This last week was one of the crazier weeks in my life. On May 4th 2023 Shopify laid off 20% of its work force. My organization Infrastructure Engineering saw a 38% layoff. I feel like I used up one of my nine lives surviving the layoff as a lot of high quality people were let go.

In July 2022 Shopfiy did layoffs but engineering was not very affected in my department of ~50 people only one individual was laid off. This time however it was pretty crazy. I was very worried for the last week that layoffs were coming. In fact I thought they might land the Friday before, however Shopify did not initiate them until the morning of our earnings call when we announced the layoffs and the sale of Shopfiy Logistics to Flexport. The week leading up to this was one of the more stressful in my life. My work productivity was poor and I didn’t sleep well. By the time the layoffs happened I was basically burned out from worrying so much in the week leading up to it.

It was a really sad day as one of my best friends at work was laid off. With a 20% layoff clearly some people who are good workers get dropped and Shopify executed the layoff from the top with almost no input from front line managers. So I feel like this layoff was more like a tornado or natural disaster where your survival was as much based on luck as skill.

Seeing mass layoffs at a 100% remote company is a really weird experience. In the office you can just walk around and see who is gone. In a remote company you are pinging each other in Slack and trying to see whose account has been deactivated. Its total chaos and a very surreal experience.

Ironically, as a business decision this is actually one of the decisions that my CEO has made that I agree with. Shopify Logistics was floundering and costing the company massive amounts of cash. The only sad part of story is that Tobi didn’t sell it sooner before wasting billions on Deliverr. The layoffs cut deep but make sense. Shopify is losing nearly $200 million a quarter. Some of this was the logistics boat anchor but a good deal was carrying more employee’s then could be justified by our revenue. Sadly, some of us had to be let go. Frankly I’m just lucky I got to stay. This does shake one’s confidence in leadership. Hopefully they treat this with humility and learn from it.

Personally the day of the layoff I felt very upset. I was trying to figure out why some people got to stay while my friend was let go. I felt bad for everyone laid off and I was pretty angry at the company leadership for putting us in this position. Later after work I met a friend for drinks and discussed the layoff with him. After ruminating on it a bit I actually think the layoff wasn’t something to be upset about. It was done. I hadn’t done it nor lead the company to the position it was in where it needed done. This helped me rationalize things and I was pretty much ready to return to work the next day not feeling upset but rather wanting to move forward.

So, now its back to work. I’m not sure I’ll feel comfortable at Shopify for a while after this, and if the company’s balance sheet doesn’t look like roses by the end of the year I’m going to be seriously concerned about another layoff. But I’ll worry about that when the time comes.