Make sense.. offices are not being used while staff is as productive (probably not as happy though? but that's case by case) at home. A lot of offices may go bankrupt in the coming years, even when this whole thing is over.

Its just interesting to see all these layoffs and cost cutting measures right after they raised a ton of money.

In case you are unaware, Brex's business model is to lend money to startups. The kicker is they lend money to startups that banks and investors won't touch. They advertise themselves as a tech company but in reality they are closer to a high risk VC firm.

At this current time that doesn't feel like a sound business model.. but I could be wrong. It also seems that they won't need so many people? The VC firms I know are all capital heavy and very light on staff.

They were able to raise money from investors selling themselves as a tech company. Now that they have the money, they dont need the engineers anymore which explains the layoffs and downsizing.

Brex feels like an attempt to gamble with someone else's money. They raised a ton of capital and now they are going to use it to invest in high risk startups.

> selling themselves as a tech company

They built a lot of the underlining infra for their Brex Cash product.

> use it to invest in high risk startups

Don't they require you to pay back the balance at the end of every month? And you're not aloud to go over a percentage of whats in your bank account. These restrictions limit the risk.

Every bank builds their own infrastructure, yet I've never heard a bank advertise themselves as a tech company...

Capital One does, to my knowledge.

Is that actually true? I thought it was the other way around, and they only "lend" money to companies that have millions od dollars in VC investment already in the bank.

Not at all surprising, raising a ton of money usually gets that investor onto your board who probably now wants you to cut unnecessary spending.

I'm not sure remote first is actually cheaper when you factor in off-sites and WFH stipends. From the article:

With that in mind, we decided to have office hubs in the major cities (starting with SF, NY, SLC, and Vancouver), where employees can work whenever they want. Our office hubs will also be important for those who miss the daily physical interactions and in-person collaboration of an office.