American payment technology company Stripe has laid off 300 people, including engineering and product staff. Some of them received an email with a cartoon duck attached to their layoff notice. As it turns out, it wasn't a prank, but an accident.
American payment technology company Stripe has laid off 300 people, including engineering and product staff. Some of them received an email with a cartoon duck attached to their layoff notice. As it turns out, it wasn't a prank, but a coincidence.
On Monday, the company laid off 300 employees, about 3.5% of its workforce. The company sent emails to all of them, telling them the bad news. The attached PDF file contained an image of a yellow duck with the text: “Duck from the USA, not California.”
In addition to the image of a duck, some of the letters contained an incorrect release date.
A Stripe representative told Business Insider that the duck image and incorrect dates were sent in error, and showed the following email from Rob McIntosh, the company's chief human resources officer.
“I also want to note that some affected Stripes employees received an error message in their personal email on Monday evening,” McIntosh wrote. “I apologize for the error and any confusion it may have caused,” he added.
The company then sent corrected messages.
In a separate email to staff confirming the layoffs, McIntosh said Stripe still plans to grow its headcount to about 10,000 by the end of the year.
