throwaway859383

Up until a massive expansion push some years ago, Klarna used to be a profitable company. It expanded from 3200 employees in 2019 to the 7000 that are there now. They also started spending money on experiments that had not much to do with the core business.

Lots of experimental things that had nothing to do with its core business such as Blockchain currency. Klarna massively expanded in the last 3 years. In 2019 there were about 3200.

I still currently work at Klarna.

The article is a very good write up of what happened. I'm going to talk about what the current internal situation is and how people are feeling based on what I'm seeing.

Since the layoffs there has been a noticeable shift in atmosphere. Previously quite a few people would regularly come to the offices, now not so much. Some still do come but significantly less. Performance has gone from people often going beyond what was expected to "I'll do enough to keep my job". A colleague who was previously very keen working for Klarna and would often work a good 11 hours+ is now "disenchanted" and doesn't quite know what to do with themself.

Job satisfaction and overall happiness has rapidly declined and is still going down. Some departments do internal anonymous surveys where people outright get asked if they are happy at work. From the ones I saw, every single one had a drop of at least 20%, some significantly more. Participation rate of those surveys has also declined. Most people I spoke to outright said they're not participating anymore because they're on the way out.

A good 50% of the people I asked, outright said they are looking for a new job. I expect some are not sharing because they want to keep it a secret. I'm expecting my team to loose about 40% of its members within the next 5 months. As far as I know, there is only replacement hiring, no active hiring.

One of my very talented colleagues that I have been working with for 3 years got laid off. During a chat with our direct supervisor I asked them if they could tell me the reason. Trying to reassure me, they said I had nothing to worry about and that my colleague wasn't fired for poor performance but other internal reason. I knew this colleagues salary so I also know they weren't let go because of their high salary. Since then my team has an open position that is hiring for this exact role. Make of that what you will.

As you might have read from the article, communication was absolutely horrendous. One of the key things I'd like to mention is that Klarna always promoted open and frequent communication. Only this was never practiced by the C-Level. This was incredible apparent during the layoffs. Many people had questions but C-Level was dead silent and let HR people "manage" the fallout. My colleague had their meeting at the start of the working day on Tuesday (layoffs were announced the day before). My supervisor got told of the layoff 15 minutes before my colleagues meeting. Informing my supervisor was done through a 3 sentence slack message.

2 weeks after the announcement, quite a few pregnant women came forward that they also received an offer. Additionally, a lot of people on long term sick leave were contacted. Since the layoff decisions weren't made centrally, I doubt these groups we're specifically targeted but Klarna is, in comparison to the average Swedish company, quite international. I know of at least one case from a decision maker (not C-Level) that a woman was laid off because she was 8-months pregnant and due to go on her maternity leave. I'm not going to speculate on what, if any, legal actions are following from this.