I sit to write this email not far from where I once sat to write the first few lines of code for Shopify itself. Those lines of code started a company and sent it on an exciting journey full of wonder, toil, success, failure, ambition, and most of all, camaraderie. Being on a journey, being surrounded by great teammates, doing hard things is what it’s all about. All of which makes this email much more difficult to write: the next part of the journey will involve fewer teammates than we’ve gathered along the way. Shopify has to undergo a workforce reduction that will see around 10% off by the end of the day. Most of the roles affected are recruiting, support, and sales, and across the company we’re also eliminating over-specialized and duplicative roles, as well as some teams that were convenient to have but were too far away from building products. Emails will go out in the next few minutes clarifying whether your role has been affected. those affected will then have a meeting with their team leader.
For a company like ours, this news will be hard to digest. It will be even more difficult for those leaving today. I’ll share as many details as I can about how we got here and, for those leaving, what happens next. How we got here When the Covid pandemic started, almost all retail was moved online due to shelter-in-place orders. Demand for Shopify skyrocketed. To help marketers, we’ve thrown out our roadmaps and sent whatever might be helpful. It’s been tough, but we know for sure that more merchant businesses have survived the pandemic because of the work we’ve been doing right now, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.
Shopify has always been a company that makes the big strategic bets that our merchants demand of us – that’s how we succeed. Before the pandemic, e-commerce growth was steady and predictable. Would this surge be a temporary effect or a new normal? And so, given what we’ve seen, we made another bet: We bet that the channel mix—the share of dollars that travel through e-commerce rather than physical retail—would permanently jump forward by 5 or even 10 years. We couldn’t know for sure at the time, but we knew that if there was a chance that this was the case, we would have to expand the company to match. Source: US Census Bureau It is now clear that the gamble did not pay off. What we’re seeing now is that the mix is ​​returning to roughly where the pre-Covid data would suggest it should be at this point. It’s still growing steadily, but it wasn’t a significant 5 year jump forward. Our market share in e-commerce is much higher than retail, so that matters. In the end, making that bet was my call and I got it wrong. Now, we have to adapt. Consequently, we have to say goodbye to some of you today, and I am deeply sorry for that. To those leaving Shopify Everyone will feel this news in their own way, but what is universally true is that it will be difficult for everyone. We want to support each of you in the coming weeks and months as much as possible, so we are offering a generous severance package. Those affected today will receive 16 weeks of severance pay, plus an additional week for each year of service with Shopify. We will remove any lump sum equity and extend any medical benefits. Knowing that Shopify is just one stop on a career journey, we also want to help set everyone up for success as they take their next steps. We will offer relocation services with access to career coaching, interview support, resume crafting, etc. And because each route taken requires certain basics, we’ll continue to pay internet costs for the period, the home office furniture we provide is now yours, and while we’ll need to recover our hardware, we offer a start-up allowance that can be used to the purchase of new laptops. If you want, you can add your email addresses to a list that we will share with other companies looking for talent. And for those who find themselves drifting down the entrepreneurial path, Shopify also caters to a free account for everyone. I want to express my sincere gratitude to each of you for all you have given to support merchants and our mission to make commerce better for everyone. What’s next Our opportunity is huge and it’s still early days for Shopify. Every team here now either focuses on building products or directly supports those who do. Our customers are traders, entrepreneurs and small business owners – the bedrock of our economy and precisely those who are usually hit hardest during a recession. Most people already feel it. We again have a clear goal in these difficult macro-economic times and will use everything we have to help them succeed and come out stronger. This is our core mission. The entrepreneurs we serve are remarkable people. They inspire us individually and as a company to be the best versions of ourselves. We’ve adapted many times, in many ways, during Shopify’s journey of intense growth. Most of the adjustments we had to make were growing into something bigger. This time we are evolving into something more focused, more dynamic and more unique in mission. The times demand it from us and we will rise to the occasion once again. – Toby CEO of Shopify