After years and billions on investment in their own fulfilment network, #Shopify abandons and sells it to #Flexport.

#Logistics is hard, especially when you’ve always been in the virtual world of software. It’s a much more blue collar industry and Shopify finally realized they couldn’t understand it.

Their offering never made most sense to most retailers, they will stick to #ecommerce only and let you figure out how to ship your stuff yourself.

#Flexport laid off 20% of its staff today.

Luckily I wasn't in the #layoff club, but I'm appalled by how badly the decision was communicated.

An email out of the blue around 4 PM saying "unfortunately we have to let go of ~20% of the workforce - keep an eye on your mailbox". Followed by another email 5 minutes later to tell you if you were in or out. Managers were even invited not to reach out to their reports directly.

I couldn't imagine a more impersonal way of firing somebody. It makes even a sociopath like Elon Musk look like Mr. Empathy.

Besides the lack of tact, sensitivity and empathy, I'm also appalled by this layoff trend in tech.

Yes, there are big bubbles in the industry. Yes, the implosion of crypto was just a matter of time, and the ads-funded surveillance tech industry is also following a similar (albeit slower) path. But drastic layoffs are also hitting profitable companies in industries that have already proved their value. Yes, there's a slight downturn in global supply chains, mostly caused by the chaos around China and its handling of the pandemic. But that's not something that looks so grave and permanent to justify the firing of 1/5 of your staff. It's not like China has just attacked Taiwan and all the geopolitical balances of trade have to change overnight, just to make an example.

It sounds to me like all tech companies are doing massive layoffs just because all other tech companies are doing so. It's almost like investors are telling CEOs "hey, everybody's firing, how come you haven't sent a few thousands employees home yet?"

And you know what? Besides being incredibly irrational, it's also the dumbest thing to do.

Besides a couple of notorious dumpster fires and bursting bubbles, it *can't* be that the *whole* tech industry is in a recession. Technology is a mean for basically any business on earth to achieve anything today, therefore saying that the whole tech industry is in a recession is like saying that all industries on earth are in a recession. Firing people just because you produce software, and all the companies that make software are firing now, is therefore dumb.

And it's dumb for another purely econometric reason as well.

They are laying off a lot of people who they invested a lot on, often by paying for relocation, hiring bonuses, trainings etc.

As a lot of tech people are suddenly jobless, the supply side of the equation has dramatically increased within just a couple of months. The winners are the companies that are currently hiring, because they can get talented resources from a larger pool, i.e. at a cheaper price.

In the meantime, companies that are currently firing because of temporarily downturns are likely, in a near future, to need those resources again, if they want to recover from the temporary downturn and show some growth to their investors. What it means is that this crazy season of layoffs is likely to be followed by a crazy hiring spree in a few months, as companies that only faced temporarily downturns will need people again in order to operate.

And, at that time, there will be larger demand scooping from a smaller supply pool. In other words, higher hiring costs and salaries.

In other words: these companies are literally selling low and buying high.

Professionally I am a Sr. Analytics Engineer at 🚢#flexport. Previously built the 🐙#seattlekraken hockey operations data pipelining and warehousing solutions. Prior to that did data infrastructure design for ✍️#hellosign and was a data analytics Engineer at 👨‍🏫#udacity. Love all things data in general and am currently learning the ins and outs of 🦆#duckdb.

Finally fun fact about me, I played 🏉#rugby for 10 years and can still throw a solid back hand pass.