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Shopify will be smaller by about 20% and Flexport will buy Shopify Logistics

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21–30 of 531 posts

Re: Shopify will be smaller by about 20% and Flexport will buy Shopify Logistics

#21
post #2

I 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 t…

It'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)

If 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.

Re: Shopify will be smaller by about 20% and Flexport will buy Shopify Logistics

#22
Things 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-layoff...

Re: Shopify will be smaller by about 20% and Flexport will buy Shopify Logistics

#23
post #16
post #4

> 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.

Being in a layoff cycle at one of the biggies they scraped all of our laptops and refused to sell or give them away, with the reason being that it's too complicated to come up with the proper process to do that properly.

If you're affected by a layoff anyway... raise a stink at the media, can be pretty effective if the company has a "sustainability" code of conduct.

Re: Shopify will be smaller by about 20% and Flexport will buy Shopify Logistics

#24
I 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. :)

Re: Shopify will be smaller by about 20% and Flexport will buy Shopify Logistics

#26
post #2

I 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 t…

It'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)

> It's a fundraising advertisement, not for you.

If you are an employee, nothing management does is for you.

Re: Shopify will be smaller by about 20% and Flexport will buy Shopify Logistics

#28
post #2

I 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 t…

It'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)

Oh yes, I realize it's for the street. But unless a public offering coincides with the PR there's little value in combining the two messages.

Re: Shopify will be smaller by about 20% and Flexport will buy Shopify Logistics

#29
post #22

Things 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-layoff...

In 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.

Re: Shopify will be smaller by about 20% and Flexport will buy Shopify Logistics

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'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)

If 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.

"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

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