Stripe is laying off 300 employees, which makes up around 3.5% of its global workforce. In an unfortunate twist, some of the employees who were let go received an email with a yellow cartoon duck image attached by mistake. On top of that, a number of the emails contained incorrect termination dates, which only added to the awkwardness of the situation.
Stripe’s Chief People Officer, Rob McIntosh, acknowledged the errors and addressed them in a memo. He apologized for the mix-up, explaining that some affected employees had received incorrect notification emails. He assured that corrected and complete notifications had been sent to everyone impacted.
These layoffs are part of Stripe’s annual review and growth planning. Prior to the cuts, the company had around 8,500 employees and plans to increase that number to 10,000 by the end of the year. This follows a previous round of layoffs in 2022 when Stripe reduced its workforce by 14%, along with many other tech companies during a challenging period for the industry.
The layoffs and the curious duck incident were first reported.