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Comment by mabbo | Hacker News Reader

I'm impacted. And it sucks.

It sucks because I really liked the company. I liked the culture. I liked the leadership style. I liked the mission. I genuinely think that company is doing good for the world, and making money in the process.

The challenge now is that the leadership have burned a lot of trust with the employees. They repeatedly said no more layoffs were coming, but with this move they all benefitted financially quite well- the stock is up 25%.

The move deeply undermines the company culture that they worked so hard to build. I hope Tobi has a plan for how to repair that damage.

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Same here, and I totally agree.

This was a job I looked forward to each morning. It was just a fun place to work full of talented people and a great culture. There were exciting projects in the works and I wanted to keep being a part of them. My time was cut short and it's disappointing to say the least.

They tried to hire people who care and that showed in the daily interactions. It's in stark contrast to today's actions and I won't be so trusting again.

Best of luck to you!

Same boat. I thought something was bound to happen based on chatter and signals I was seeing. Weird and contradictory comms around budgets. Noises about manager/employee ratios. Timing of financial reports and stock trading blackout periods.

I was around for layoffs last year and I found it very surprising that nobody made more noise about the fact that executives never shared the hard numbers they used to make their layoff decisions. I'll be very curious to hear chatter over the coming weeks around how they rationalize these layoffs.

If nothing else, stock prices tell a pretty cynical story.

> I genuinely think that company is doing good for the world

You can't be serious... What good those bunch of [censored] could possibly do?

As a merchant - worst decision ever was made to work with them. Wasted tens of thousands of dollars for nothing. Everything is bad - tech, support, "dedicated manager", API, plainly everything is horrible.

good for the world... Seriously?

>>> I hope Tobi has a plan

This is a cut throat game of capitalism, you do know that right? He's going to be rewarded for making these cuts. There is no downside for the winners.

Hope.....unfortunately that's not how the game is played. Unions, worker protections, and taxes on the wealthy those are real actionable goals.

Look, I spent a decade at Amazon working for Jeff Bezos and the horde of sociopaths he enabled. I know how it goes.

Tobi has never given me the impression that he's a sociopath. It's part of why I wanted to work for Shopify. I used to joke that "'Shopify is the no assholes company.' 'But what about Kaz?' 'It's the no assholeS company- we're allowed one!'". But honestly, even my view on Kaz softened up over time.

Either the leadership at Shopify are genuinely nice people trying their best, or they are way better than the Amazon leadership at hiding their sociopathy. But either way, it felt nicer working for them.

I think you can come across as not being asshole while still being a sociopath willing to throw others under the bus for your own personal gain. And even if you're not a sociopath, everyone has a price.

I'm sorry, hope you'll land somewhere good.

I'm sorry for you.

The CEOs / Executives are literally appointed by the board who in turn are voted in by shareholders. It is their job to increase the share price.

The world is better of with efficient capital deployment.

So, I don't understand how the smartest people in this world don't understand the fundamental working of capital markets.

Note: it's the same shareholders that have allowed to get $200-$300k TCs when smart people around the world toil the same as you for $60k. So, you can't have it both ways

Yes, the first thing I tell someone laid off is that the world is better off with efficient capital deployment. They should know better and not have any emotional reaction. It’s purely logical after all. The CEO should have put that in the letter.

I'm sure you'll use the same logic when a coal worker is fired, right? The hypocrisy is mind-boggling.

Then he should stop ranting about Executive pays.

You can't have it both ways. Start misinformation about how capital markets work and not expect to be corrected.

HN is a discussion forum. If an incorrect fact or misguided opinion is shared, it will be debated.

I'm sympathetic to OP, but I also understand the dangers of misinformation and the resulting brainwashing of anti-capitalistic movement it causes and I will protect capitalism.

and I will protect capitalism.

Truly the hero capitalism deserves.

I lived in a country which had

democracy + socialism

democracy + capitalism.

One period marked poverty, child mortality, While the other marked good standard of living and reduced child mortality.

I'll let you guess and pick the confounding variable from the equation. That's the advantage of independent thinking vs brainwashed-by-liberal-universities (and thank god I didn't study in some brainwashed liberal university)

> The CEOs / Executives are literally appointed by the board who in turn are voted in by shareholders. It is their job to increase the share price.

This is a meme that needs to die.

> The world is better of with efficient capital deployment.

Even if this were true, rising share prices don't necessarily indicate efficient deployment. Chasing short-term share price increases often incentivises behaviour detrimental to company in the long-term.

Shopify, Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon all have long term goals.

Meta/Google/Amazon/Microsoft are literally investing R&D $ that will pay off 10+ years later.

Yet they all have laid off people.

Just because you laid of people doesn't mean they aren't thinking long term.

Really how can reddit/HN and social media be so blind about this when they have data screaming at them?

> Just because you laid of people doesn't mean they aren't thinking long term. That's not what I said at all. My point was that a rising share price and actions taken to influence that do not necessarily indicate that capital has been efficiently deployed.

> Really how can reddit/HN and social media be so blind about this when they have data screaming at them?

Maybe don't start with the assumption that everyone else is an idiot.

Smart people, as you put it, know that empathy plays a role in the world. It's possible to understand how capitalism works, while not being a sociopath.

None of those people are sociopaths. You are just projecting. You haven't met the person or know anything about them.

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