stormchaser wrote: ↑Tue Mar 07, 2023 6:04 pm
My Wife’s ex-husband was laid off from PayPal this morning - sounds like PayPal sold their buildings in La Vista and are laying off a large portion (possibly all?) of their workforce in the area. Assuming true, definitely not good news...
PayPal layoffs are a semi-annual event. They have been for quite some time (even pre-pandemic). PayPal got a big bump when things shifted online in 2020 and their stock got up to over $300/share. Now, it's at around $75/share. You don't have a valuation shift like that without a lot of layoffs. Personally, I think they were foolish to beef-up as much as they did during the pandemic-driven boom they had. It was wishful thinking to assume that shift in consumer habits was going to be permanent. However, hindsight is 20/20.
My wife was lucky and was quietly warned by someone in June 2022 that she was on the list of upcoming layoffs that ended up happening in October 2022. So, she was able to find a new position before PayPal pulled the trigger. Her new position was even cool and held her start date so she could wait for PayPal to lay her off so she get her severance package.
The La Vista office is a waste now. Once they closed it for the pandemic and let everyone work from home that was the end of that place. They had a voluntary return to office and nobody opted to return. So, those two big buildings have been collecting dust for 3 years now. Chandler, Arizona, is a very similar facility and they closed it down in Summer 2022 (after subletting a large chunk of it). So, La Vista closing was just a matter of time. There's no point in paying utilities, security, and property taxes on empty office buildings.
A lot of PayPal employees have scattered. My wife had several coworkers that took the flexible work-from-home policy and moved to other places in the country where PayPal has no office presence. It was a great opportunity to move to a place they've always wanted to live but couldn't because the career opportunities there were limited. Now, if those same people end up being a part of a future PayPal layoff (see my earlier mention of PayPal layoffs being a semi-annual thing), then I'm not sure I'd want to be living in some of those places while trying to find work.
I'm not sure how you break local news of layoffs for work-from-home staff. For example, a news story may read, "PayPal lays off 2,000 employees. 300 of them at their Omaha offices." As those people reported to a local physical office building and so could be labeled Omaha employees. When everyone is working-from-home and there's no longer a local office, then how do you determine the impact of PayPal layoffs on a particular community? They're not PayPal Omaha employees. They're just PayPal employees who live wherever, some in Omaha.