It was a not-so-Fab a week for one of the city’s most watched tech start-ups.
Fab.com fired about 80 people from its New York offices, in a purging of about 20 percent of its global workforce. The e-commerce start-up had been hinting about its tough times in internal emails and to the press, but for the dozens who got pink slips, it was still a shock.
In fact, the first place most of them went was to the bar.
On Thursday, Barrow’s Pub in the West Village was overflowing with the laid-off staffers. At one point, there were close to 100 people at the bar, by some counts.
Some of the ex-Fab employees discussed their harsh departures from the company they loved.
One ex-staffer said she would lobby to return.
Not all employees were happy with the way they were let go, and at least one staffer, according to an account on Valleywag, called CEO Jason Goldberg a “coward” for hiding from them after the layoff announcement.
Co-founder Bradford Shellhammer disputed some of the claims.
“Jason and I walked around the office for a couple of hours after the layoffs, talking to employees who had questions, one-on-one and in groups,” Shellhammer told The Post in an email Friday.
“Some people left right away and didn’t have a chance to talk to us in person, but hopefully they know that both Jason and I are available to talk at anytime,” he added.
The workers all got at least one month’s pay, and they were offered stock that will allow them to still own a stake in the company, Shellhammer said.
The co-founder was responsible for shattering a glass door at Fab’s downtown headquarters on Wednesday, and a picture of it was posted to Instagram, sparking rumors that he slammed it after a heated meeting with human resources.
Shellhammer insists that wasn’t the case: “This is the second door that has shattered at the Fab office, both times freak accidents from simply shutting a door. Scary and upsetting, but not at all related to any type of emotional event or the layoffs that took place the next day.”
This is not the first time Fab has changed course. It was founded as a social media company in 2010, before becoming a site for flash sales, an e-commerce company offering fashionable highly stylized products.
After raising $150 million earlier this year, the company was reportedly valued at $1 billion.
One former staffer at the bar on Thursday was skeptical that Fab could pull off its latest attempt to right the company.
“They don’t know anything about e-commerce,” the former employee said.