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Stitch Fix to Lay off About 1,400 Employees in California
- dmode 6y agoThis is just a wave of low cost shoring. I work for a SV company and we are “offshoring” all our support from Midwest to Canada. I can see this trajectory play out for Stitch Fix and other companies. Pretty stylists here are commodity jobs and plenty available in Canada. Best part is that it is an English speaking nation as well
- wobbly_bush 6y ago> all our support from Midwest to Canada Is Canada lower cost than Midwest?
- dmode 6y agoYes, because of Canadian dollar
- purplezooey 6y agoPure horse shit, about "lower cost areas". I suspect there is a right wing shill hiding somewhere here. The founder's appearance on Shark Tank has the smell of it. Why else would you go for such a ridiculous headline.
- neonate 6y agohttps://archive.md/zQh5e https://archive.md/zQh5e
- nostromo 6y agoThis is more interesting than all the other layoff stories in that they're axing 1,400 California jobs but adding 2,000 in lower-cost locations like Dallas, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Minneapolis and Austin. It's like offshoring -- but off-Californiaing.
- whywhywhywhy 6y ago>It's like offshoring -- but off-Californiaing. This is what "Going full remote" post-covid is going to look like for a lot of companies.
- nvr219 6y agoGood!
- Spooky23 6y agoIt makes sense. If you're not looking for super high-end tech talent, there is no magical advantage to paying California salaries so that people can spend every dime on housing. I skeptical of most of the tech stuff too -- fewer tech roles require the skillsets/social connections only found a big tech hub than in the past. For many years, IBM was able to run successful tech operations in places like Minneapolis, Austin, Binghamton NY, Hudson Valley NY, North Carolina, Tampa, etc. The median home price is Pittsburgh is literally 90% less than many California locales. Even with a 40% pay cut, in many professions moving to one of these places will be a neutral in terms of money and probably a positive impact on the employee's quality of life.
- halflings 6y ago> The median home price is Pittsburgh is literally 90% less than many California locales. Can you give some data around this? 90% seems like a hyperbole. Or are you comparing the most expensive zipcode in the bay area (e.g Atherton) with the cheapest in Pittsburgh?
- dodo6502 6y agoMy friends just moved to Pittsburgh and bought a great house for 108k. This is literally 95% less than a comparable home in Silicon Valley.
- thorwasdfasdf 6y ago
- cwilkes 6y agoI’m surprised they had that many stylists — most of this could be done by AI and a handful of tastemakers. Unless by stylist they also mean customer care, which they probably do as this article mentions hiring 2k people in lower cost US cities. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/01/stitch-fix-is-laying-off-1400-in-california-18percent-of-workforce.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/01/stitch-fix-is-laying-off-140...
- gbear605 6y agoMy understanding is that it in large part was done without AI because a lot of the input requests are too complex to summarize in any form other than language. “I work in an semi-casual office but I want to try adding some new colors to my wardrobe to spice things up. Next month I’m going to a wedding and I need a new bracelet and a pair of gold earrings for that. I don’t need any more scarves this fall but I’d love a nice knitted hat in cool colors. Stripes don’t flatter me.” And I could go on for a while longer talking about a wide range of clothing choices. Could you give options for all of that? Yes, with some work. Would that be a good user interface that keeps a wide range customers returning? I doubt it. Plus their user base just prefers at least the illusion of having an individual stylist, so you receive a detailed note with each package talking about the ways that the clothing choices fit your style, wardrobe, body type, and activities.
- sheenobu 6y agoYou are right about the input requests being too complex. From this microservices presentation[0], they do use machine learning to generate recommendations which are then curated further by the stylists, specifically for this reason. But I've always wondered about the grouping and parity between stylist and customer. IIRC, they say it in the presentation but they do not say how much bucketing happens. Is Person of archetype-A grouped with 100 other people and given to Stylist A? 1000 other people? Or do they only do additional curation if you reject so many items and write so many input request words? Also, is there a good track record for such a request like "I need a pair gold earrings" working? and working specifically because of human curation and not pattern matching on color and item description? 0. https://youtu.be/E8-e-3fRHBw?t=332 https://youtu.be/E8-e-3fRHBw?t=332
- dpau 6y agorecent somewhat related article discussion: Remote work means anyone can take your job https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23337857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23337857
- valuearb 6y agoThey can if your skills aren't unique.
- threatofrain 6y agoVery few people are unique, so what's the point in mentioning that in a tiny sentence if you're not going further with it? Perhaps the insight comes... one reply later?
- hinkley 6y agoMost employers aren’t quite sure what they’re paying for so it hardly matters if your skills are unique anyway.
- quantummkv 6y agoVery few people in any industry have a truly unique set of skills. And in jobs that can be easily remoted away like software, that quantity is even less.
- taneq 6y agoThere's not too many of us with truly unique skills. And even those can usually be covered by different combinations of employees.
- valuearb 6y agoUnique in this context doesn’t mean absolute uniqueness, it means your skills aren’t widely available. The world needs experienced Go developers for an example. Being able to hire one remotely may increase the available pool of Go developers you can hire, but it doesn’t make them cheaper. That’s because hiring remotely also increases the number of employers chasing the same few Go devs.
- safog 6y agoNote: These are stylists and not engineers. I've tried StitchFix twice and found their stylists pretty lacking in terms of value they add. They don't listen to your requests and I'm sure most of them just have templates of stuff they send out w/o looking at what you liked / disliked. I'm fairly certain it's a role that can be very easily filled regardless of the Zipcode. In fact, I was pretty convinced until now that the stylists were just algorithms but it looks like I was wrong.
- monkeydust 6y agoSame, shocked they have this many human stylists when they seemed to make out they were using ML to predict taste.
- realdlee 6y agoI agree. Tried the service a few times and didn't keep a single item. A lot of their recommendations were actually from their own Stitch Fix clothing line, which felt like at best Gap quality for Gap full retail prices.
- ptmcc 6y agoI gave StitchFix a couple of shots. It was okay, I got a couple decent items out of it, but didn't amaze me. But I canceled when I very specifically stated in both my profile and my message to the stylist that I did not want any white/tan colored items (I'm fair skinned) or polo shirts (just not my style). My next order contained a white polo shirt and a tan knit beanie (in the summer!). smdh. I, too, figured it was just some algorithm dressed up as personal stylists, but knowing that it is actual people just makes it even more unforgivable.
- syshum 6y agoit always amazes me how many human filled jobs are very very robotic. It is often indiscernible on if a job is filled by a human or robot
- fokinsean 6y agoAnecdotal, but my wife is a stylist and is very much listening and providing individual feedback. She feels so bad when someone doesn't like what she picks so it's her goal to make them happy. Not all are bad.
- ponker 6y agoThis is going to be an interesting one. They better hope that they’ve found a way to train a stylist really well, because people paying money for a personal stylist want styles from New York and LA. You can get Pittsburgh style in the on-sale rack at Kohl’s.
- pests 6y agoI hope this doesn't impact my first box just ordered last night.
- Cyclone_ 6y agoKind of interesting they picked Austin as a low cost alternative. I get it's a tech hub, but surely there are other cities less expensive?
- LatteLazy 6y agoQuality vs expense. If you can half the cost for similar quality in Austin or 80% less cost for zero quality in some nowhere town, you go for Austin...
- rossdavidh 6y agoI live in Austin. There's "Austin", meaning the actual city limits, parts of which are getting more expensive (although still a fraction of SV prices). Then there's the Austin area, large parts of which are half the cost of central Austin, itself half the cost of SV. There are also still low-income, low-cost parts of literal Austin, which I think has not been true in SV for a while (although I haven't lived in SV since 1992 so I could be wrong there).
- dfxm12 6y agoI'm sure cost isn't the only factor. You still have to relocate to some place that will attract talent, either right out of college (like UT), because it's already a big city or because people want to live there. It would be even better if the state is offering tax breaks, or has lower taxes than where you're coming from.
- dreamcompiler 6y agoAustin is ridiculously expensive by Texas standards. Super cheap by California standards.
- jessaustin 6y agoLots of Texas is cheaper, but executives don't want to drive three hours in a rental car after their flight.
- vonmoltke 6y ago
- chrischen 6y agoThis is fairly surprising since most ecommerce businesses have been doing well because of coronavirus shelter-in-place rules across the country.
- dreamcompiler 6y agoSpeaking as a Stitchfix customer (and nerdy engineer who loves their service and hates shopping for clothes), I semi-permanently paused my subscription a couple of weeks ago. I haven't left my house in two months, so there's not much point in buying new clothes.
- greenyoda 6y agoAnother story about this, which isn't paywalled: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/stitch-fix-is-laying-off-1400-employees-in-california-and-plans-to-hire-in-lower-cost-us-cities/ar-BB14TMxx https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/stitch-fix-is-layi...