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From a business perspective, this is great for Shopify. The labor market for software engineers has seriously softened as a result of all the layoffs. Go look a
by rcme 3y ago
From a business perspective, this is great for Shopify. The labor market for software engineers has seriously softened as a result of all the layoffs. Go look at job openings and their posted salaries.
When Shopify beings hiring again, they are going to be able to hire talent at a fraction of the price.
Also, this is largely a coordinated effort from activist investors specifically targeting large tech salaries. E.g. https://www.businessinsider.com/google-layoffs-cut-jobs-excessive-pay-investor-alphabet-2023-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/google-layoffs-cut-jobs-exce...
There is essentially a vicious cycle targeting tech compensation. Activist investors are convincing boards that they're overpaying their tech talent. Then those boards approve layoffs. Then those layoffs further lower salaries. Rinse and repeat.
- ngcazz 3y agoIt's basically class warfare
- pastor_bob 3y agoShopify already pays at the low end. I mean, not even relative to FAANG; you can make a similar salary at a government job as an engineer.
- dvdhnt 3y agoThis hasn't been true for the last couple of years. source: I was a Shopify employee until today and can confirm my salary was closer to FAANG than not.
- mattgreenrocks 3y agoSorry to hear that. Hope you can find a new job soon!
- dvdhnt 3y agoMuch appreciated, thank you.
- exhibitapp 3y agothis is absolutely not true, I know engineering managers with around 5-7 years of total experience ( aka people under 30 ) making $400,000 CAD in cash compensation at shop. They recently did a cash/equity split where employees could choose their split and not a huge surprise many chose the maximum cash there are no government engineering positions in Canada paying anywhere close to this
- zeroxfe 3y agoTotally not true. My Shopify offer was slightly higher than my Google offer (as a re-hire), both base + stocks, about 3 years ago. However, going with Google really paid off because of the stock performance.
- burke 3y agoThis was partially true at points (though we've always done quite a bit better than government), but categorically stopped being true with: https://news.shopify.com/rewriting-the-story-of-compensation https://news.shopify.com/rewriting-the-story-of-compensation -- now it's pretty competitive.
- amrocha 3y agoThey pay competitively now, but it took half the company quitting during covid covid for them to get to that point
- _jesse 3y agoWhen did this change? I interviewed in fall 2021 and got a decent offer but ultimately took a higher offer elsewhere.
- inerte 3y agoLast September. You now get $X per year and chose how much you want in stocks or cash. Depending on your level, a certain minimum of stock is necessary. Most Sr / Staff engineering had a floor of 10% stocks, but the rest is plain cash. Shopify wasn't paying like FAANG, but also not like a startup. I would say 75% of a FAANG.
- moneywoes 3y agoCan anything be done?
- mattgreenrocks 3y agoIt's not just tech compensation. The zeitgeist right now is that employee comp is/was simply too high. There have lots of murmurings lately that amount to that at many different levels of the capital chain. Perhaps what's interesting about now is that people are quite okay with saying it openly. Tech is an easy target since it is well-known, and the pandemic inflated the importance of tech artificially to some degree. Fully grokking the idea that employee comp could be "too high" for the overall health of the economy really did a number on my economic worldview. Gone is the naive belief that rare/valuable skills secure higher salaries over a long period of time. I no longer trust employers to take care of me, and that getting better at building assets (in the form of products, mostly) is something to grow into to supplant and eventually buy out time spent working for someone else.
- no_wizard 3y agoIsn't this frustrating? Employees of course have the bare the brunt, but god forbid its shareholders and executives that need to scale down their payouts. Feels so incredibly backward. And yes I know its "stock performance" but what do you think drives this? With executive compensation mostly related to stocks, of course at the end of the day, thats what they want to drive up.
- rcme 3y agoEmployees have to bear the brunt of the effects because those making the macroeconomic decisions are part of the capitalist class. Jerome Powell was a partner at one of the world’s largest private equity firms. Is it any surprise that he’s trying to spin a narrative that employees are paid too much? Isn’t squeezing employees to increase profits what those in private equity typically do?
- 908B64B197 3y agoThe serious companies have most of their employee's compensation in stock anyways.
- tracerbulletx 3y ago"Too high" = one of the only careers that wasn't completely soul crushing left.
- wesapien 3y agoCapitalism is untenable and I say that with frustration as someone who was able to do better after growing up lower-middle class (kinda poor). AI is already displacing some people from their work. I hate both absolute capitalism and socialism/communism. How can AI help us find a sweet spot?
- 1attice 3y agoHonestly, it can't. What it will do instead is cause the most abrupt wealth concentration in the history of humankind. This will create 'revolutionary' conditions, although the shape and direction of that revolution will differ from context to context. In some places, it is likely to be fascist; in others, socialist; in still others, unexplored, undiscovered options. It will be a time of experimentation -- or as Gramsci eloquently, and more pessimistically, put it, a "time of monsters." But what is going away, permanently, is the space between extremes. Pour one out. I miss it already.
- jonny_eh 3y ago> When Shopify beings hiring again, they are going to be able to hire talent at a fraction of the price. Wouldn't it be the opposite? When the market recovers, they'll competing with everyone else for talent, when instead if they held onto their talent, they could be paying less.
- 908B64B197 3y ago> When Shopify beings hiring again, they are going to be able to hire talent at a fraction of the price. What I've been told about Shopify is that they were seen as a good place to get "western" experience before jumping ship (often for folks who couldn't pass the higher bar for US immigration) because they were already not very competitive with companies in the valley.
- pcthrowaway 3y agoShopify was never paying top of market in the first place. They might be able to get better talent for the same price, but "a fraction of the price" to me has a connotation of "1 over (an integer bigger than 1)", meaning 1/2 or less what they were paying previously... and this is certainly not the case for them. If you're going to suggest 9/10 is also a fraction or something I'll counter that 4/3 is also a fraction, and no one uses "a fraction of the price" to refer to an increase in price
- raydev 3y ago> Then those layoffs further lower salaries Is there evidence of this now? What I see is a small fraction of the open roles I'm used to seeing. Compensation, on the other hand, is the same at these big companies. If not even higher than it was a couple years ago.