241–250 of 531 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course not. They’re caused by the fed.
Recessions and collapses happened long before the Fed ever existed, e.g. Tulips
I 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!
> 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 fr…
I guess their idea of AI is someone using the ChatGPT API. Good luck if they think they will "hack" some revolutionary AI together with a cowboy hacker culture.
>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
This 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?
> 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.
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.
>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…
I 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.
Once 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?
Is the company structurally weak? Absolutely awful situation for the workers, but I haven't seen systemic negative effects for the companies conducting layoffs.
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
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...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
You are assuming that there is an infinite number of people that can be added to Shopify’s payroll that will increase the product’s usefulness and increase revenue enough to justify their hiring. The company leadership doesn’t believe that. There is a line where adding more people will not justify enough revenue increase, and that’s up to the company leaders to decide. It’s worse for the people laid off, but ultimate…
How many software products has Google released over the years, which they're able to do so because they have a massive number of employees? More employees will allow for more products.
Whether it would be prudent or profitable to tackle more products is another story, but we're already talking about hypotheticals with 'infinite employees' here.
I do think there is room for 20% of its employees to work on other products that could integrate well with their vision and still be within the ecommerce realm. But that doesn't juice up their stock price right away.