Shopify joins a list of tech companies that are letting go of their workforce due to slow growth. The company revealed that 10% of their staff members will leave the organisation.
Tobi Lütke – Shopify CEO and founder in a letter to the staff said: “Shopify has to go through a reduction in workforce that will see about 10% leave by the end of the day.”
“Most of the impacted roles are in recruiting, support, and sales, and across the company we’re also eliminating over-specialised and duplicate roles, as well as some groups that were convenient to have but too far removed from building products. Emails will go out in the next few minutes that will clarify if your role was affected; those impacted will then have a meeting with a lead in their team.”
The company was hoping that the demand they had during COVID will continue to post the pandemic, unfortunately, the merchants and customers went back to their old habits.
“When the Covid pandemic set in, almost all retail shifted online because of shelter-in-place orders. Demand for Shopify skyrocketed. To help merchants, we threw away our roadmaps and shipped everything that could possibly be helpful,” writes Lütke in a blog post.
“It was hard, but we know for a fact that more merchants’ businesses survived the pandemic because of the work we did in this time and that’s exactly what our mission is about.”
The job cuts the company announced are the first big layoffs Shopify has undergone since the company was founded in 2006. Shopify is offering 16 weeks of severance to the laid-off employees, plus an additional week for every year of tenure at Shopify.
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