Ebay To Eliminate 1,000 Jobs, or 9% of Full-Time Workforce (cnbc.com) 87
Ebay said Tuesday that it plans to lay off 9% of the company's workforce, equal to about 1,000 full-time jobs, as the tech industry continues to downsize to start 2024. From a report: Jamie Iannone, Ebay's CEO, told employees in a letter published on a corporate blog, that the company will also "scale back the number of contracts we have within our alternate workforce over the coming months." Iannone said the job cuts are necessary because Ebay's "overall headcount and expenses have outpaced the growth of our business. To address this, we're implementing organizational changes that align and consolidate certain teams to improve the end-to-end experience, and better meet the needs of our customers around the world. Shortly, we will begin notifying those employees whose roles have been eliminated and entering into a consultation process in areas where required."
Excellent (Score:1)
That guy who didn't rule the dispute in my favor will also go.
Used to use eBay, but AliExpress beats them now (Score:2)
I used to use eBay constantly, but now I often don't even bother looking at eBay. AliExpress has all the same Chinese stuff eBay had, and more, but somehow AliExpress gets the products to my door weeks faster and their prices are cheaper.
Re: (Score:2)
Taobao is another good one, if one can find a good Taobao agent. I've also never heard anything bad about AliExpress, while I've read lots of horror stories about eBay, especially if one is a seller there.
Now, if I were selling stuff, I'd avoid eBay. I hear so many horror stories of someone selling an iPhone, it gets bought, the buyer allegedly swaps it for a stolen, iCloud locked iPhone, or just swaps the phone for a dud of the same model, then files a fraud complaint. The seller winds up both without t
Re: (Score:2)
"A Chinese website infects my computer when I open it." and other propaganda.
If it can, update your browser.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, they've also been pounding my SSH port with dictionary attacks for the past 20 years, and that did them a lot of good, you know.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Well. I don't know in other countries, but in mine, ebay charges a lot to sellers. Also, thantks to dishonest sellers who used to setup higher shipping costs to avoid fee over article price, now you pay a percentage of your sale including shipping costs (some products worth 5€ may get a shipping cost of 10 euros, you pay 11% of those 15 euros). Besides, there is a forced policy of paypal only payments movement. People has moved to other second hand sites where you are free to sell your article however
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Ali for new stuff, eBay for vintage toys (Score:2)
AliExpress and Temu are good for new-in-box things that don't need to be brand name. I use eBay and Mercari mostly for collecting a toy line that was popular in the late 1980s and mid-2000s. I don't have a Facebook account (I graduated before it existed). What other web-based trading sites are good for buying and selling vintage toys?
AI wrote your termination notice (Score:2)
"To address this, we're implementing organizational changes that align and consolidate certain teams to improve the end-to-end experience, and better meet the needs of our customers around the world. Shortly, we will begin notifying those employees whose roles have been eliminated and entering into a consultation process in areas where required"
I wonder which AI they used to write this "you're fired but maybe we'll ask you to consult for us" notice.
Re: (Score:2)
nah this is probably coming from the consultant hired to explain how AI will benefit (ahem cut jobs) in the future so get ahead of the story.
a drop in a bucket (Score:1, Insightful)
The number of people losing jobs will accelerate now. Then the Fed will drop interest rates again and then will start another round of QE (a euphemism for money printing) to try and prop up the falling stock market prices and possibly there may be even more checks handed out, the way Trump did it during COVID, I wouldn't be surprised. All of this inflation will be reflected in the higher prices, so fewer items purchased will lead to more consolidation of the companies in the market, more firing, will lead
Re: (Score:2)
What's the alternative?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The alternative is to wake up from the dystopian fantasy and look at reality.
Stock markets are at all-time highs. Unemployment is 3.7%, an historic low. Inflation is falling. Productivity is rising. Wages are going up, and going up fastest for people on the bottom rung.
People love to whine and complain that the world is going to hell, but that is not reality.
Re: (Score:2)
Hey, no prompting, please!
Re: (Score:3)
...Wages are going up, and going up fastest for people on the bottom rung.
People keep saying this, and maybe it's true in the bigger metropolitan areas, but out here in bumfuck, flyover, it's absolutely not true at all outside of the fast food places that try to keep pace with national trends. Wages still aren't rising enough to cover inflation, and haven't in nearly forty years. When everything costs 7-15% more year by year, and our annual raises are 3%, it's effectively a pay cut. Every year. And that's pretty standard in our area. "Exceptional" employees may get 4%. OOO! So bi
Re: (Score:2)
Stock markets are at all-time highs.
Trickle down doesn't exist. Fuck your GDP.
Unemployment is 3.7%, an historic low.
An historic lie, and the same lie that's been told for decades. After you've been out of work for six months you no longer show up in the stats, so the worse things get, the bigger the lie gets. That's why the lie is bigger under Biden than it was under Trump, which was bigger than it was under Obama, etc. We know the lie is getting bigger because the number of homeless is increasing at an increasing rate.
Inflation is falling.
False [shrm.org]. The rate of increase is falling, but inflation is sti
speaking of batting (Score:2)
Fuck, I botched a link. Still, that gives me a .500, pretty good for baseball, and infinitely better than SB's BS comment above.
https://www.security.org/resou... [security.org]
Why is it that I can post as fast as I want on mobile but on desktop I have to wait a minute? So dumb.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
The first idea is implemented in my home country (if you don't hold stocks long enough, you pay more income tax for them), the effect is negligible.
The second would mean that a lot of people suddenly start to own homes... on paper. They'd get money to "own" homes they then "rent" to the actual owner (for a nominal fee, usually whatever property tax is to be paid on the property) and that real owner also has a signed and undated sales contract stored. Sorry, that has been tried before, too.
Re: (Score:3)
No. That is market distortion (on top of what we already have). If someone buys stock and sometime during that year the stock starts plummeting because of something bad happening (financial shenanigans, work disruption, etc), you're now stuck for however many months you have left on that year until you can get out. If the company goes out of business you just lost all your money because you couldn't sell while others coul
Re: (Score:2)
The rate should be raised more. But also, HFT should not exist.
Re: (Score:2)
I doubt the Fed is dropping interest rates anytime soon. The tiff in the Red Sea is already causing shipping issues... which means inflation, which means the Fed hiking interest rates. Inflation isn't coming from the dollar and QE, but from basic supply and demand, and the fact that shipping traffic has never been in this much danger since World War II.
In any case, regardless of interest rates going up or down, companies don't realize that every worker they boot is one less buying their stuff, so we likel
Re:a drop in a bucket (Score:5, Informative)
Shipping in the red sea should have minimal impact on the USA. Goods from Korea/China come via the Pacific instead, We get most of our oil from Canada, not the middle east. Goods from Europe coming here don't have to go through there either. Even stuff from Africa probably isn't going to go through it.
It's more likely to screw Europe. Heck, that's mentioned in articles about it, Europe is bearing the brunt.
Though with the US being basically the only remaining major naval power, and the global economy and everything, it's probably for the best if we settle things down.
Probably in the usual "proportionate" US fashion.
(which bears very little in the way of proportionality)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
China is fast becoming a major Naval power and they have no problems siphoning money from their economy to fund more ships. Without ships, Taiwan is inaccessible due to the current American navy. Every year that Taiwan is inaccessible, Xi Jinping's dick shrinks an inch. So he'll have to move soon or we will all know him as Dickless.
Re: (Score:2)
They're building up, but I wouldn't rate them as being there yet. They also lack the ability to project power to the red sea in massive amounts, currently. Maybe I'll change my mind in around 5 years.
Don't forget the recent "missiles filled with water" scandals.
Re:a drop in a bucket (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow :) an actual pro terrorist here on /. I guess with everything else I shouldn't be surprised.
Israel should eliminate every threat in Gaza, kill or capture every Hamas operative, take down all of the tunnels that were built with the money given to Hamas by Iran, the UN, Red Cross, EU, US, China, etc., eliminate Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Drug addicts, terrorist populating Yemen known as the Houthis are pirates and should be dealt with accordingly and this is not just a problem for Israel, it's actually a world wide problem for shipping, so it's going to be up to a coalition that needs that shipping route to get rid of them.
AFAIC the 2 billion Islamists surrounding Israel are the threat to the global peace and security, not much can be done about it unfortunately without actually taking down the governments of multiple countries, all of it is centered around Iran. Allowing Islamists to freely enter Western societies was and is a gigantic misstep, which resulted in what we are observing right now - proliferation of the pro terrorist, pro Islamist ideology. Their ideology is caliphate, establishing a global Islamist state and eliminating everything that's not Muslim in nature. This mega war is still coming. Israel is one single country in the Middle East that actually is built on democratic principles, it is populated with Jews and Muslims, over 2 million arabs to be precise, over 21% of Israel's population, all of them are full citizens of Israel, allowed to vote of-course.
Israel is the only country in that region that actually propagates research, science, technology, one country that actually spends its resources to improve lives of its citizens. The same cannot be said of almost any other nation there (maybe UAE is doing something similar with its record oil profits).
To say that Israel is involved in 'genocide' is to spread insanity, fakeness, anti democratic ideology, ideology of terrorism. Par for the course for you obviously. Genocide is the policy of the Islamist states around Israel, especially the policy of Iran and Syria, who push this agenda all over the Middle East. It is interesting to observe Erdogan in Turkey with his agenda, but he is just a weather wane, turning whichever way the wind blows.
7th of October, 2023 has shown the world what should be expected from Hamas with its Islam and its cohorts. Again, par for the course to accuse Israel rightfully protecting its people from murder of 'genocide', when no other arab state would accept the refugees from Gaza, they know that there is nothing good or useful that can be expected from them, there is nothing to gain and everything to lose. Ruzzia, Iran, Syria, North Korea, China, Venezuela - those are probably your favorites on this planet. The pro death league. I am on the other side of *that*.
Re: (Score:1)
It's not a black and white situation. Yes Hamas is a terrorist organization and something needs to be done about them, but also thousands of innocent civilians have been killed in Gaza by Israel. Israel is basically trying to wipe out Gaza entirely which is almost as bad as the surrounding Islamist countries that want to wipe out Israel.
The answer to all this isn't "Israel should cease to exist" or "Israel should eliminate all the Muslim threats", it's to find a peaceful solution that provides justice for
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
There are no innocent civilians in Gaza, it is a place filled with people who put Hamas into their government and their official position is destruction of Israel. On the 7th of October Hamas pointed out that many of the murders of Jews in Israel were done by 'innocent Gaza civilians'. Israel needs to clean up the place, given the fact that Hamas terrorists are indistinguishable from general population (done on purpose) there is no way to avoid all sort of casualties. Of-course in place of Israel I would
Re: (Score:1)
Really? So the kids that make up half the population and were born after Hamas took power deserved to be killed?
Are you sure you're not the terrorist here?
What makes us better than the terrorists is that we DON'T kill innocents and violently retaliate. Campaigns like this just bring us down to their level
Re: (Score:2)
Really. The kids that make up half of the population in Gaza are trained by Hamas to put on bomb suicide vests and go murder Jews in Israel, this is what their training is from age as young as 4 or 5. The ideology of Gaza residents is to attack and murder Israelis, that is exactly what they did on the 7th of October. I know what side I am on, the side of protecting my people from those who attack and murder them and to me the age doesn't matter at all. What does it matter how old the person sent to kill
Re: (Score:1)
Killing innocents civilians just converts more people to the cause. You can pretend that the 5 year old toddler has been "trained by Hamas", but that's just a weak attempt at dehumanizing them.
It's pretty clear that Israel's policies in Gaza have been an abject failure both in the past decades and in the current war. Hopefully the people realize and elect better leadership so they don't get stuck in an endless cycle of violence.
Re: (Score:1)
I don't need to pretend anything, there are thousands of pieces of evidence, training videos There are something like 36 'hospitals' in Gaza, Israel doesn't have half as many with near 5 times the population. Just like their 'schools', those are not hospitals but Hamas warehouses for weapons.
I am for *survival* and to me the side that actually matters is the side of civilization, not the side of terrorists, aiming to murder civilization. I hope Israel keeps going at it until all Hamas operatives are dead
Re: (Score:2)
Well even if you believe it's justified, you can't argue with people saying you're calling for genocide if you're saying that everyone in Gaza is guilty and should be murdered. Obviously a lot of people are anti-genocide so don't be surprised when there's pushback
Re: (Score:1)
There is no genocide, there is a clean up operation that should disable Hamas and later Hezbollah. Again, Israel needs to continue regardless of any of these misplaced calls for it to stop. Israel must protect its people, not satisfy the weakminded idiots who want the terrorists to survive.
Re: (Score:2)
No, letting the terrorists continue to be in control and proselytize the people there "just converts more people to the cause".
The toddler, sadly, is collateral damage.
And you want to be careful about the "just convert" problem - because there's an obvious, if ugly solution to that: salted earth. If you follow the evil overlord list and just kill all of them, then they can't become opponents.
I want to point out that Israel's policies over the last decades has been more "we'll give you anything you want ex
Re: (Score:2)
So maybe the US solution will work better - where we invaded two countries in response to two towers being destroyed.
That's another failure which we should be learning from rather than trying to replicate.
Re: (Score:2)
I imagine it'll go just as well as the US operation to "clean up" the Taliban. If Israel was interested in protecting its people they'd be working to gain public trust from people in Gaza and convince them to stop supporting Hamas, but of course that takes lots of work and is complicated, much easer just to bomb them every few years instead when you're up for reelection.
Re: (Score:1)
Trust from people in Gaza? Seriously, gaining trust from people in Gaza, the people who are trained to murder Israelis from early childhood? OK. The people who built over thousand kilometers of war tunnels underneath their sector in order to sneak in and out near and beyond the borders of Israel, to move weapons, cars and soldiers. Whose *entire* GDP is based on building missiles and tunnels while being funded by the EU, USA, Iran, UN, Red Cross and similar, using all of that money to build weapons and tu
Re: (Score:2)
Like I said, it's not as easy and it takes time. Around me, we don't have a lot of gangs and car hijackers. Good way to help them would be more aid for education and educational supplies. People don't just become terrorists when they're educated and have comfortable lives.
People have been killing each other in the middle east over religious wars for millennium. Clearly it doesn't work
Re: (Score:1)
Right, "it takes time and it's not easy", thank you for that amazing analysis. How about this: nothing can be done when there is a particular country with more resources than most (Iran and Ruzzia), whose political ideology is destruction of a tiny place, like Israel. Nothing can be done at all. For whatever reason many in the West see Israel as some sort of an 'imperial arm' of the USA in the Middle East. The reality is that even the idea of 'Palestine' was invented in the Politburo in USSR in the late
Re: (Score:2)
Absolutely there should be better monitoring of where resources are going. If the aid isn't going to help the people that need it then it's not doing its job.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:a drop in a bucket (Score:5, Informative)
All of this inflation will be reflected in the higher prices
You do realize the inflation we're seeing is the result of companies raising prices [theguardian.com] because they can, right? This has little to nothing to do with the miniscule increase in salaries [marketwatch.com] or supposed supply chain issues [marketwatch.com] or anything else. It's been documented this is nothing more than greedflation [marketwatch.com] which raising interest rates won't bring down. To bring down prices people need to stop buying things [marketwatch.com]. Let the food sit on the shelves, don't buy the latest piece of crap from Shein or H&M, get rid of streaming services. Forcing companies to lower prices to get inventory moving is the only way to bring down prices.
But, like not buying from Amazon, it's too difficult a task so it can't be done. Lazy Americans would rather whine and bitch than do something.
Re: (Score:3)
I guess maybe you didn't actually take economics in school? Inflation caused by supply constraints or labor costs are no more authentic than inflation caused by profit taking. The result on the value of your dollar is the same. The only real difference is that competition can drive down profit margins, eventually.
Re: (Score:3)
Inflation caused by supply constraints or labor costs are no more authentic than inflation caused by profit taking. The result on the value of your dollar is the same. The only real difference is that competition can drive down profit margins, eventually.
If the inflation is caused by labor costs that implies that laborers, who are also consumers, are getting paid and can therefore afford to buy stuff. But for some reason you chose to conflate that with supply constraints, even though they are dramatically and obviously different. Why?
Re: (Score:3)
because unless you are on the very bottom rung its not actually different. if retail/hospitality/service work see wage growth but wages stay flat elsewhere, that continues to hollow out the middle class every-bit as much as more money going to the 1%ers; maybe faster.
Re: (Score:2)
So you are going to sit here and quote Jerome Powell, who is blaming inflation on corporation, right? OK, you do that. Jerome Powell, the current chair of the Fed. The same Fed that held interest rates down to 1% in the early 2000s, near 0 between 2008 and 2017, between 1 and 2 from 2017 to 2019 and then flat 0 from 2020 to 2022. Of-course now the interest rate is around 5%, but that's quite a bit too late, isn't it? The inflation that was accumulating over all of those years of QE, handouts, bailouts,
Re: (Score:2)
What's out of the ordinary in this move? Extrapolating from ONE point at eBay to the wider economy is kind of silly.
https://stockanalysis.com/stoc... [stockanalysis.com]
Re: (Score:1)
Really, one point of data at eBay?
Discord laying off https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org] Xerox cutting https://slashdot.org/story/24/... [slashdot.org] Twitch laying off https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org] Intel reducing staff https://slashdot.org/story/23/... [slashdot.org]
Github laying off https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
https://linux.slashdot.org/sto... [slashdot.org]
Google https://news.knowledia.com/US/... [knowledia.com]
Yahoo https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
Paypal https://slashdot.org/story/23/... [slashdot.org]
Spotify trimming workforce https://tech.slashdot.org/stor.. [slashdot.org]
Ebay's growth has been cooling for a while (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean seriously, the site design is nearly unchanged in 20 years. There has been little effort in reaching out to new customers, in offering market research metrics, or in diversifying their business in any way. It's a pretty good site for auctions, but that's all it is and apparently that's all Jamie wants it to be.
Re:Ebay's growth has been cooling for a while (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is fine! Other than keeping up on security updates and changes required by any legislation... if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
No company can have eternal growth, so if you reach a good point and just try to hold the line, that's fine.
Personally, I stopped using eBay a long time ago but at least to me it's still synonymous with 'online auction' and that ain't bad branding.
Re: (Score:2)
A tech company with a P/E of 12 but isn't actively trying to expand and is doing layoffs outside of a recession (we're not quite in a recession yet). Big red flag for investors.
I'm not asking for the impossible, Ebay is certainly free to run their company as they see fit. Although investor have purchased shares in the past thinking they would go further than this, about 12 times further than this. So I think it is problematic to hold onto stocks for such a company.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
we're not quite in a recession yet
Wish all you want, it's not going to happen.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, a P/E of 12 doesn't mean investors are thinking the share price will go "12 times further than this", whatever that statement means. It's just the ratio of share price vs. earnings, it doesn't really tell you expectations on future share prices or company earnings. If you could buy the entirety of a local business for $120K, that each year makes you (the owner) $10K in earnings
Re: (Score:3)
eBay has come to replace Amazon for me since Amazon has basically been sliding toward becoming an eBay anyway. May as well go with the original. Plus, I like that I can use PayPal with eBay, but I cannot with Amazon. I would rather only one, well protected entity have direct access to my credit card information.
Re: (Score:3)
While eBay has seen a lot of erosion from Chinese junk merchants like AliExpress and Temu, when you want to buy something from real people it's nice to use eBay. I frequently buy used books through eBay from a thrift store in a nearby city. Both their app and web site are rock-solid, and I have seen very conservative improvements to the UI over the last couple years. I'm actually glad they haven't overreacted to the threat of Chinese dropshippers because they could easily have destroyed everything they've b
Ebay's problem is stuff like Reverb (Score:2)
I suspect if I dug into it I'd find other specialized sites for ebay. I know there are ones for game collecting and action figures. Those are going to chip away at their dominance.
Re: (Score:2)
eBay doesn't need a site redesign. It works, don't screw with it.
If they need to do anything big it is (and I can't believe I'm saying this) on the marketing side.
There are certainly some small improvements which could be made, though, notably in the area of improving search. It's getting harder to find the specific things I want, instead of some variety I get a wave of crap I'm not looking for. I wind up having to do a bunch of search term engineering.
Hostile to sellers (Score:2)
Ebay is overly hostile to sellers.
It ceased being a site that the casual person could use to sell their household items a long time ago. It is now way easier, cheaper, and less risky to use sites like Poshmark or Etsy for that purpose.
Ebay's great F Up is they tried to become another Amazon by attracting all these giant commercial retailers to set up store fronts - and in that process they screwed up their core value prop, which was peer-to-peer sales.
Re: (Score:1)
> ..hostile to sellers
I think it depends on the seller's approach (to some extent). Its rather 'friendly' to serious seller IMHO.
The obscuring of bider's IDs benefits sellers, as it allows them to place phantom bids to artificially ... but given the number of times one looses by 1$ or 1£ ... ...
raise the bid prices. Because the IDs are hidden and 'unique' to each item, one can never 'prove'
that the bids are artificially inflated
well
Then there is the prevalence of 'private' sellers listing scores
Re: (Score:2)
You're illustrating my point.
eBay started as a P2P selling site. It was not for "serious sellers", it was to sell one-off things.
Catering to "serious sellers" and all their affiliated baggage and issues - and having too easy of a dispute process - is what ruined the entire platform.
Re: (Score:2)
[ebay is] a pretty good site for auctions, but that's all it is and apparently that's all Jamie wants it to be.
i used to shop/transact there fairly often, but they have a large counterfeit item problem.
if you report the fraud, you'll get your money back, but the seller often gets to continue per usual.
decided it's not worth my time.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, eBay at this point is large enough to matter. There is no need to advertise - if you want to find something or sell something, chances are you will go onto eBay. It's the network effect a
and nothing of value was lost (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There's a lot of that, sure, but if you're willing to put in a little effort, you can still score the same deals that drove users to the site 20+ years ago.
Re: (Score:2)
hired during covid and then (Score:2)
i wonder how many of these people were snapped up during during covid hiring spree. now that spending has apparently cooled, they are expendable. hmmm. prob. not a good company to work for. like, ever.
And while we're counting heads to be severed... (Score:3)
Perhaps it's time to take a hard look at the employment future of a certain CEO who palpably failed to insure that growth outpaced "overall headcount and expenses". That's kinda his job, isn't it?
Re: (Score:2)
I think we can probably replace the CEO with a ChatGPT bot. Bots like that are easy to train given the plethora of CEO ad-copy masquerading as company statements. And it won't get tired of answering subordinates questions, even be up on the weekends, ready, willing, and able.
Ebay vs AliExpress (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
AliExpress works reasonably well independent of the country.
AliExpress has one truly major, epic fail: Searches with more than two terms do not work at all, I get zero results with them. If I want to search for stuff on their site, you have to use an external search engine. I thought it might be some pecularity of my ad blocking but no, I was talking to a coworker about this and he has the same problem. As a result I have resorted to buying some items on amazon or ebay simply because I could find them there, and couldn't find them on aliexpress. When I bought a Andr
Working remotely or in office, does it matter? (Score:2)
Does anyone think Ebay would care if those 1000 people has been working remotely or has been coming to office?
Anyone still thinks that working in the office would make it harder for you to be laid off?
Re: (Score:2)
A year and a half ago the question was raised if workers who work remotely or at home [latimes.com] would would be the first to go during firings.
The answer appears to be yes [businessinsider.com]. Bosses who were surveyed admitted as much [fortune.com]. Remote workers are also overlooked for promotions [forbes.com].
10,000+ employees? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Same reason Twitter "needed" 8000.
Unchecked growth resulting in massive bloat.
Tech all around is bloated. Pretty much every big tech firm at this point has at least 20% staff that is just unneeded. There was this misconception that we had shortages, when more than likely, it's just poor management of existing resources and effort duplication, or downright "Adult day care" type positions.
The usual questions (Score:2)
Why did eBay even have a thousand employees to lose? What could these people have been working on?
Don't care (Score:1)