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Shopify will be smaller by about 20% and Flexport will buy Shopify Logistics
- Ekaros 3y agoRevenue up, but it was barely profitable by share... So I think it is reasonable something is done.
- VBprogrammer 3y agoThat's some fresh thinking there: tech companies are supposed to make a profit?!
- Pigalowda 3y agoProfit has been out of fashion for over a decade. I guess what’s old is new again? In 10 years when interest rates are 0 we can have the tulip Olympics again.
- DelaneyM 3y agoI know the reality is more complicated, but it's always jarring to read a "company X had a great! quarter, is firing 20% of employees" headline. Very dystopian. It seems like these two facts should at least go out in different press releases on different days. For Shopify, does anyone know whether the 20% figure includes the people leaving with the sale of SFN to Flexport? Edit: just heard in the earnings call that the 20% headcount reduction does _not_ include the logistics teams going to Flexport.
- MuffinFlavored 3y agoWhat if the headline read like this? > Shopify to cut 20% of its workforce, beats an already/comparatively-to-history reduced/calibrated quarterly revenue estimates for the current economic landscape
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoIt's a fundraising advertisement, not for you. The headline is to pitch possible future investors that Shopify will prioritize investor returns over anything else (as ordained by the Prophets of capitalism)
- monero-xmr 3y agoIf Shopify can deliver its software with less people, that’s better for society. Put it this way - would you like to be paid to mow a lawn using scissors? I can pay hundreds of people to mow my lawn using scissors, and they will be employed as landscapers. Or I can pay one guy with a lawnmower.
- mochomocha 3y ago"Bullshit jobs" [1] are a suboptimal and implicit mean to deliver on UBI without superficially changing the rules of capitalism. For exhibit 2, I'll bring in the US military and its economic impact on the midwest. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
- monero-xmr 3y agoThe US military is not capitalism. That’s socialism - a job and industry fully dependent on the government and thus is a politically created career. Bullshit jobs don’t exist in the free market, as no capitalist would pay for someone to do something useless. If that is happening it would certainly be because a government regulator required someone to sit there twiddling thumbs.
- mochomocha 3y ago> Bullshit jobs don’t exist in the free market, as no capitalist would pay for someone to do something useless And yet if you spend any time in any large corporation, you'll find countless examples of these, including in the tech industry. Don't you have any friend working for Google/Meta/${big tech co}? Bullshit jobs can and definitely exist with capitalism: any successful and large business is filled with them.
- ryathal 3y agoThe investor class is desperate for a recession and it's just not happening so they keep laying off people until they can make it happen.
- flappyeagle 3y agoThis is not how recessions work.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoOf course not. They’re caused by the fed.
- red-iron-pine 3y agoRecessions and collapses happened long before the Fed ever existed, e.g. Tulips
- bichiliad 3y agoI think the Tulip Mania, if that's what you're referring to, was a speculation bubble, whereas a recession is widespread by definition.
- MrSqueezles 3y agoEmotional investors moving hundreds of billions of dollars create self-fulfilling prophecies. It absolutely is how recessions work. "I'm so pissy because the US Fed isn't giving away free money anymore. I'm moving to cash and will shower money on any company that does layoffs." Yeah, it works.
- flavius29663 3y agoUS recessions and bear markets happen most of the time because of mass psychosis, not because of some underlying cause. There can be a trigger, yes, but it's generally not that big of a deal. The government also plays a role in triggering these recessions, so that they can pop the bubbles before it's too late. Yes, there can be recessions causes by world wars, worldwide droughts, pandemics and other cataclysmic events, but usually it's not the case for US.
- HillRat 3y agoThe ZIRP discourse is a bit facile, but there’s a lot of truth to it, and a lot of tech companies have been kept afloat solely by historically-low WACC and a frothy IPO market; due to their inability or unwillingness to impose financial discipline commensurate with their revenue we have a bunch of companies that are, functionally, unprofitable at any scale. Rough times for good folks, unfortunately.
- MAGZine 3y agoWell yeah, cutting workforce seems like it only has upside to these companies. Expenses go down, profit margin and share price go up. What're the workers gonna do? Protest? Strike? Hah. No, the remaining employees will pick up the extra responsibility and thank the employer for continuing to employ them.
- bumby 3y agoUnionizing is an option. Not necessarily an easy one, but it’s an option.
- KyeRussell 3y agoNowhere in your comment do you consider the possibility that some of these employees were doing something that just didn’t matter.
- jossclimb 3y agoI don't think its a pure upside. Anyone wanting a job would join one of these layoff companies, of course, but anyone already in a job is going to be a bit more hesitant. I right now would not accept a role with a lot of these layoff companies, too risky. I don't think that bad smell subsides that quick for everyone.
- justblaze23 3y ago> Expenses go down, profit margin and share price go up. Growth also goes down, which means more firings and rinse and repeat.
- empathy_m 3y ago> What're the workers gonna do? Protest? Strike? They're going to work for other firms, who have also simultaneously laid off staff. They will accept lower wages. Salaries will be permanently anchored lower, improving the cost structure of US software across the industry. It's an effective coordinated move by firms against labor. Interesting side effect here is that in order for staff to avoid a layoff, the benchmark is not whether they produce output in excess of the risk-free return -- it's whether their worth is greater than the long-term benefit of paying each new hire 30% less.
- gurchik 3y ago> We legally need the work laptop back, but we’ll help pay for a new one to replace it. What law? I’m not criticizing Spotify at all for this decision, I’m just genuinely curious. A few other companies recently are giving away the laptops so I’m wondering what is different here.
- uvu 3y agoshopify*
- gurchik 3y agoWhoops, you’re right. I’m past the edit window though.
- nness 3y agoThey're likely speaking of their liability should a employee's laptop, containing sensitive information, ever be stolen or re-sold (or simply, left in the hands of an ex-employee with a grudge.) It would be difficult for a IT department to guarantee, for sure without replacing the internals of the device, that the device doesn't contain sensitive information. Probably easier from an inventory and IT security perspective to just capture every device than try and coordinate with individuals to reformat, etc. (for the same reason, some companies outright destroy old devices instead of reselling.)
- dangus 3y agoI think it's actually a really easy guarantee on modern laptops from a technical standpoint, but that doesn't matter if there's a compliance requirement or contract they signed with major customers.
- ghaff 3y agoThere are a lot of customer requirements around mobile device management and the like that arguably don't make a lot of difference for any employee wanting to work around them. But they're there so companies need to follow them.
- purple_ferret 3y agoSeems like a huge miscalculation by management if their abandoning their expansion into logistics so quickly. Tobi should step down.
- Rafert 3y agoQuickly? They acquired 6 River Systems and announced the Shopify Fulfillment Network back in 2019. The were some pivots along the way (using 3rd party vs building out own warehouses) but it seems to me they've been at it for some time.
- ydnaclementine 3y agoThey're selling Deliverr after purchasing them in May 2022 (finalized in July 2022)
- Rafert 3y agoI'm aware - but that's hardly their first foray into the space is what I'm trying to say. I guess 'abandoning expansion' can be read multiple ways :)
- nus07 3y agoLast time I read a very reassuring and cogent letter by the CEO of Shopify about the layoffs . But at no point did the letter hint at further layoffs no less 20% which is huge. Wondering what the explanation is this time. I understand everyone has their worth and price but I fail to see how management and leadership at companies still have jobs and huge bonuses. Reaganomics has had 35 years. Maybe we need a new vision for our society.
- throwawaysleep 3y agoIf a CEO ever feels the need to give out a reassuring letter, you know that layoffs and wage freezes are on the way. Management doesn't care about you, so anything that is about your comfort and well being is a scam.
- dboreham 3y agoPerhaps worth noting that management may care about employees, but management have bosses who require them to care more about them than they care about employees.
- FredPret 3y agoThe CEO's job is to deliver results, not maintain full employment. Companies exist, and have always existed, to be temporary money-making enterprises. Acting like they are civil institutions tasked with upholding the social fabric is absurd.
- matdehaast 3y agoAgreed, all these people who make it seem that companies need to be some duty to employee everyone clearly hasn't seen how this has failed in many social leaning states. Don't like how they do it? Create your own company and run it how you want.... We live in a world where you can do that.
- FredPret 3y agoExactly, and startup costs have been dropping like a stone. No-one owes anyone a living, but you don’t need anybody’s permission either. Seeking to create artificial certainty in outcome leads to insurmountable stagnation.
- nness 3y agoShopify also bumped their prices 33% earlier in the year. As a small-business Shopify merchant, I would appreciate more competition in the market.
- eatonphil 3y ago> more competition in the market Genuine question: Isn't it a pretty crowded space? Do not SquareSpace, Square, Wix all have variations of Shopify products/offerings?
- nness 3y agoI think the larger challenge is competing with the broad business value that Shopify provides — Its not just payment processing, but also email marketing, theme and API services, a app marketplace, shipping integrations, etc. Wix/Squarespace, at least last time I checked, treated e-commerce as an add-on to their core service (building websites.) Square is a payment processor which with an e-commerce add-on, but is heavily templated.
- joshuahedlund 3y agoCommentSold? Disclosure: my current employer
- tebbers 3y agoWooCommerce is free plus a $5 a month VPS if you want to do e-commerce yourself. If you want support + hosting + security features then pay for a SaaS.
- maxk42 3y agoWooCommerce was purchased by Automattic and since then it's been very difficult to implement without paying for SaaS components. Still possible, but no longer straightforward.
- kderbyma 3y agoMedusaJS - may be worth the try
- felipevb 3y ago> Shopify finds it useful to talk about the difference between main quests and side quests internally. The main quest of the company is its mission, the reason for the company to exist. Side quests are everything else. The main quest / side quest analogy works so so well!
- Rafert 3y agoThings changed quite a bit since this quote from February 17: > “There’s no cuts coming for us,” Harley Finkelstein told The Canadian Press. “We’re in a really good place.” https://globalnews.ca/news/9494197/shopify-outlook-no-layoffs-coming-president/ https://globalnews.ca/news/9494197/shopify-outlook-no-layoff...
- marcinzm 3y agoIn my observation absolute statements about no layoffs are a strong indication of future layoffs in this economy. It's impossible to be certain in this economy so giving an absolute statement is basically a lie. Someone who is so brazen about lying to/deceiving their employees will have no qualms with doing layoffs. On the other hand someone who uses more careful language even if it costs them in the short term is someone who will have more qualms about layoffs.
- curiousllama 3y agoIn sports this is the "absolute vote of confidence" Once a coach has to say "[player] has my absolute confidence in their success," you know the player is ~2 weeks from being benched.
- duxup 3y agoI agree, but I think the sports analogy is even more on point when it comes to sports management giving a vote of confidence to coaches. You only ever have to say anything like that when there are questions. Coaches and players... they talk about each other a lot.
- differentView 3y agoI've heard it called the Kiss of Death when general managers or owners publicly say similar things about their coaches.
- boringg 3y agoIf you have to ask the question ...
- otter-in-a-suit 3y agoI was unfortunately affected by this (in the Data Organization). Shame - Shopify is a fun place where I've learned a ton. We were just getting a cool Data product off the ground. Well, if anybody's got a need for a Staff/Lead Data Engineer (Remote EST) with experience in Scala (+cats/fs2), Python, go who has spent the last 10+ years building Data Products on BI, then Hadoop, then GCP (+ the Apache Zoo, lately namely Kafka/Iceberg/Beam), my email is in my profile. :)
- DDerTyp 3y agoHey, I just found your LinkedIn Profile and noticed that we studied at the same university - even the same degree! I've send you a request on LinkedIn, so maybe we could connect and have a chat? Have a great day!
- Woeps 3y agoofftopic, but it sounds you where trying to reach them as their car's extended warranty is about to expire ...
- CoastalCoder 3y ago@Woeps: In case your joke gets downvoted into oblivion, FYI I found it very funny.
- otter-in-a-suit 3y agoWhat a small world - let's!
- halfmatthalfcat 3y agoGlad to see another BigCo still on the Scala train.
- bonadrag 3y agoGood luck. No doubt you will be employed quickly.
- alanfranz 3y agoWhat is an healthy manager-to-ic ratio?
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- 542458 3y agoI feel it depends on a lot of factors, such as how senior your ICs are, how interlinked their tasks are, how complex the domain is, how large the project is, what the rate of attrition is, how complex the organization’s established procedures are… An organization that has nothing but fairly senior researchers working on separate projects might need little management. An organization with lots of more junior engineers working on something like a rocket (where every part depends on every other part) might need more overhead.
- rcme 3y agoRegardless of what the healthy ratio is, managers are typically incentivized to add more managers between themselves and their reports. This creates the illusion that they are more senior and worth of a promotion to senior manager, director, VP, etc. so even if your company has a healthy ratio, there needs to be a force counteracting the natural desire of managers to grow their ranks.
- dangus 3y agoI don't know about a minimum but I think 10 is a good upper limit. Unrelated, I think that we should stop calling workers individual contributors. I think "workers" is a more fitting description. "Individual contributor" makes the worker seem smaller and less impactful, as if management is contributing in a way that's superior and bigger than the individual. In reality, only the workers work, and managers manage, doing less work the higher up on the ladder they go. Don't believe me? Here's a list of CEOs that somehow managed to be CEO of multiple companies at once. - Jack Dorsey - Jeff Bezos - Elon Musk - Carlos Ghosn And yet, my employer forbids me from having more than one day job.
- thegginthesky 3y agoI'll tell you a personal anecdote about Shopify and why I dislike the company. Back in 2019, I was contacted by Shopify for a job opportunity. After acing multiple remote interviews, their recruiter couldn't contain their excitement. They promised me an onsite interview to simply meet the team and potentially secure an offer. Imagine my surprise when, after enduring a 15-hour economy class flight with barely any time to recover, I received a call from the recruiter. They casually informed me that the team had decided to put me through five grueling back-to-back interviews, including a whiteboard session and a pair programming assignment. Despite my lack of a laptop, they assured me one would be provided. What followed was an unmitigated disaster. The first interview bombarded me with ecommerce questions, completely unrelated to my field of expertise. The pair programming session was a nightmare, as I was handed a barely functional laptop that delayed the start by 20 minutes, and then given just 30 minutes to complete the task without any assistance. Bear in mind, I was already physically and mentally drained from the arduous journey. While the remaining interviews were passable, they were nothing to brag about. After being sent home with the promise of a call, I received a cold rejection a week later, citing a lack of experience based on the onsite interviews. Looking back, I'm grateful I didn't sacrifice everything for a company with a track record of questionable practices and frequent layoffs.
- amanj41 3y agoThat is absolutely disgraceful. I have been furious after much smaller things like being told an interview will be system design when it was actually a LeetCode style interview. Can't imagine how that must have felt.
- UseStrict 3y agoI had almost an identical experience, except I was local to Ottawa at the time. Literally a full day of back-to-back interviews. They asked which languages and technologies I was comfortable with, and then gave me a pair programming session with someone who didn't even speak to me, in a programming language I wasn't comfortable in, leading me to have to look up a lot of syntax. Radio silence for a week, then I called the original recruiter and they just basically said "no."
- josephd79 3y agoThey forgot to mention that the C-level exec still get their bonuses.
- jrochkind1 3y ago> The balance of crafter to manager numbers is a tricky one to strike. Too few and you risk misalignment on the most important things, too many and you add heavy layers of process, approvals, meetings and… side quests. Our numbers were unhealthy, just like it is in much of the tech industry. One of the insidious consequences of this is that it leads to the company increasingly celebrating activities rather than crafter driven outcomes. With the right numbers we’ll fully focus on outcomes and impact. Am I reading this right that they decided they had too many managers, and are laying off some? They don't say it clearly in which direction they thought they were unbalanced, but I think that's the implication of "activities rather than crafter-driven outcomes", or just what is supposed to be the obvious answer when anyone says this is unbalanced?
- icegreentea2 3y agoYes, I read the statement as Shopify having too many managers and is weighting their layoffs to address that ratio (as well as generally pruning "side quests"). > too many and you add heavy layers of process, approvals, meetings and… side quests (emphasis mine) and > A more fit for purpose Shopify centered on its main quest has less scope creep, fewer meetings, and more shipping great features for our merchants. (emphasis mine)
- tgtweak 3y agoYet they're not offering those managers IC positions, they're just cutting and targeting managers with higher salaries for the most part. Also heard of a few staff engineers that went.
- jrochkind1 3y agoI'm a rubyist, and they have been recently known for hiring people to work on ruby as a language and contribute to ruby/rails ecosystem in a general way, not always directly and specifically related to their own codebase. I wonder if they're gonna stop all that stuff. https://shopify.engineering/shopify-ruby-at-scale-research-investment https://shopify.engineering/shopify-ruby-at-scale-research-i...
- lechacker 3y agoI guess we can begin burying those stories about how the rebound in tech equity means more layoffs in the sector are unlikely
- osigurdson 3y agoIt seems all companies are expecting the great AI windfall. I think this is mostly wishful thinking with today's technology. Unless CEOs have access to secret tech that no one else does, this feels like more of a hype driven forecasting exercise.
- SilverBirch 3y agoOnce again a company that prides itself on being a follower rather than a leader. It drives me insane >Our numbers were unhealthy, just like it is in much of the tech industry. Ok, can we consider this in your compensation discussions this year? That you mindlessly followed the crowd and left your company structurally weak? Or do we think you're going to shoot for record compensation this year?
- callahad 3y agoIs the company structurally weak? Absolutely awful situation for the workers, but I haven't seen systemic negative effects for the companies conducting layoffs.
- zinodaur 3y agoI work at a company that did similarly large layoffs despite record profits. In our case, the cuts were conducted by an MBA. Many important revenue driving products have been mangled by having their teams entirely removed, with pages going completely unanswered. In at least one case, it seems like an entire team was cut in error. The company was seriously negatively impacted, but the share price hasn't budged. To the extent that share price is connected to reality, I imagine it will take while for the market to notice the impacts of a layoff
- nerpderp82 3y agoThese cuts are being done for two reasons 1) wage suppression 2) by hostile take overs inside the company by MBAs, the phase lag between the layoffs and impact on velocity or the bottom line is too long. The second order fire that comes months later gives them an option to look like a hero again. Most MBAs burn an asset for a short term gain. Period.
- SilverBirch 3y agoWhat the CEO is saying is that he hired a load of people into the company that they don't need. Now they're going to try and get rid of them. Wouldn't the company have not been better off just... not hiring the useless people in the first place? And isn't it going to be a significant drain on resources and morale to pick through and get rid of all the dead weight? And are they actually going to get rid of the bad people, or as with most of these situations are they going to be left with the politicians whilst the good people go off to great opportunities elsewhere? Businesses are path dependent, you can't just go "oh, not enough people hire more, oops! too many, fire some!".
- ulfw 3y agoOh how I love this shit. Fire 20%, Stock up 18% pre-market already. Well done. Fire 100%, your wealth might skyrocket. Wealth trumps ethics, morals and employment.
- flappyeagle 3y agoIf you fire 100% the business stops working. The stock would plummet. See: twitter
- Graziano_M 3y agoI love how they don't want to bury the lede, but they also will use the passive voice: "after today Shopify will be smaller by about 20%". "some of you will leave Shopify today". It's not at all that those people are being laid off!
- stickfigure 3y agoThat isn't what passive voice means. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_voice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_voice: For example, in the passive sentence "The tree was pulled down", the subject (the tree) denotes the patient rather than the agent of the action. In contrast, the sentences "Someone pulled down the tree" and "The tree is down" are active sentences.
- shadowvanned 3y agoThanks, E. B. White. The parent poster meant that the tone was passive, and I think everyone understood that.
- stickfigure 3y agoI don't even agree with that point. "Some of you will leave Shopify today" is a lot more blunt than the quasi-euphemistic term "laid off". Someone is really stretching for outrage.
- DeltaCoast 3y agoSomeone else mentioned it's not passive, but a few weeks ago somebody referred to this language as "exonerative tense" which I thought fit well.
- rpsw 3y ago> But now we are at the dawn of the AI era and the new capabilities that are unlocked by that are unprecedented. Shopify has the privilege of being amongst the companies with the best chances of using AI to help our customers. A copilot for entrepreneurship is now possible. Our main quest demands from us to build the best thing that is now possible, and that has just changed entirely. Most recent layoffs have been framed around needing to focus the company due to economic and market headwinds. This reads like AI has transformed the mission. What does "A copilot for entrepreneurship is now possible" mean here?
- redler 3y agoIt means they’ll frequently be seeing the phrase “as an AI language model…” in their daily strategy sessions.
- 0zemp2c 3y ago[flagged]
- A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago<< What does "A copilot for entrepreneurship is now possible" mean here? I think this is what is meant here[1]. Not copilot, but the idea is the same. It is interesting, because 'prompt engineering' is being discussed in the same context. In the video, you will note several interesting bugs generated by GPT. Is it not exciting to see all those bugs in the next few years? [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y7GRYaYYQg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y7GRYaYYQg
- subpixel 3y agoThink of it more like auto-pilot. You go to sleep and your shop runs promos, creates new products (digital, or digitally-printed), runs a/b test on your collections, whatever - all so you wake up to new sales.
- bombcar 3y agoAfter IBM did it, every layoff from now on is going to explicitly or implicitly say that AI will cover for things in the future; it's some magic words to try to not spook investors.
- neom 3y agoDoes anyone have a sense of how bad things really are for the US economy and what the next 12/18 months are going to look like? Seems like every day all I see is doom and gloom, I've not seen a bright spot in quite some time... it's becoming increasingly difficult for me to get a sense of where things are. People keep saying things are going to get worse, I keep reading things are going to get worse, friends are literally committing suicide. Feels like twilight zone.
- cxf12 3y agoI'm in the BI space. I'll answer anecdotally since I pay attention to the job boards in the US quite a bit. I've got no hard data for my assertion full disclosure. For the last 3 months entry level work has dried up. I'm seeing very few postings for underling positions. Mid level 4-7 years jobs have markedly declined as I'm seeing fewer postings across this same time span month over month. 7+ years experience seems to be flat, but not down as the other tranches of work. You asked for a sense. That's my sense.
- 0zemp2c 3y agodoom and gloom? all major indexes are still trading at lofty values "safety" stocks like AAPL are at or near all-time highs real estate has budged slightly, but a rounding error off of the gains made in the last few years even employment...tech hiring is getting hit but lots of other employers in retail, food & beverage are reporting record hiring and even wage increases if there is a "crash", it hasn't happened yet you may just end up with a sucky decade of stagflation...you are poorer every day, but just not dramatically so
- shmatt 3y agoI feel like people don't understand how similar these huge corporations are to seed stage startups, and I'm sure people would be fine with a seed stage startup doing layoffs at this point of time Most of these companies have 1-2 areas generating 90%+ of the revenue. They are the rich VC giving unprofitable teams money to find PMF. When those teams can't find profitability faster in this environment, the VC rightfully stops the funding. Some people will/have moved to the profitable teams, but you can't just double or triple their size and expect their income to grow accordingly
- brotoss 3y agoReferring to "main quests" and "side quests" in a mass layoff notice is extremely cringeworthy
- samstave 3y ago"haha! You're employment here was just a game to us!" Yeah, not as bad as the CEO laying off 900 people via zoom, and then plying for sympathies at how hard this decision is for him to do. our entire economy is out of whack in so many areas.
- medellin 3y agoThe letter seems to have two audiences. Investors and employees. It’s easy to criticize this stuff but i have yet to see HN provide any valid feedback in these threads outside of criticizing past decisions of the CEO.
- throwwwaway69 3y agoHere’s valid feedback: don’t use ridiculous language (team change), treat us like adults. We know what this is. Don’t turn a message about layoffs into a marketing puff piece about Shopify’s mission to save kittens and make rainbows. Own up to literally any amount of accountability, and be real as for the reasons this is happening (we hired these people knowing the risk we may need to lay them off - we were wrong and now you suffer as a consequence)
- medellin 3y agoHonest question. What good does that do? It’s a company they aren’t here to make you feel better. They are treating you like an adult by giving you a nice severance package. I don’t understand the need for people to have companies admit they were wrong.
- mabbo 3y agoIt's not so bad, given the company culture. I'm one of the people impacted and it never occurred to me that anything was off by that statement.
- bambataa 3y agoIs this the same CEO who decided to double the engineering team in a single year? https://techcouver.com/2021/01/06/shopify-to-double-engineering-team/ https://techcouver.com/2021/01/06/shopify-to-double-engineer... Aren’t CEOs paid ludicrously well to make long term decisions, rather than just flail around?
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoIt just reiterates that on a high enough level, employees are just numbers, resources and sliders to fiddle with, often having a direct correlation with share price.
- pdntspa 3y agoThis is exactly what is taught in business school. It's why you are a human resource, a thing to be used, rather than a human being with skills and a story and a life and needs
- andsoitis 3y agoHe is also a co-founder and owns 7% of the company.
- jimmytucson 3y agoThe notion that this CEO and hundreds of others made bad decisions by over-hiring is sensible, but the fact that so many made the same mistake at the same time makes me second-order think this. As cruel as it sounds, what if over-hiring was a good long term decision? What would that imply? It would mean that _not_ hiring aggressively in a high-inflation period is harmful to business. To me, that is far more interesting to think about than CEOs making dumb mistakes and not getting punished for it because life isn't fair...
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- softwaredoug 3y agoI worked at Shopify until the Fall. Shopify was just a really fun place to work. And in part this was because they did a really good job of interviewing. Technical, yes, but in particular behaviorally. So I can honestly say that many of the colleagues I know being let go are truly great colleagues. They were some of the most impactful people I worked with in my org (discovery) and they are a great get for any company.
- tmshu1 3y agoCan you share a bit about what they did well in the behavioral interviews? Do you have specific examples? Would love to learn some best practices
- organsnyder 3y agoShopify calls its first interview the "life story" interview, and (in my experience) it was a great place for me to talk about my career, reflect on past successes and mistakes, and demonstrate empathy and self-awareness.
- annexrichmond 3y agoI did that interview. Borderline illegal. My life story I consider pretty personal and was so was a pretty uncomfortable interview.
- organsnyder 3y agoI didn't feel compelled to share anything I didn't want to share. I really felt free to frame it in a way that I was comfortable with. It's as much a "career story" as a "life story", IIRC.
- the_only_law 3y agoMy “career story” is already nice and curated for you. It’s called a resume.
- base 3y agoIt's amazing the impact this had on the stock value of the company: +25% at the moment.
- kderbyma 3y agoShopify is trash. Don't use it. It's like they sledgehammered the customers and then robbed them.....
- Arubis 3y ago“We will also keep Slack and internal email open today for everyone so we can share farewells.” That’s drastically different. Most orgs that’ve run layoffs over the last few years have terminated access immediately, or even before informing those losing jobs. This feels more human, and I hope it goes well for them.
- hgsgm 3y agoIt's very European.
- InCityDreams 3y agoEurope Big place, many country - which part?
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- TremendousJudge 3y agoThe same way an anonymous internet person defaults to male American, "European" defaults to "Western Europe", which actually means "The original EU members, plus maybe England"
- 0zemp2c 3y agoI think the Irish Farewell is even better, just close the browser and walk away, if you really like your coworkers, you can spare them the uncomfortable conversation, and the Irish Farewell is a tiny way of polluting the culture of the thing that ejected you
- pastor_bob 3y ago>Logistics was clearly a worthwhile side quest for us, and started to create the conditions for our main quest to succeed. From the beginning, we worked with lots of partners on all aspects of this same problem: warehouses, robotics, transportation, crossdock, freight. We iteratively built a solution, step by step, through software, leases, and M&A deals, that could be an independent company one day. Shopify was the perfect place to bootstrap this effort from 0 to 1 and we have done this. The next step is to take what we have and take it from 1 to N as a main quest. I don't understand the point of a statement like this. Why not just admit logistics turned out to be a sunk cost and you're abandoning it, rather than say "We actually killed it!"
- dalyons 3y agoThey’re not though, they’re selling it? To a company that presumably wants it and intends to grow it
- bombcar 3y agoI read it as "this works, but it's not our core competency so we will sell it off" - whether they're pulling one over on the company and it'll die immediately remains to be seen. Shipping is getting expensive across the board, which might be part of it.
- boringg 3y agoI think you've nailed it on the head. I think they've now offloaded a key piece of e-commerce which they now have less control over their own destiny. Flexport is going to have to make margins as well which is going to get pushed onto the consumer at the end of the day which drives up prices, decreases demand. Tricky future incoming.
- bombcar 3y agoIf you know a portion of your business is going to get more expensive, it can be very nice to disassociate yourself from it - now people will be saying "Flexport screwing me, what other options do I have" instead of "Shopify is screwing me". A similar thing happened when eBay and PayPal stopped being connected at the hip.
- amanj41 3y ago>16 weeks severance per year of tenure. I know this sounds insensitive but I am slightly envious Edit: am dumbass. plus one week per year of tenure as corrected below. Still not bad IMO
- drom55 3y agoit's 16 weeks severance + 1 week per year of tenure
- madaxe_again 3y ago“16 weeks severance plus a week for every year of tenure at Shopify” is what it says, which isn’t what you’ve stated there.
- boringg 3y agoI'll take 4 months thanks + 1 week / year of tenure. That is a very reasonable severance.
- ipaddr 3y agoThis a Canadian company which means you can get upto 2 years of pay via the courts. This stops most lawsuits but the one month for every year standard could mean some will sue. Older workers should sue because 4 months is not enough time to find similiar work You could be over 50 work for a month and be entitled to 9 months pay. Talk to a lawyer before you sign
- mabbo 3y agoI was impacted. I still will speak highly of the company. Good people. Very few assholes. The mission feels good, like it's not a net negative on the planet. Lot of churn internally, but often handled in a positive way. I'm fortunate that I've got a decent nest egg set aside, and I can afford to spend the rest of the summer just being with my wife and daughter. It sucks that it's happened but I'm not worried about the future (yet).
- evilspammer 3y ago[dead]
- myth_drannon 3y agoStock is up 26%, just bonkers.
- allanmacgregor 3y agoThis is not surprising Shopify has had an identity crisis and lack of focus for years now. To name a few: - Alienating marketplace partners by trying to absorb their functionality - Trying to break into the logistics space - Failing to develop and make headway into the Enterprise space. Shopify needs a reality check and new leadership if they want to continue being relevant
- AlwaysRock 3y agoSounds like you are describing an attempt at diversification that has failed in some areas and is now being pulled back. Businesses try things, some work, some fail.
- tempsy 3y ago$70B company still plenty relevant. more surprised when i don’t see a store use shopify at this point
- pxeger1 3y agoWhat is the "enterprise space" in the context of Shopify? Does that mean B2B sales?
- jacques_chester 3y agoI was caught in this layoff. My team was Ruby Dependency Security, focused on supply chain security in the Ruby space. I guess seen as being too far from the core mission. I enjoyed working there, but especially the people I worked with. I will miss working with them.
- bonney_io 3y agoThis all sucks, and I hate that CEOs can continue to lie about layoffs, hire uncontrollably, then completely 180 and lay tons of folks off. That said: where do I sign up for 16 weeks of severance pay?
- mortenjorck 3y ago> That said: where do I sign up for 16 weeks of severance pay? The cruel irony is that having Shopify on your resume will open a lot of doors and likely result in a shorter job search than those laid off from lower-profile companies with less severance. For point of comparison, my no-name series-D gave us a little over two weeks… and I’m unfortunately still looking 20 weeks later.
- the_only_law 3y agoYeah, I was laid off from a no name SaaS company owned by a PE firm. Most of my resume is either no names or known names, but in non prestigious, non tech companies Absolutely dreadful job search. Six months and nothing. A couple of awkward interviews that went nowhere. No one will touch me, and the few that do have pretty obvious issues. Meanwhile, friends that have well known names on their resume (even if it’s for infamy) are doing fine.
- moneywoes 3y agoYep 2 weeks of severance here
- ejb999 3y agoCould work the other way to for some people, imo - some folks I know won't even consider interviewing ex-google, ex-meta, ex-amazon folks, thinking they have been overpaid and/or pampered for years, and even if they are temporarily willing to accept a much lower salary, will be the first out the door when another better paying opportunity comes along and/or the FAANGS start hiring again. The picture painted in the media of these 'pampered' employees - true or not - does affect the perceptions of some hiring managers.
- ilamont 3y agoShopify was the perfect place to bootstrap this [logistics] effort from 0 to 1 and we have done this. The next step is to take what we have and take it from 1 to N as a main quest. Then he says they're selling to Flexport, an act which doesn't sound like a "main quest" at all ... it sounds like it's a difficult side quest being offloaded to someone else. For Shopify customers: What does this mean for shops using Shopify Fulfillment Network?
- tgtweak 3y agoSFN was just deliverr anyway so it will likely continue in that sense under flexports banner. Since Shopify sold it as an equity swap they still have an interest in promoting it and keeping it in house. The bigger picture here is that Shopifys visions of becoming an aggregate Amazon and competing in this space are dwindling. Sad as there is a real solution waiting here.
- adrr 3y agoI do wonder what shopify's vision is now. I figured they wanted to be the next Tmall with merchant customized storefronts but on a unified stack including logistics. They have the best opportunity to take on Amazon since all the brands hate Amazon and there is a big desire to control presentation from the brands. Brands don't care about fulfillment except cost and shipping speed and most outsource it to a large 3PLs.
- myhrvold 3y agoSmart! This was a bet that I think made sense in theory for Shopify, but in practice became too hard to manage and execute given their M.O. Would imagine Shopify is taking a loss in offloading, but will prevent future hemorrhaging of cash from a business decision that clearly did not pay off like anticipated. Unlike some people, I don't think this experiment was necessarily a bad one for Shopify. I would have to know inside info as to whether it made sense at the time to do, but barring that I would give the benefit of the doubt to Shopify to try, if the reward was high enough if they pulled it off...
- moneywoes 3y agoHow good was Shopify Logistics? Is a competitor viable?
- tgtweak 3y agoNot great honestly, the only redeeming factor was the onsite delivery eta logic (since SKU locations and customers location was internal) and the lift from displaying that on the site ("get it by tomorrow"). The costs, receiving SLAs and difficulty with any hands on help was worse than the other dedicated 3PL companies.
- moneywoes 3y agoAh gotcha. I imagine the 3PL market is very competitive, is that correct?
- bartread 3y ago"We are changing the shape of Shopify significantly today to pay unshared attention to our mission." What a way to lead, and what an absolutely grotesque euphemism (not to mention a barbaricly tortuous use of English). Why do companies write like this? It's just awful. I'm only half-joking when I suggest that if they'd taken this text and asked GPT-4 to rewrite it in a compassionate tone they'd have got a better result. (I say this having used GPT-4 quite regularly in recent weeks, although not for these kinds of purposes. It's quite impressive, along many axes, and I'm confident would have made a decent fist of this piece.) EDIT: All right, I have to give some credit here. I've now had chance to read the full release and, whilst I don't love the RPG-esque references, I understand that this is fundamentally a piece of internal comms sent to a group of people who are probably used to discussing things in those terms (Lord, preserve us - not my bag). That aside, I thought a lot of the rest of the release was decent and the severance terms seem good, so I have to give props for that. I've left my first impression unedited because, if nothing else, it's an honest reaction to some quite poorly composed introductory remarks and on that basis certainly not entirely unfair.
- nickstinemates 3y agoIt's written like a prologue for an RPG. Main Quest, Side Quest, Crafters... that's dedication.
- fmajid 3y agoTo prove it was not written by ChatGPT because no AI is that psychotic, not even SkyNet?
- bartread 3y agoIt is indeed. Not my bag at all but I've edited my original comment because a lot of the stuff further down, RPG references aside, is decently written, and there clearly is some compassion there. Severance terms are, as these things go, generous as well, and certainly a lot more than many companies would have done.
- jkestner 3y agoNot going to defend it, but apparently gaming vernacular is a company thing: https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/04/how-shopify-bungled-its-latest-layoffs-and-made-employees-feel-like-npcs/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/04/how-shopify-bungled-its-la...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- souradage 3y agoI was one of the teammates affected as well. Production engineering which is already spread thin as is. Really disappointed in this move but I have nothing but good things to say about the company and the people who work there.
- no_wizard 3y agoSo there is a 20% layoff and the sale of the logistics unit to Flexport, if I understand this right? Is this on top of the layoff they had a few months ago? That means Shopify is really about 30% smaller all told.
- callmeed 3y agoThe 20% number is a bit ambiguous. How many are being laid off and how many are moving over to Flexport?
- arwhatever 3y agoLeft Shopify just a few weeks ago, so I guess I missed out on the severance and on the surprise. Big part of what drove me off was that the software project management (at least for my team) felt like someone was mashing on the control panel, figuratively.
- readonthegoapp 3y agoDoes this mean Flexport is looking to become ther non-Amazon Prime/Logistics operation for the rest of the internet?
- susanasj 3y agoShopify shares up 25% today, which explains most of what's happening here. I agree with all the other comments criticizing the CEO's leadership of furiously hiring and now making massive cuts, but I think that is missing the context that the CEO does not answer to you or me, or to business professors, or to his employees. He answers to the board, which typically care about stock price and not much else. Today is a massive success in that regard.
- bryanmgreen 3y agoAs a Shopify user, I am conflicted about the Flexport acquisition. On one hand, it was really nice having a fulfillment partner directly related to the webstore. It gave a sense of harmony for future growth of services. From a stock perspective, it was a money suck, but hey, look at Amazon. On the other hand, the Shopify web platform feels a little neglected and I hope this will allow them to re-focus. From a stock perspective, maybe this will help get their immediate finances in order. They've made some solid improvements and additions, but there are a lot of little things that need attention. One of my quibbles is that you can't make private or unlisted products. They're either visible to everyone, or disabled. There are a lot of people asking for that feature, and it's not a hard one to implement. There are a lot of things like this that probably wouldn't take a lot of resources to implement but would significantly improve the merchant experience.
- racl101 3y agoThey say they don't wanna bury the lede but the statement still confuses me: > don’t want to bury the lede: after today Shopify will be smaller by about 20% and Flexport will buy Shopify Logistics; Does that mean layoffs AND part of their company being sold off. Or does it mean employees being reassigned because part of the company is being sold off? Granted I don't know much about Shopify. But when I read things on the face of it ... it sounds confusing.
- orsenthil 3y agoCan we change title to "Shopify lays off 20% of it's workforce. Flexport acquires its Logistics sub-division".
- local_crmdgeon 3y agoWOW! That's a change!
- 1attice 3y agoWhy is HN letting Shopify's headline preserve its soft-pedal? Expected: 'Shopify lays off 20%' Actual: 'Shopify will be smaller by about 20%'
- mabbo 3y agoI'm impacted. And it sucks. It sucks because I really liked the company. I liked the culture. I liked the leadership style. I liked the mission. I genuinely think that company is doing good for the world, and making money in the process. The challenge now is that the leadership have burned a lot of trust with the employees. They repeatedly said no more layoffs were coming, but with this move they all benefitted financially quite well- the stock is up 25%. The move deeply undermines the company culture that they worked so hard to build. I hope Tobi has a plan for how to repair that damage.
- deltree7 3y agoI'm sorry for you. The CEOs / Executives are literally appointed by the board who in turn are voted in by shareholders. It is their job to increase the share price. The world is better of with efficient capital deployment. So, I don't understand how the smartest people in this world don't understand the fundamental working of capital markets. Note: it's the same shareholders that have allowed to get $200-$300k TCs when smart people around the world toil the same as you for $60k. So, you can't have it both ways
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- spacemadness 3y agoYes, the first thing I tell someone laid off is that the world is better off with efficient capital deployment. They should know better and not have any emotional reaction. It’s purely logical after all. The CEO should have put that in the letter.
- deltree7 3y agoThen he should stop ranting about Executive pays. You can't have it both ways. Start misinformation about how capital markets work and not expect to be corrected. HN is a discussion forum. If an incorrect fact or misguided opinion is shared, it will be debated. I'm sympathetic to OP, but I also understand the dangers of misinformation and the resulting brainwashing of anti-capitalistic movement it causes and I will protect capitalism.
- boo-ga-ga 3y agoWhy do the stocks of tech companies grows every time the do layoffs? Is it a sign that the management is ready to do bold and unpopular decisions, or what?
- jtokoph 3y agoBecause reducing cost generally means increase in profits.
- IndoorPatio 3y agoI've seen little evidence that a company can thrive after 20% workforce cuts. Whatever successes Shopify has had, it's safe to say those days are done.
- dcgudeman 3y agoWhat are you talking about? Companies downsize all the time and continue to thrive. It's a normal part of adapting to market conditions.
- ant_li0n 3y agoI was hired in Aug 2022, laid off yesterday. Looking at it from their perspective, I would have made the choice to lay me off (or fire me). The reality is that I just did not get enough meaningful project work. I talked to my manager frequently and it was always something "just around the corner". My manager went on parental leave 3 months after I started. Pretty much everybody took most of December off. Our division did a re-org which shook everything up, wasted more time. I didn't get any meaningful projects until the start of February, my 6th month of employment at Shopify. I was doing really well there, felt good about my work and my contribution, whereas I'd been floundering for 6 months with impostor syndrome and existential crisis. But it was just too late. I got the axe. I don't feel too personally bad about it, although I hate interviewing and have performance anxiety when it comes to technical interviewing stuff. I want to take time off to rest but I'm afraid I'll use all my savings up and still not have a job. I wasn't there long enough to really know for certain, but I feel like part of the problem is the monolithic nature of the codebase. Getting projects greenlit required a bunch of political wrangling and convincing of the senior leadership team by the product folks. Things just moved really slowly. The "Get Shit Done" (I kid you not, that's what they call it) process of shipping projects seemed interesting but nobody really followed the documented process. I got the feeling it was a lot of back channel conversations, gate keeping by higher up folks, with people every step of the chain asking themselves, "Will this decision make me look more impactful in my upcoming review?". Kinda feels like the way I imagine the bureaucracy of the Soviet Union operated. I don't know. I have a lot of feelings about all of it, I'm personally really sad because I feel like I really had something to offer, something to contribute, but I spent most of my time just fucking around. Scale that up to a company the size of Shopify and it's just a tragic waste of human potential. But they will just pat themselves on the back, congratulating themselves on "making difficult decisions". The 16 weeks severance is nice though. Takes the edge off.