The one about layoffs in an American fintech

Shortly after I published a post about my experience working for an American fintech, the company send a message to the whole company via Slack.

For obvious reasons, I will not share that message, but I would like to share some highlights:

• The revenue growth was slowed in 2024, so to keep growing the company must adapt.
• The company decided to restructure teams, and as a result, approximately 120 positions (both employees and contractor roles) will be eliminated globally, affecting around 10% of the organization.
• The company announced the acquisition of a leading software provided to the travel and hospitality industry for over $300M, further helping to diversify the business.
• All employees will receive an email stating whether their role was impacted by that restructure.

That day I started working later than usual and the first thing I noticed was a Slack message from my engineering manager (EM) asking me if I had received the email, although he mentioned the communication plan might differ for contractors.

However, some colleagues from SNGULAR unexpectedly received that email, informing them their role was not impacted. I will get back to this later.

This whole situation took everyone off guard, since it was a decision coming from the top management of the company in the USA. Not even our team managers knew about it, so they had no answers to give to all of us.

Tying all the loose ends, for a few weeks before the big announcement they had been gradually installing Kandji, an automation-forward Apple device management (MDM) software, to remotely control our laptops. That software works like a middleware even in the login process of the operating system, so if they remove your access to the project the laptop is basically useless.

In this case, SNGULAR knew nothing about it and even worse, my manager told us he was hiring people to join to this project. So weird.

An All Hands Engineering meeting was scheduled that same day, where the CTO of the company answered some of the questions that were sent anonymously. Not much was clarified at that meeting.

One of the items he did confirm though was that a dozen contractors would stop working on the project and that they were already deciding who would be affected.

Of course, not all contractors affected by the restructure are from SNGULAR, as the client collaborates with other consulting agencies as well. But we did not know who nor how many of us would be affected.

The very same day the layoffs were announced, some colleagues from other areas of the company no longer had access to the project. In the engineering area, however not many people was affected, especially in the Transactional area, of which my team is part of.

According to what I later found out, there are several reasons why they could not do the same to everybody else affected by these layoffs, mainly due to the laws of each country:

• In Spain, the standard notice period for terminating an employment contract is 15 days, applicable to both employers and employees, but it is common for companies to terminate employees without prior notice, assuming a severance pay.
• In some cases, it was necessary to wait to remove the access to the project to workers in other time zones.
• In other cases, there was a consultation period.
• In the case of contractors, it depends on the notice period agreed with the consulting agency.

In our next 1 to 1 meeting, the EM confirmed that 2 or 3 people from SNGULAR would left the project, but they did not know who exactly yet. He also told me that I was among the top contractors in terms of performance and implied that he did not expect any changes concerning my position, but could not guarantee that I would not be affected. I felt somewhat relieved in that moment, although it was not yet confirmed.

A couple of weeks later, in my monthly 1 to 1 meeting with the manager from SNGULAR, he confirmed that two colleagues would left the project at the end of the month and they had already been notified. In that moment, he did not know if more people would be also affected.

Surprisingly, one of the colleagues who had received the email stating their role was not impacted, was one of the people affected. D'oh!

Since the notice period agreed upon with SNGULAR is 3 weeks, my colleagues are still working on the project, until the end of the month. Tough position for them.

Finally, a week later both managers confirmed that the budget for 2025 is set in the fintech company and no further changes are expected, barring a disaster. The EM also confirmed our team will stay the same during Q2.

Although the company's stock price fell by nearly 40% immediately following the release of their previous year's financial results and the announcement of the layoffs. Who knows what is yet to come.

Anyway, I must say that during those weeks, I was very concerned about my future, because I was hired specifically to work for this client and did not feel like working for another one, that would have been the worst case scenario for any of us.

Given the uncertainty, I seriously thought about starting to search for a new job, although I did not feel much like it either.

As I said in my previous post, working on this project is allowing me to learn a lot and I want to continue learning a lot more in the upcoming months.

After my experience at Domestika, going through something like this again is really unpleasant. Luckily, for the time being, it is over.

Thank you for reading, and see you in the next one!