Stripe made a bad choice _hiring_ people, early this year. They were very explicit about this in the email. They overextended and didn't foresee the economy contracting the way it did - and now they have to correct.
Cutting salaries for everybody has a number of disadvantages, chief of which is that it will encourage the best of people to leave. Firing can be done strategically, targeting the most recent hires and the underperformers.
I do feel like I have to remind that the first duty of the management is to the company - not because the company is "Mother and Father", in an old communist wooden language, but because the company needs to survive in order to pay all salaries, and hopefully expand enough so it can hire again even more people (assumingly in a more sustainable way this time).
Cutting salaries for everybody has a number of disadvantages, chief of which is that it will encourage the best of people to leave. Firing can be done strategically, targeting the most recent hires and the underperformers.
I do feel like I have to remind that the first duty of the management is to the company - not because the company is "Mother and Father", in an old communist wooden language, but because the company needs to survive in order to pay all salaries, and hopefully expand enough so it can hire again even more people (assumingly in a more sustainable way this time).