Shopify will be smaller by about 20% and Flexport will buy Shopify Logistics • Hacker News Board

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

#331

Post by mattgreenrocks » Thu, May 04, 2023, 4:23 PM UTC

tracerbulletx wrote: post #307

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'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…

"Too high" = one of the only careers that wasn't completely soul crushing left.

In this case, "too high" = "we haven't figured out how to commoditize it well enough yet because the skill floor/ceiling is too high to scale with cheaper talent." This was one of the primary reasons I began to specialize partially in tech domains that are regarded as "hard" (compilers/perf): much smaller market means employees have a bit more leverage.

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

#332

Post by IMTDb » Thu, May 04, 2023, 4:24 PM UTC

revelio wrote: post #181

IMTDb wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I thought 37signals is privately owned. How do you know how much revenue they have?

I have no idea of their exact numbers. But The CEO publicly said they generate tens of millions of profits every year [1]. This is for a company of around 30 to 40 employees.

https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/1212837791031279616?la...

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

#333

Post by fmajid » Thu, May 04, 2023, 4:24 PM UTC

nickstinemates wrote: post #270

bartread wrote: post #266

"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 resu…

It's written like a prologue for an RPG. Main Quest, Side Quest, Crafters... that's dedication.

To prove it was not written by ChatGPT because no AI is that psychotic, not even SkyNet?

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

#334

Post by hbn » Thu, May 04, 2023, 4:26 PM UTC

qbasic_forever wrote: post #166

nness wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'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 perspect…

That's bizarre or just shoddy IT. Every major platform has remote wipe and self destruct capabilities, control over full disk encryption, etc. I guess they let people bring their own devices and just not follow solid IT practices?

They can't remote wipe it if you don't connect to the internet.

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

#335

Post by lazyasciiart » Thu, May 04, 2023, 4:27 PM UTC

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #316

bambataa wrote: post #143

Is this the same CEO who decided to double the engineering team in a single year? 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?

>Aren’t CEOs paid ludicrously well to make long term decisions, rather than just flail around? CEO's are neither prophets nor oracles. They are effectively dice-rolls with a face. Not roll er s, but rolls. No matter what, sometimes you get bad numbers. Founder CEO's like Lutke are heroes. They have skin in the game. This forces them to calculate their risks. Their actions and decisions have greater weight because of…

So he is actually in the same position as a non-founder CEO at this point.

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

#336

Post by rcme » Thu, May 04, 2023, 4:29 PM UTC

no_wizard wrote: post #305

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'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…

Isn'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.

Employees 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?

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

#337

Post by ejb999 » Thu, May 04, 2023, 4:30 PM UTC

neom wrote: post #131

Does 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 lite…

We posted a job back in oct/nov for a senior tech position at a very large, but non-tech company - we got 3 applicants/resumes, 2 of which were out of the country and not considered. The one got hired (and was a good hire).

In Jan/Feb posted the exact same job (an additional position) and got over 300 resumes including from ex-FAANG folks who we generally don't see applying).

Something sure has changed imo, and I also personally do believe things are about to get much, much worse for many people.

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

#338

Post by ink_13 » Thu, May 04, 2023, 4:30 PM UTC

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #316

bambataa wrote: post #143

Is this the same CEO who decided to double the engineering team in a single year? 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?

>Aren’t CEOs paid ludicrously well to make long term decisions, rather than just flail around? CEO's are neither prophets nor oracles. They are effectively dice-rolls with a face. Not roll er s, but rolls. No matter what, sometimes you get bad numbers. Founder CEO's like Lutke are heroes. They have skin in the game. This forces them to calculate their risks. Their actions and decisions have greater weight because of…

Lutke's not a hero, he's a mini-Zuckerberg: he still runs the company he founded as CEO, but he has already made more than enough money to comfortably retire. Also like Zuckerberg, his company might be better off without him at this point, since being practically unaffected by success or failure makes continuing as CEO something of a vanity project.

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

#339

Post by sokoloff » Thu, May 04, 2023, 4:30 PM UTC

jimmytucson wrote: post #212

bambataa wrote: post #143

Is this the same CEO who decided to double the engineering team in a single year? 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?

The 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 interesti…

I feel like not hiring aggressively in a _low-interest-rate environment_ is harmful to your business.

Assuming you have some productive use for the incremental employees, the discounted returns from those employees' contributions are decreased by an uncertainty factor and by the risk-free interest rate. When that latter term is near zero, hiring is restricted by the uncertainty of their performance and projects assigned to, meaning you get a lot of hiring by sensible, data-driven management teams.

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

#340

Post by burke » Thu, May 04, 2023, 4:31 PM UTC

pastor_bob wrote: post #259

rcme wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Shopify 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.

This 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 -- now it's pretty competitive.