A Top eBay Exec Departs as Company Reorganizes

by: iheartjacksparrow

"eBay is laying off ,,, several software engineers, architects, data scientists and legal counsels, according to the publication."

That doesn't sound like things will be working better anytime soon. Except for maybe less legal counsels.

by: pace306

3 cheers for Mr Sparrow :) Never have truer words been spoken!

"eBay is laying off 15 director-level employees, more than 40 managers, and several software engineers, architects, data scientists and legal counsels"

15 director level employees = former friends with cushy do nothing jobs that had to go

40 managers = son in laws, daughter in laws, cousins, distant relatives for some former eastern EU country who you backpacked through Europe with ... good riddance

several software engineers = much to damn expensive American based engineers - cheaper to get them by the dozen over in India.

architects = eBay was building houses? should have been building jail cells for eBay top brass who insider trade

data scientists = is that like a sandwich scientist or a theme park ride scientist? "It would be abit surprising if Devin Wenig blinded ME with science!"

legal counsels = great - good job - all the legal dregs of society at this company need to go - couldnt come sooner.

by: CanBrit

It's already hitting the layoffs.com site

https://www.thelayoff.com/ebay

by: CanBrit

It looks like many more employees are starting to spill the beans. Here is one rather upset employee's comments.

"ts happening today.
Mostly Managers and many ICs are let go today in another round of layoff. Second in 6 months, today's layoff impacted many Staff level engineers and mid-tier management. Ebay continues to fall under internal politics and crumbling under devious and vengeful management who works like a dictator and pushes good, long-tenured, hard-working people out coz people resisted the push from management about unreasonable and frankly stupid asks, serving only the management personal interest."

by: CanBrit

Wow.....a tech threatened to leave some special lines of code behind if they pink slip him.

Pretty good indication of where all the strange bugs were coming from after the layoffs last year. This past week I've run into strange error pop ups for no reason. I think we can expect quite a bit more instability to come.

by: Scotty

Day 5....no sales....

by: RKTOYS

Architects is probably being used in a software context.  While architects sometimes have a greater understanding of system architecture, they are often do-nothings writing memos about the cloud, or AI, or XML, or whatever buzzword salad is in vogue these days.  "Data scientist" is supposed to be somebody that can analyze data but in practice means they can read a dashboard.  A green light is good, so is a yellow one, but red means they need to write more memos about rightsizing collaborative processes vis-a-vis paradigm shifts.

by: FidoMaster

My understanding is that John LIn, CEO of eBay Greater China did, and will continue to report into Jay Lee.

John Lin's focus has been ''to lead eBay's Greater China cross-border selling business, tasked with better enabling Chinese-based merchants to sell products globally on eBay's platform.''

John is the person behind last year's eBay's ''China Retail Revival on steroids'' AKA ''The Thousand Sails Plan''.

With the ''Thousand Sails Plan eBay aims to help a thousand Chinese brands to enter overseas markets through its e-commerce platform. The company will offer support with its experience in big data, market analysis and marketing resources.''

The eBay Fujian company is eBay's first cooperation platform with the Chinese government and is eBay's second branch company in China following Shanghai.''

The planning area of the first stage of the park is about 30,000 square meters, comprising a logistics center, maker incubators, a talent training center as well as a payment service support center, among other services.'' (keep in mind this is eBay-funded)

An eBay cross-border e-commerce institute was also established ...Jointly organized by the Fujian Pilot Free Trade Zone, eBay and Fujian Business University, the university features two majors - e-commerce and international trade, along with other optional courses. Qualified graduates will be granted a certificate from eBay and offered career opportunities to work at excellent e-commerce companies in Fujian. The institute is estimated to educate 2,000 to 3,000 e-commerce professionals for Fujian every year.'' (eBay training China merchants to compete with US sellers).

by: FidoMaster

CanBrit (and anyone interested) also check out comments at teamblind.com.

In crazy ironic timing before the layoffs, IEEE Spectrum posted an artile about Blind's survey gauging tech co's layoff fears - eBay respondents ranked 2nd only to Tesla. I don't think many folks questioned *if* eBay would have more layoffs, but the timing was eerie indeed.

http://bit.ly/2Idg94B

by: CanBrit

@Fidomaster
Thank you for the link.
One comment hits the mark with their inability to hire competent staff.

"EBay has the best shot at competing against Amazon. But if they choose to hire for cheap then they would go nowhere. The profiles of some of the new hire directors tasked with revamping the site has really sad profiles. I spoke with one and was amused how did that person even make it there."

by: smallstuff

I never cease to be amazed at the ability of large companies (and small ones also) to generate corporate doublespeak that makes absolutely no sense.  Gone are the days when companies set clear goals and rewarded their employees for meeting the goals.  

by: Silver Ice King

So Wenig is now making his move to make China Ebays future with these moves as    Jay Lee comes from Singapore to San jose and he has a very close relationship with John Lin from Ebay China.  Wenig has always said that China was Ebays future and now that Elliott is pushing hard on Ebay to perform and Wenig realizes his days are probably extremely numbered he has everything set up to let the Chinese completely dominate Ebay.  He had to get rid of Cutler to do it as Cutler had the SEC connections from his NYSE days and i am sure that most of what Wenig has planned will be totally against the best interest of Ebays shareholders, but I am betting that since all of Chinas businesses are truly State owned that Wenig will get a great Golden Parachute from the Chinese Government.  

China was losing their grip on the US marketplace with the changes in the shipping prices that are about to start being implemented and now with these changes Ebays management is set up as firmly as they can be to completely take care of the Chinese businesses at the cost of Ebays other Sellers.  Be ready for some major changes to be coming out in the next couple of Sellers Updates that are going to once again hurt US sellers but since the Chinese Sellers are not under our rules they will once again come out smelling like a rose along with the Chinese government.  

Now that Ebay has gotten rid of another 400 employees many of whom were top level management who I am sure helped Wenig cook the books as well as come up with so many of these crooked schemes to dig deeper into the Sellers pockets with all the glitches that seemed to always benefit Ebay, lets see how many took home enough information to cook Wenigs goose while covering their own rear ends as you know they had to know this would happen eventually.   I also wonder if this is what is behind the sudden announcement about Turbo Lister being shut down in the UK and basically putting US Sellers on notice that they are next to lose what many still use for their listings.  But now that Wenig has to make cuts what better way to blame it on the Sellers or Elliott when they don't keep their promise of having Seller Hub having the ability to do the equivalent of what T/L does.  But as usual he will have ignored that Elliott wanted him to have management focussed on the marketplace, the core business, which I feel is once again going to take another hit when all is said and done.

I loved the one threat on The layoffs from a programmer who talks about leaving a line of code in their program when he is let go to really cause them issues.  We already know that Ebay has not had the necessary talent remaining to catch any errors or corruption of the H1B visa workers or their friends and counterparts back home who are also doing Ebays programming as they had no way of fixing all the glitches that Wenig was so upset about at Ebay Open.  I am surprised that Steve Fisher has not realized that he is going to be the next scapegoat for all the issues with the Technology which is why he was put back in charge of it a couple of months ago.  Wenig has no intentions of being the person that gets the blame for all of Ebays problems, but he also fails to realize that he is the top executive and the buck stops with him eventually and he is going to see his entire career be completely destroyed while all those people who he put out on the street with his antics will finally get the last laugh.  He better realize that the odds are this is the last job of any importance that he will ever hold unless China gives him a position in their government, but I doubt they are that stupid after having dealt with him all these years.  The man missed his calling, should have been either and actor or a Con man, oh wait, he already is living up to his Con Man reputation every time he speaks to the shareholders, Wall Street or any time he is up in front of Ebay related people spewing out his Buzzwords and promises for what they are going to accomplish if they all stick together..

Hopefully his contract with Ebay has some type of clause they can invoke repayment of all monies that he profits from the sale of company stock if any type of wrongdoing or manipulation of the the numbers while he was in charge comes to light anytime in the next 15 years or whatever the statute of limitations is!!!

by: SANT1N1

Wow, they're laying off software engineers? Maybe now they can #learntocode

by: notfunanymore

Thank God I got out in May 18. I’d had enough of everything this company deals out. You don’t have your own business when you sell on the “venue” they absolutely control EVERY ASPECT OF WHAT YOU DO. And for that, you get to pay higher fees, you assume ALL and I mean A-L-L liability. Look at your fees, do you pay more in “fees” than you generate monthly in NET revenue? In other words Are you making more  after expenses than your fees??  Of course not. So you work for eBay. Wake up!  

by: CanBrit

@Silver Ice King
Very well said. Kudo's

@SANT1N1
Thanks for the morning giggle...lol.

by: RKTOYS

Hiring tech talent is hard when you only look at Indians and exclude everybody else.

by: Silver Ice King

@CanBrit

Sorry it was so long but it had been awhile since I have felt up to posting so i went a little on the long side rather than condensing it like I should have.  But thank you for the compliment, glad you enjoyed the read.

by: Frank Abagnale

@Silver Ice King

"Sorry it was so long..."

Are you kidding me?? It was so good that I read it multiple times!!! Thank you!  

by: Grady

As this is not the first round of layoffs, but a regular timed occurrence,the dynamics will have a much more complex and harmful effect on the company. The people still working there will consist of roughly a small (very small) group of terrified top tier talent. They will work alongside a growing group of incompetent H1B's who are taking over and ordering them to do things that don't work. Another group, are fresh out of college and just "wanted a job quickly", others who work for cheap and make lots of mistakes. All of these people consider themselves temporary, especially those who know what they are doing and have been with the company a while. Most are too stressed out and scared to do good work, many are looking for jobs, and a few are very resentful of being told what do do by people who have no idea what they are doing and were hired within the last 18 months. Some are very disgruntled, even toxic. These people can be unpredictable, with the possible exception that you may expect them NOT to always do things that will benefit the company or the command staff. This is a really effective way to ruin one's company in a hurry and drive off customers and shareholders. This type of strategy compounds their corporate failure in a geometrically accelerating pace. There will be more layoffs in early summer, all of the employees world wide already know this, so how do you expect good work from them in such an environment? I would point out that those being laid off are often NOT the slugs. They are simply a number, someone they no longer want to pay a professional salary. They have decided they can be replaced with an H1B or a college kid and they can overlook mistakes, absenteeism, or anything else because it looks like Napoleon's sweep across Europe on paper.

My heart truly goes out to those who worked hard and did nothing to get a pink slip. Also to the customers, shareholders, and those employees still trying to do their jobs in such a toxic environment. The world can be a hostile place these days.

by: pace306

I think ALL of us appreciate the post by Silver.

The post may have been longer then the normal post, but it was smart, spot on, cogent and a breathe of fresh air - as apposed to the "hit n run" posts by some here - who's only contribution is "what you are describing isn't happening to me, I'm making lots of sales, therefore it doesnt exist and you are all cry babys".

If one thinks about how eBay runs and what results you get - they dovetail exactly into what Silver mentions.

Sellers on eBay (in cases of returns, various kinds of thefts, missing moneys, missing listings etc) HAVE to loose each and every time. eBay is the "house" and in most gambling places - the house wins %85-90 of the time (Vegas and AC differ from each other (aka come places are "looser" then others)(but the theory is the same).

Like the Maze post, sellers are given just enough cheese to convince themselves that what they are doing is a GOOD/SMART thing. And, like alot of gamblers - they go home pockets empty, stomachs full from the free buffet, and vow to come back again ASAP.

Now alot of us do come back - despite knowing all this - simply because as bad as eBay is - its still #2 in the game, AND alot of items sold on eBay cant be sold on Amazon for various reasons. IE, eBay knows all this and gives sellers just enough cheese to make them think its worth it.

Getting back to sellers loosing - its because eBay needs their money. eBay will not invest their own money into anything - that money is set aside for BOD perks, AND for the Chinese.

eBay - as an example - is roundly criticized for its crappy negotiating visa via Postal Rates. The cheerleaders will tell you how hard eBay fought for you, how they spent 2 days locked in meetings TRYING to get you the best rates.

Well ..... 1) its an oxymoron for eBay to get you "the best rates" since they make money of shipping in FVF calculations aka they are shooting themselves in the foot by getting lower rates since then THEIR take (and they shouldnt be able to make a dime off shipping) will be lower.

2) their rates (if you look when you ship) are inconsistent. You dont always get %XX off rates - it swings wildly, yet if you ask the PO (as I did) (district field manager) - the percentages ARE consistent %5, %10 and %15 off retail rates - so why is eBay lieing about it?

3) eBay is paying the same rates (as told to me by the same person) as the shipping aggregators do aka Smartpost pricing, yet that pricing is NOT extended to sellers ... makes you say HMMMMMMMMM

DW said many yrs ago that China was eBays future, since US small sellers are "unreliable sources of income" ..... and hes sorta right. How many old radios or stamps does one person have?? BUT, how many cheap non licensed iPhone Lightening cables does China have? BILLIONS.

What happens when the item you sell "magically breaks" when it gets to the buyer? some, lots - to be sure.

You and I - complain - the item was fine - and it was. But WE call CS and complain. We demand justice. WE demand fairness and parity - the Chinese sellers just ship another $2 cable and its over. IE the returns rules were written with THEM in mind, not the US based seller selling $400 handbags.

EVERYTHING on eBay is a scam - promoted listings being one of the biggest! You pay 3x as much to have your listing shown - the way it should have done in the first place! Ive seen items where a guy had 1 regular listing and 2 sponsored listings - one on top of the other - ie 3 in a row. I called eBay and they said "its all legit!" SO SORRY. "If YOU would pay for those ads - then YOUR item would be shown! (like that)".

Wrapping up - SIlvers post was/is much appreciated - it clearly outlined some of eBays flaws and how they effect everyday sellers.

Sales on eBay ATM are non existent or abysmal - lets see how they cook Q1's books!