. Dark, sad, but hilarious. Thanks.