[hn_throwaway_99]

Bizarre. People expect either (a) company management to be completely clairvoyant about what the future will hold, or (b) when their best estimates about the future change, I guess folks expect management just continue charging ahead until their company goes bankrupt.

I also totally disagree with this statement, if you're implying that you think good CEOs should layoff as few people as possible: "I always felt that good CEOs (from a culture perspective) make it clear that in times of trouble, the first priority is not the business, but everyone working there."

If anything, I think good CEOs are clear about making tough, painful decisions, and they make them quickly and move on as fast as possible. There is nothing worse than everyone seeing the writing on the wall (e.g. lots of people with not enough work to do), but feeling that management is paralyzed by fear to change it.

What's going on is really not that complex. Companies (and MANY companies, certainly not just Klarna), planned for number of employees based on estimates about the future state of the world, and that future state of the world turned out to be drastically impacted by all the events mentioned in that letter.

[mittermayr]

"if you're implying that you think good CEOs should layoff as few people as possible" — depends. It's all about the timing.

This letter didn't read (to me) like they're cautiously planning for the worst and therefore they need to make a hard decision and prepare to cut staff. It read like they're reacting to a storm that is already here. This, in my view, is not good timing. They've had the numbers for a long while now, everyone had the numbers for a good while now.

To cut 10% in one go strongly reads like they've already dragged it out.

I stand by my opinion that the management strategy here is not proactive but reactive. While that is clearly better than being paralyzed of course (I agree with you there), it's not necessarily a good sign of having things under control, no?

What's worse, to just set everyone on fire in a casual (not a quote) "you may or may not be let go, we'll see, but 10% of you are out" is also not a good way to handle it.