Brex Layoffs | Hacker News Reader

Brex Layoffs

brex.com

127 pointsbpc84150 comments

It's really disappointing to see the trajectory that Brex is on. I was extremely enthusiastic about their product, they had the best business banking/credit/expense tracking in the industry. I was a very happy customer, until they decided they would only chase SV startup unicorns as their customers, and terminated my account. Brex is very much a cautionary tale for other startups.

They lied (or did not clearly inform their sales people) about their AWS credit promotion a few years ago which really annoyed me when they were trying to sell us. Went back to the safe embrace of SVB but I guess that didn't really play out well. As a startup I desperately want to see more credit card companies willing to offer cards to founders without ridiculous personal guarantees, so I hope they figure it out.

I have used SVB in the past as well, for my first startup. They were solidly OK. This is still an area ripe for disruption IMO, old Brex filled the niche but for some reason we just can't do payments and banking correctly in the US. India has UPI for instance, and even foreigners can avail themselves of this facility.

Solidly okay right up to their bank run.

As an SVB customer, how bad was it? Did you have any delays or other issues accessing your money? Did service or perks change a lot after the takeover?

They let us get our cash out within a few days IIRC, and we switched to a different bank (was right after we were acquired so kind of a different situation). I would say there's still a large gap in the market SVB filled but I am not using them for my new company yet so can't compare before/after.

Cool, it was my impression it was fairly smooth for customers. Glad it worked out well for you and congrats on the acquisition!

Thank you! Glad this happened after the deal closed

Aren’t they all?

I like that they shared publicly the severance package (I missed that in a company before, the severance package was only available to the ones laid off, and you wouldn't even know if you got the same as your colleagues).

And the package itself seems alright too (and sensible, for example: the laid off can keep their laptops. What would company do with almost 300 extra laptops?). Time of the lay off also not too bad (firing people in November/December is really uncool).

All in all, not TOO bad from what I can see in the public post.

Oh, and they also said how many people first, not how many percent, which suggest they think about their human resources as actual individuals.

I've been on both sides of the layoff discussions all too many times over the years. Even at the most disorganized or chaotic places, I've never seen the severance packages be anything other than a set formula.

That formula might consider location, level, tenure, and other relevant factors, but I don't think I've ever seen a case where it was "I like Alice more than Bob, so Alice gets more..."

The laptop thing is usually less about clawing back property and more about preventing the laptop, potentially with customer PII and source code and other stuff on it, ending up sold on ebay or left laying around as a personal device to be eventually lost at an airport 3 years later, and so on. They take them back, wipe them, then either resell them to a reseller or reissue them to other employees etc.

Indeed, the financial services firm I contribute at is required to remotely lock and wipe laptops when offboarding for compliance purposes, and that is somewhat consistent with the other FIs I’ve seen the inside of. How effective this is depends on an org's MDM story (people, process, controls).

If they are managed devices (which I hope they are at a fintech company), it should be trivial to remote wipe them before removing MDM from them to enable personal use/resale etc.

As I understand it, it's a question of insurance. Either way, it's very common in larger companies to either reissue or physically destroy machines after an employee leaves.

how would you wipe them without an internet connection if I shut it off ?

the minute it goes online, it gets the kill signal

i mean, you can get the information about getting laid off from email on the phone or another computer. then not connect it and download what you need then reinstall it

You can do everything you mentioned irrespective of whether you are allowed to keep the device or not (before it's physically collected by you former employer, which can take a few days).

They just a remote wipe which surely a company that size is set up to do.

Good point!

8 weeks plus 2 weeks per year seems light. 4 weeks for every year sounds more fair. The interview process was over 8 weeks

Those equations intersect at 4 years of tenure. Brex was founded only 7 years ago, so most affected employees would presumably make out better with 8 + 2 * N than with 4 * N.

We are still including the 8 weeks. 8 + (4*n).

> 8 weeks plus 2 weeks per year seems light. 4 weeks for every year sounds more fair. The interview process was over 8 weeks

Well that would be a short severance for everybody who was hired in the last year.

You still get the 8 weeks.

> Time of the lay off also not too bad (firing people in November/December is really uncool).

I don’t understand this. Why is it uncool? And why is January better?

I guess it doesn’t let people enjoy their vacations. But on the flip side, isn’t that a good thing? You can curb expenses on the vacation/holidays.

You can enjoy those holidays with the family instead of being stressed and sad about losing the job. The holidays being Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I see. I guess different strokes for different folks.

For me, if my job or project is doomed, and my employer knows, I will rather they tell me immediately so I can start figuring out solutions ASAP.

It doesn’t matter if it’s the holidays. The last thing I will want is to come back from a holiday in Portugal, spirits high, year plans made, but only to be told I am fired.

But I can understand the other perspective.

The amount of time you have after you are fired is the same. If you are fired later, you get paid for a month or two AND are stress free with your family during the holidays.

Of course. However, the amount of time spent thinking consciously or subconsciously on a doomed project is minimized. The amount of time spent making decisions predicated on having the same job also. I can also savage any expensive holiday plans I made.

The keyword for me is the employer should let me know ASAP when something is doomed.

Again, this stress-free holiday with family is not a problem for me. I will rather be real about the situation than have my employer hide it for a month. They could give me an extra month of severance instead :).

Edit: I might be a minority on the earlier take.

I think the other argument that would affect other people is: these things always leak through gossip. When you hear of an imminent layoff and you don’t know if you will be included, it’s the worst type of stress.

I think it depends on the amount of severance you receive. A layoff happening in November/December with enough severance to cover what would've been the employee's wages/salary through February or beyond is kind of ideal; that way I'd get to spend the holidays as, well, holidays. Otherwise, I'd prefer it to be after the holidays, when businesses are ramping back up into normal operations and therefore I can reasonably hope for a faster turnaround time (and thus less of my own savings drained).

This time I got laid off it was the latter (last week), and while it's still stressful, I vastly prefer it over the last time I lost my job (right after Thanksgiving, with no severance).

What about Chinese New Year then? Also February not cool?

There are effectively 2-3 dead weeks in which you’re not paid but can’t look for a new job. All you can do over Christmas and New Year is worry.

Nobody’s hiring during that time of year.

Looking at that list 6 months of COBRA is short, really short. In this job-search environment your COBRA is going to run out well before you could find your next job.

When I was laid off from Oracle in 2012 I got 18 months of COBRA. That sounds must more reasonable.

It’s 6 months of subsidized COBRA where the company is contributing. Legally you are entitled to 18 months but you have to pay out of pocket entirely.

The marketplace coverage (or straight Medicaid) is cheaper than cobra these days. Cobra was 2200 for my family, with marketplace we pay 400.

Not necessarily, when I left a company (to take a break) continuing with COBRA was ~$3400/month, the direct marketplace insurance was ~$3200/mo.

It does depend on income because the lower prices are due to tax credits, but this early in the year these folks should have a low estimated income. I recon you had a big estimated income that year? I had a similar issue where the last few months I was paying 1500 for marketplace insurance, it’s only in the new year I’m paying less.

I believe it would've gone down on year 2, but didn't get to test that so don't have any details, as I went back to work before a year.

> The marketplace coverage (or straight Medicare)

Medicare is available only to 65+ y.o. people. You probably wanted to say Medicaid.

Yes thanks

Previously:

Brex, valued at $12.3B earlier this year, lays off 11% of staff https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33167302 (October 11, 2022 — 14 points, 1 comments)

There was no lack of funding for Henrique’s posh wedding ceremony in a paradise island in Brazil back in October though. https://www.metropoles.com/colunas/fabia-oliveira/video-veja...

Getting 403

The founders are never part of the layoffs.

Honestly looks like a slightly above average wedding - prob cheaper than getting married in the US

Why do people post stuff like this? A guy made some money and had a nice wedding.

Would you prefer he kill himself?

"Henrique and I are responsible for the decisions that led us here, and seeing so many talented folks go through this experience is never what you hope for as a founder."

~ Responsible but not accountable, got it.

Just the right kind of leadership you want in an employer.

"As a result of this, nothing will change for Henrique and I."

I guess this is what happens 1.5 years later when you decide to kick all LLCs off from using your platform and they all go to use your competitors instead

What happened there?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31772847

source: was one of the affected LLCs. Went to Mercury and never looked back!

Tone of this is just awful, reads like he's saying they've laid off a bunch of people who were slowing us down, and sort of ends it by saying how excited he is about the business now they've been let go...

That's venture capital for you..

Company was burning $17m per month with less than $300m in revenue... while growing at a slower rate than ramp.com . simply unsustainable.

What am I not understanding about your comment, 300m is 25m per month, so that sounds very profitable?

They spend every cent of the revenue they made AND the extra $17m each month.

Ohhhh, I misunderstood that in the same way. $17 is the burn (i.e. the net loss), not the expenses.

Their spend is $42m per month

Is there some relevance in the comparison to ramp.com or were you just mentioning it as an example?

its effectively their competitor

Oh right... for some reason I thought it was a crypto startup. Maybe that's another Ramp

yeah, thats https://ramp.network/ . Also called Ramp. I made the same mistake previously.

It seems like companies are really tightening the screws further this year. When I got into this industry I figured the good times would roll for about 10 years, and then it would be about time for another career change. "Make hay while the sun is shining", as they say. I'm right around that 10th year, and I think that prediction was accurate.

Do you think there is a career out there better than (I assume) software development?

My view is that we are still in pretty good times. Maybe not great, but everyone who kept their jobs is still earning a big salary.

And everything else other than software development is worse (specifically if you bundle things like ML into “software development“).

I am curious. What career would you change to?

Attorney. Build a system, work from anywhere, make your own schedule. Hard to outsource.

Really? I would have assumed that attorney is one of those jobs that is going to be hugely disrupted by AI. Should people new to the field bother if they aren't going to be top X% (5? 10?)?

There's way more to legal work than filling out forms. The AI is going to replace legal assistants, not the attorneys themselves.

For people without the resources, yes. For people that have a problem and resources, no. They pay for the best and want to be sure it‘s watertight.

Just get into and through Harvard Law, easy peasy...

The best programmers make good money too.

Quality is determined by a combination of network, reputation, and results, not your Alma mater. Search for a securities or criminal defense attorney, ask around, see if where they got their diploma plays into the referrals you get.

Actual legal work, as opposed to legal-adjacent tasks, will be the last to be disrupted by AI, at least so long as AI means LLM. Law is simply too complicated to rely on something that doesn't have the ability to understand.

Doc review staff will be effectively eliminated...but they're already being eliminated by non-AI technology, so AI will just be the last straw.

I watched a tech demo of an LLM writing code to make a neat little user interface. I would have thought that utterly impossible a couple years ago.

I don’t think this would be a good time to start a career drafting contracts.

It’s not even the complicated part, these are fields where people still use fax machines and wouldn’t use teleconferencing until they were dragged kicking and screaming through COVID (And even then, lots of courts were like, nah, we’ll just close court for a year, too bad for you)

Free market dynamics don’t apply. Healthcare is the same way because it’s controlled by an old guard backed up by the force of law. There is no way to disrupt because the system is rigged.

Here I am the one to bring up AI, ugh. I get a sense that, of all things, LLM's actually encroach on legal professions the most (aside from copywriters). But this is from an outside perspective. Any insights?

If blockchain didn’t replace the law, neither is a hallucinating robot in the near term. Has to pass legal muster, not techbro bar. I say this as someone deeply involved in GRC in finance where a component of my work is working on improving LLM guardrails for knowledge management.

What does build a system mean?

Focus on a niche, create a funnel, be very good at that niche, scale horizontally.

EDIT: Picked attorney because you have to be licensed to practice law, creating a barrier to the equivalent of code bootcamps. My apologies if the model around the idea wasn't clear, I will do better!

Why is this seemingly general rule so specific to law (being an attorney)?

The license is the key, as a barrier to entry. Medicine is very high and takes a lot of time but pretty impenetrable. Law is cheaper for the time and money. What else would have this property?

Self-employed tradesman pays as much on a per-hour basis as contract dev work and doesn't have to compete with a million people in developing countries willing to work for $20/hr. The project management parts from software development aren't too different either -- it's all tasks, coordinating stakeholders, etc.

That's my angle, but there are plenty of other fields too: healthcare (nurses make as much as most SWEs and can live anywhere in the country), government, certain employee tradesmen (electrician, etc.), basically anything that requires some sort of license or training. Life is long, spending a couple years to get 10+ years of good returns is a wise investment.

I've never been to the Bay Area, so what I'm about to say may not apply, but look in any middle-class neighborhood: maybe 5% of the people are in tech -- what is everyone else doing? The above is a sampling of careers that have provided people in my neighborhood a comfortable American Dream style of life.

I want to call this out because I see this advice a lot (and it's also my backup plan).

Trade work can be a fantastic way to earn a living, but it is HARD work. It will break your body if you do it for your whole life. There is a reason plenty of people jumped to office work the first chance they got.

Don't go into the trades blind, take care of your body, or you'll be like my grandpa and need help uncurling your fingers if you fall asleep making a fist.

You want a specialized trade. HV Electrician at a utility or something like that.

An off the shelf commercial or residential trade sounds like a nightmare, especially in an area with bad weather part of the year.

That said, if you can deal with employees of that type as a business owner, you can clean up.

> but look in any middle-class neighborhood: maybe 5% of the people are in tech -- what is everyone else doing?

This comment is why I love HN. Once you sort through all the kiddos who don't know anything about anything, you get golden nuggets like this.

In my middle (almost upper-middle) class neighborhood we have a bunch of doctors and psychologists, a bunch of lawyers, a few retired professionals, a couple professors and.... me in tech.

Are the doctors and lawyers your age or older?

Some older, some younger, some the same age.

>I've never been to the Bay Area, so what I'm about to say may not apply,

This is honestly where it is hitting. When I moved to the bay area ~10years ago I asked myself 'why are they paying me usd500k to move here when I could just work from my home country for a fraction of that'.

Meanwhile in my home country there's a tech boom. In fact my current big faang company is hiring there and closing jobs here.

Can't say I'm surprised except that it took this long for the realization that you don't need to have your staff move to the bay area and thus you don't need to pay bay area wages.

This chain and this comment is one of the best things I've read on here in years. It reminded me that a lot of community colleges have workforce programs that I need to look into: https://www.nvcc.edu/academics/programs/index.html

That’s the reality in the US I think, then. Still, I am not convinced those jobs can make you earn reliably more than a software developer. Maybe equally well, but more? And that’s already discounting jobs at FAANG and Brex, that much more than the rest.

I live in the Brazil, currently earning ~USD50/hour (at a US company) as a web developer. Not as a contract dev though, I prefer to be employed by a company.

Here, neither nurse nor tradesman are well paid jobs, quite the contrary.

Rich neighborhoods here have: doctors, lawyers, medium company owners, big company executives.

None of them is possible to get to that level of paying within 10 years (medicine is 8 years at least only to have a specialization). An exception might be entrepreneurs, but there is a lot of luck involved.

Curious to the answers here, leaving a breadcrumb for later.

Kind of saw that coming. The salaries at Brex were insane.

Higher than FAANG? Or whatever is the acronym today.

At some point (not sure if this is still the case) you could choose between all salary or a mix of salary and options. The total comp in either case was ~450k for a senior dev. So we are talking Netflix-level salaries for a startup.

Higher than MSFT for sure - but not Netflix or Google: https://www.levels.fyi/companies/brex/salaries/software-engi...

$263.42K for an entry level position, wow.

If you look, entry level is >10% more than the next level, so it's probably off - but likely about $200k or more.

Pretty great for a Non-FAANG company.

FAANG is not the top of the market at all anymore. Google pays middle market unless you have a competing offer.

To be fair, everyone is laying off. Whatever paid peanuts or millions. Hopefully, the devs who got the bigger piece of the cake stashed some under the mattress.

20% after an 11% layoff is high even during current times imo

Cash salary or made up stock options valuations?

> Waiver of the one-year equity cliff for those who haven’t reached theirs yet.

That's nice, however I find it "unfair" that if you are offered X RSUs as part of your first year comp but they vest over 4 years then if you get laid off you lose them even if you already "worked" for them. My experience losing 40k worth of RSUs at my first job has certainly soured equity compensation in my eyes.

20% of the company

Given how it sounds like Brex is doing, they're likely going to need to cut again. This isn't deep enough to really solve any systemic or structural problems. It will likely work though if the product vision and execution are on point and they just need more runway/less bloat.

But do layoffs ever solve systemic or structural problems?

They're typically about reducing burn. Whether management knows how to identify and fix core problems is a totally different question.

> But do layoffs ever solve systemic or structural problems?

Brex is a leveraged play on start-up fundraising. They're a fundamentally cyclical business.

I have seen them do so in the past. But they need to be very targeted similar to surgery. There's some tumor in the company and you need to identify what that is and remove all of it.

I've seen it effectively done once.

So strange putting this out in public. It's almost like it was entirely written to investors.

> increasing in-person collaboration in our hubs, and concentrating the time zones in which we operate.

> With our focus on financial software and high-quality growth, we grew gross profit by 75%+ last year. While we're proud of those accomplishments, we still have a way to go to ensure high-velocity growth and profitability for years to come

> increasing in-person collaboration in our hubs, and concentrating the time zones in which we operate

Massive turn-around since Brex declared themselves to be remote-first and said things like "Yes, employees can relocate permanently with Brex’s transition to remote-first" https://www.brex.com/journal/remote-first-at-brex

Employees had leverage. Now they do not.

If true, this is a good sign for the future of the company, as it means that their revenue metrics are fine.

The problem is that they are simply spending too much on activities not related to the business. For tech companies, that usually means spending too much money on "tech" that isn't actually relevant to the revenue-generating business, especially now that the section 174 changes have eliminated the preferential treatment of software R&D.

I wonder what the revenue of their customers looks like. They have to have a ton of revenue from other startups that themselves are in tenuous financial positions.

From the employee's perspective, it definitely sucks though. I went through a layoff this year and it took me a lot longer than I anticipated to get another job.

The people at the bottom get laid off and the people at the top get promoted. Makes sense

> To continue capturing the massive opportunity ahead, we’re hyper-focused on building a high-velocity product and growth machine.

I mean, who wouldn't want to work for this guy?

Came here to say the same thing. The lack of plain English is funny if it wasn't such a sad situation. I also know it's nothing new or unique.

He's clearly operating at all levels.

As an aside, it's funny (not ha-ha funny) watching these things sweep through in waves; they're basically fashion. For a while, we needed to "put the structure in place to be able to scale" and it was all about adding more levels of hierarchy. Now we're flattening the org chart and managers are expected to do everyone's job at once. Today everyone needs to own the product vision. Tomorrow you need to focus on execution and stop stepping on product management's toes. Be more hands-on. Now stop micromanaging. We're Agile. We can't keep changing the plan. Promote from within; the best leaders start in the trenches. We need professionals with outside perspective, so we're filling that role with some guy from Oracle.

They are clearly in the arena trying things.

"Today we’re restructuring Brex to become a high-velocity company"

Lol. Wtf were you doing so long as a CEO?

I never understood these dumb messages.

Leveraging synergies to provide accelerated experience in rapidly changing customer marketplace to become thoughtiest of all thought leaders...blah..blah..

I know right. It is such a mind boggling thing that all of the "free speech" tech aficionados speak in the highest form of nonsensical group think.

Brexit?

Likely not the last round. From their numbers, it seems pretty clear that they need to become profitable.

How bad is the job market for tech folks now? Are companies hiring at all ?

My response will just be one data point, so take it with a grain of salt and do your own research.

Job applications to interview rates are _way_ down, like 5% or less. Some job posts will likely feel like you sent your job application into a black hole and it will never be seen by anyone or get any response at all. I'd imagine use of "AI" job application screening services have greatly increased and HR departments are likely screening application even harder than before.

Most jobs posted are senior/staff level only, rarely do you see a non-senior posting. But still you might see an non-senior job posted here and there.

People I know did find jobs after layoffs in 2023, but rather than in weeks it was months and likely, but I'm not 100% certain, for lower pay (all people I know where in different countries, but working for US companies). Other companies have hiring freezes and some seem to (almost) not have hired at all in 2023.

One trend I've noticed is job postings by US companies in South America (Brazil for eg.), Mexico, Eastern Europe, India are _way_ up. Interpret that as you will.

Venture funds are likely scaling their investments into companies back, especially non-AI companies, so venture funded companies that were in growth month either tried their best to cut costs (no hiring, layoffs) and shift to profit/revenue mode or shut down. Publicly traded companies seem to have shifted to increasing their share prices using similar tactics.

So, currently bleak, compared to pre-covid to 2021, but might be possible to still find something with a lot of persistence. Not an ideal situation for anyone looking currently, unless you have some special connections or are skilled in AI work etc.

As a tech recruiter, I can say that you 100% nailed it.

Thank you for explaining it so well.

It's insane how much bullshit is on their home page. Can someone explain what the hell are "smart spending" and "integrated cards"?

Interesting that the CFO and CTO also got the boot, but the positions weren’t eliminated. Is this a power grab? Or am I misreading?

It's not clear to me how you would have a company of this size without a CTO or CFO. I'm interested in why your expectation is that the roles themselves would be eliminated, versus bringing in people who might perform better?

FTA: > We’re flattening our org structure and reducing layers of management. Our goal is for leaders to operate closer to the metal, less siloed and more functionally, focused on few cross-company priorities. These changes begin with the leadership team and cascade across the org:

COO and CTO

The CFO position is generally mandated by law in most states, though it can be filled by another officer such as the CEO (i.e., it doesn't need to be its own position).

However, it is generally considered a red flag for a large company to have these positions filled by the same individual (unless the company is a subsidiary of an even bigger company, in which case the CFO role in the subsidiary may be a pro forma position).

> The CFO position is generally mandated by law in most states, though it can be filled by another officer such as the CEO (i.e., it doesn't need to be its own position).

Only two states seem to mandate a CFO from https://www.harborcompliance.com/corporate-governance-by-sta...

CTO position is not being backfilled. There will be a VP of engineering, not quite the same.

Its board members vs everyone else

So sorry to hear dear friends

Oof to this link in the post https://www.brex.com/journal/operate-at-all-levels

What a terrible culture, dunking on people management, calling it meaningless

And no, I don't want the Director of AI to explain react component rendering to me, it sounds like they are grooming a generation of super-micromanaging executives. Maybe the CTO was kicked out after he failed to complete 3 back to back leetcode hards

> it sounds like they are grooming a generation of super-micromanaging executives

My read from the linked example was the Director built a tool outside of the critical path that was a quality of life (performance) improvement. This is a prime example of code that leaders should be writing - the team isn’t blocked by them, they can put it down at any time, they maintain familiarity with the tools and codebase (both the good and the bad), and if it lands then the team is uplifted.

A leader should know how to influence his org within a 3 minute conversation to do this. The fact he stopped his Director of AI work to do this means their org is broken - or worse they have no influence over it

Disagree.

this is a founder pushing back against having a leadership caste that can’t actually do the work to drive the business forward themselves.

This is not even cynicism, it's just grasping at straws.

It depends - I mostly agree with that blog post.

If a leader doesn't understand the underlying role (at least somewhat) - they can't reason about it. The best people managers I had were good at that skill and took it seriously, but also had a technical understanding of the role.

I think it's relatively common for bad people to get hired to these management roles because the skill can be harder to evaluate than straight engineering. Hire enough of this kind of person and your company dies. It's also why managers get a bad reputation generally - good managers/team leads are excellent, bad ones are neutral at best.

Can you imagine Ilya Sutskever being fired because his frontend code wasn't up to par

This is a silly example, because Ilya's umbrella isn't front-end code.

To answer your question though, yes, if Ilya was Head of UX Engineering and his front-end code wasn't up to par, he should be fired.

Where do you read that people management is meaningless? I only read that people management alone isn't the most productive way for anyone to operate

Yeesh. That looks almost satirical.

This is another example of companies using every opportunity possible to wedge "AI" into their product.

AI visibility is key to gaining investor confidence (funding boom for anything AI this past year combined with funding drought for anything non-AI).

"high velocity"

Terminal Velocity

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