Some companies manage to do layoffs professionally. Stripe, a payment technology company, failed the professionalism test. What should have been a quiet dismissal of 3 1/2% of their workforce (300 out of 8500), turned into a national embarassment. It seems that in their emails to 300 workers, they sent a cartoon image of a yellow duckling with the label “US-Non-California Duck”. This left duck egg on the face of many of the people at what is the largest privately held fin-tech company. They apologized quickly, but as the nursery rhyme goes… all the Kings horses and all the Kings men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again. I hope for Stripe”s sake, this isn’t the case.
Stripe, the Bay Area’s second most valuable startup, emailed a layoff notice to 300 workers – along with a cartoon picture. Is this the way to handle layoffs?
Found at www.forbes.com
