Payments company Stripe is to lay off 14% of its workforce globally.
In an email sent to staff earlier today, founders Patrick and John Collison said the company had over-hired for the world we are in.
The Limerick brothers said the job losses will bring the numbers employed by the company back to 7,000 from around 8,000 currently.
It is unclear as yet how many Irish staff of the tech company will be impacted by the decision as the Collison brothers said the headcount reduction would not be applied evenly across the organisation. Stripe employs around 600 people in Ireland.
The Stripe CEO and president said they and Stripe's leadership had made two consequential mistakes.
"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," they wrote in the communication to staff.
"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."
They added that in addition to the lay-offs, other costs would also be firmly reined in.
"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," they claimed.
They said the changes were the hardest that the company has had to make to date.
But the Collisons also told staff that the company feels very good about the prospects for innovative businesses and about Stripe’s position in the internet economy and that it is well positioned to weather harsh circumstances.
"However, we do need to match the pace of our investments with the realities around us," they said.
"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."
Stripe is not alone among tech companies in making changes to its hiring plans and in shedding staff as the economic downturn impacts on people's willingness to spend.
In March last year, Stripe announced plans to create 1,000 jobs in Ireland over the coming five years.
It came as it raised $600m in fresh funding, which at the time valued the firm at $95bn.
However, since then it has been reported that Stripe has cut the internal valuation of the business.
Stripe was founded in 2010 by the Collison brothers.
