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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

#51

Post by throwaway290 »

pixl97 wrote: post #33
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.

Do more with less and less until you do everything with nothing.... The answer to your question is it depends, and is one of the big things that has people worried about AI and automation rapidly improving over time. If things like wealth redistribution don't occur in a highly automated society you end up with big problems really quick.

It occurs, just not in the direction it should.

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

#53

Post by megablast »

monero-xmr wrote: post #21
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #10

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.

> 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.

When you argument is to take the extreme, you must understand that it is bullshit, right?

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

#54

Post by 542458 »

alanfranz wrote: post #25

What is an healthy manager-to-ic ratio?

I feel it depends on a lot of factors, such as how senior your ICs are, how interlinked their tasks are, how complex the domain is, how large the project is, what the rate of attrition is, how complex the organization’s established procedures are…

An organization that has nothing but fairly senior researchers working on separate projects might need little management. An organization with lots of more junior engineers working on something like a rocket (where every part depends on every other part) might need more overhead.

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

#55

Post by monero-xmr »

mochomocha wrote: post #49
monero-xmr wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US military is not capitalism. That’s socialism - a job and industry fully dependent on the government and thus is a politically created career. Bullshit jobs don’t exist in the free market, as no capitalist would pay for someone to do something useless. If that is happening it would certainly be because a government regulator required someone to sit there twiddling thumbs.

> Bullshit jobs don’t exist in the free market, as no capitalist would pay for someone to do something useless And yet if you spend any time in any large corporation, you'll find countless examples of these, including in the tech industry. Don't you have any friend working for Google/Meta/${big tech co}? Bullshit jobs can and definitely exist with capitalism: any successful and large business is filled with them.

They may exist for a while but when push comes to shove, they will be eliminated. The government is the one with the real problem - there are bureaucrats who gladly do nothing all day every day, or even actively harm industry, and they can never be fired and exist as barnacles.

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

#56

Post by wincy »

rqtwteye wrote: post #40
nus07 wrote: post #9

Last time I read a very reassuring and cogent letter by the CEO of Shopify about the layoffs . But at no point did the letter hint at further layoffs no less 20% which is huge. Wondering what the explanation is this time. I understand everyone has their worth and price but I fail to see how management and leadership at companies still have jobs and huge bonuses. Reaganomics has had 35 years. Maybe we need a new visio…

"Maybe we need a new vision for our society" If AI really kills as many jobs as predicted, we will definitely have to rethink society. It doesn't really make sense that a technology that improves overall productivity of society ends up making large segments of the population suffer. We need to find a way to have everybody benefit from progress and not just a few at the top.

Unemployed disenfranchised highly intelligent highly motivated people is going to be very different than a bunch of unemployed McDonald’s workers. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens if nothing else.

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

#57

Post by empathy_m »

MAGZine wrote: post #3

Well yeah, cutting workforce seems like it only has upside to these companies. Expenses go down, profit margin and share price go up. What're the workers gonna do? Protest? Strike? Hah. No, the remaining employees will pick up the extra responsibility and thank the employer for continuing to employ them.

> What're the workers gonna do? Protest? Strike?

They're going to work for other firms, who have also simultaneously laid off staff. They will accept lower wages. Salaries will be permanently anchored lower, improving the cost structure of US software across the industry.

It's an effective coordinated move by firms against labor.

Interesting side effect here is that in order for staff to avoid a layoff, the benchmark is not whether they produce output in excess of the risk-free return -- it's whether their worth is greater than the long-term benefit of paying each new hire 30% less.

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

#58

Post by DDerTyp »

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…

Hey, I just found your LinkedIn Profile and noticed that we studied at the same university - even the same degree! I've send you a request on LinkedIn, so maybe we could connect and have a chat?

Have a great day!

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

#59

Post by somedude895 »

nus07 wrote: post #9

Last time I read a very reassuring and cogent letter by the CEO of Shopify about the layoffs . But at no point did the letter hint at further layoffs no less 20% which is huge. Wondering what the explanation is this time. I understand everyone has their worth and price but I fail to see how management and leadership at companies still have jobs and huge bonuses. Reaganomics has had 35 years. Maybe we need a new visio…

> Reaganomics has had 35 years. Maybe we need a new vision for our society.

Because some highly paid people lost their jobs we need a new vision for society? Sure, it sucks to be laid off but you talk as if there's mass unemployment and droves of people suddenly living in squalor. Don't be so dramatic.

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

#60

Post by monero-xmr »

megablast wrote: post #53
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. When you argument is to take the extreme, you must understand that it is bullshit, right?

On the contrary it is useful to distill an idea into its essence in order to make a point. This is a logical argument, and is the same technique any teacher uses when trying to begin with base principles.

It’s tough when you have no counter argument, which is why you resort to arguing against the method rather than thinking of something intelligent.

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