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

news.shopify.com

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

#81

Post by nness »

eatonphil wrote: post #18
nness wrote: post #11

Shopify also bumped their prices 33% earlier in the year. As a small-business Shopify merchant, I would appreciate more competition in the market.

> 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?

I 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.

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

#82

Post by IMTDb »

orra wrote: post #42
monero-xmr wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. Right, but that's not the actual dichotomy. First, if Shopify can deliver its software with less people, then with the same number of people they could deliver more. Second, realistically the dichotomy, in the short to medium term, is will these people be employed in a skilled…

> if Shopify can deliver its software with less people, then with the same number of people they could deliver more

That is assuming everyone contributes in a meaningful way. That might not be the case for various reasons: - Incompetence / lazyness - You feel productive, but you impact is actually really low ("I am preparing an alignment meeting") - You are working on a product / component that generates little to no revenue/interest (Hello "metaverse" team from Facebook) - Your skill are not highly required at the moment and don't seem to be required in a short/mid term; someone else surely needs you more.

Sometimes, doing more is not necessarily the right thing. 37 signals is famously known to have far enough revenues to hire a ton of guys and probably launch many new products. Yet, they choose to remain at a fixed headcount for now and return the profits to their shareholders. They do not hesitate to let people / fire them if they feel the need to despite their profits. Why can't Shopify follow the same strategy; albeit at a different headcount ?

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

#83

Post by throwawaysleep »

KyeRussell wrote: post #34
throwawaysleep wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a fundraising advertisement, not for you. If you are an employee, nothing management does is for you.

It’ll be a very confusing day for you when you grow up and have just one direct report, and you’ll need to face the reality of them calling you “management” on snarky Hacker News comments.

I have no managerial aspirations.

I intend to be an under the radar B- player at a diversified portfolio of companies until I can retire.

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

#84

Post by ryathal »

DelaneyM wrote: 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…

The 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.

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

#85

Post by endisneigh »

zimpenfish wrote: post #75
endisneigh wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the unemployment rate is 3.5% > then with the same number of people they could deliver more. this is not true to begin with. classic engineering fallacy

> this is not true to begin with. classic engineering fallacy Are you assuming they'd be put onto the existing projects (which may slow down delivery, yes) rather than doing new projects in parallel (which will not and will in fact let them deliver more because there are more projects )?

you're simply doubling down on the fallacy. doing more projects does not mean you're delivering more. code is not value. there needs to be clear demand for what is being produced and management needs to have effective leadership to make sure the right people are doing the right things. all of which require effort. in lieu of that, it's better to lay people off from the company's perspective. if and when they understand the scope of the problem and the demand is there they will hire more people. that's more or less how to economy works.

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

#86

Post by mynegation »

2rsf wrote: post #16
gurchik wrote: 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.

This is especially true for Apple laptops, where the transfer of ownership is complicated (to protect against theft). I saw Lenovos and Dells being recycled in corporate settings but never Macs.

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

#87

Post by lechacker »

gurchik wrote: 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.

I don't know why people even care about that. I go out of my way to not use my work laptop for personal work/projects/etc. Especially considering the amount they value the laptop at (which may be inflated) is deducted from your severance payment

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

#88

Post by bonadrag »

otter-in-a-suit wrote: post #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…

Good luck. No doubt you will be employed quickly.

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

#89

Post by cde-v »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #10
DelaneyM wrote: 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)

Almost no one is going to agree with you here. Hacker News is filled with “temporarily embarrassed billionaires” who all think their shitty little app or the fact that they know some obscure useless programming language think will make them rich one day.

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

#90

Post by osigurdson »

It 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.
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