eBay Lays Off ~1000 Employees, CEO Blames Macroeconomic Headwinds, Expenses Outpace Growth

[valueaddedresource]

Breaking news: eBay is laying off 1,000 employees, about 9% of workforce. CEO Jamie Iannone says headcount and expenses are outpacing growth.

Exact details about specific areas affected have not been disclosed, so not sure what the impact on sellers will be yet but...this does not bode well for the Q4 report in my opinion. 👀

https://www.ebayinc.com/stories/news/ensuring-ebays-long-term-success/

We are on a path to building a stronger eBay for the future — one that is growing, and resilient in the face of any challenge. Over the past three years, we made fundamental changes in our experiences across categories and accelerated the pace of innovation at eBay. In areas where we’re investing, we are seeing consistent increases in customer satisfaction and a meaningful improvement in our growth relative to the market.

Our strategy is the right one, but there is more we can do to ensure our success. We need to better organize our teams for speed — allowing us to be more nimble, bring like-work together, and help us make decisions more quickly. Today, I am sharing news about changes we are implementing to better position eBay for long-term, sustainable growth.

The most significant and toughest of these decisions is to reduce our current workforce by approximately 1,000 roles or an estimated 9% of full-time employees. Additionally, we plan to scale back the number of contracts we have within our alternate workforce over the coming months. These are not actions we take lightly — and we recognize the impact they will have on all eBayers. We have to say goodbye to people who have made so many important contributions to the eBay community and culture, and this isn’t easy.

The Need for Change

Despite facing external pressures, like the challenging macroeconomic environment, we know we can be better with the factors we control. While we are making progress against our strategy, our 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.

[vintagecraze50]

I just heard it on the news. Also 3 million on criminal charges for the Steiner episode, ands we wonder why people are getting laid off. What a bleeping mess that is.

[vintagecraze50]

Funny. Is there an evacuation order yet? 

[valueaddedresource]

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@vintagecraze50 wrote:

I just heard it on the news. Also 3 million on criminal charges for the Steiner episode, ands we wonder why people are getting laid off. What a bleeping mess that is.

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And don't forget there's still the EPA lawsuit hanging over their heads too. So far they are fighting it....using some very expensive outside council from the same firm that defended Volkswagen and Chrysler during their emissions scandals and also BP in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. 

[cool.jewels.by.jeff]

I blame the CEO and the failed business model they continue to push

[vintagecraze50]

I was always concerned they would fail some items as well and then put the buyers off. Something I do not need in my business with it. I also do like to get items to customers fast. We have some great repeat customers though that know we treat them well so we just give them better prices rather than raise prices through the roof for extra profit. 

[retro_entertainment_collectibles]

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@valueaddedresource wrote:

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@vintagecraze50 wrote:

I just heard it on the news. Also 3 million on criminal charges for the Steiner episode, ands we wonder why people are getting laid off. What a bleeping mess that is.

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And don't forget there's still the EPA lawsuit hanging over their heads too. So far they are fighting it....using some very expensive outside council from the same firm that defended Volkswagen and Chrysler during their emissions scandals and also BP in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. 

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Know why Deepwater happened?  Movie is complete farce. 

Short of it:

Gulf has high pressure rivers of oil connecting lakes of oil (basically).  One was located and Russia sent drilling equipment to Cuba and they began drilling.  Well that river run between oil owned by Gulf Corp. and Shell Corp. respective.  Rather than have Cuba have wealth BP/Halibutt (LOL! Oh you know who!) start drillin' upstream.  Gulf/Shell filed international courts stop it.  When it was saw via Satt's that BP was laying down the concrete and well heads pressure ramped up in speeding the proceedings.  Now that concrete takes months to fully setup and when the dates moved up they decided punch through having not done some critical testing.  K-wrap loads of methane hydrates released and the concrete had not fully cured.  The entire rig was lifted two feet into the air on what amounts to pipe about the size of sewer pipe what run through you're streets.  Was the explosion,  piping buckled, well head foundation broke and bammo.

Now they also to speed drilling drilled into a salt dome, area where geographic plating meet hence the salt collection. Salts very stable except when smashed.  Well the pipes twisting and arching under the weight of the rig fractured the salt dome and hydrates started bubbling up all over the place.  That's the "Cave" they spoke of and issues of hydrates impacting any type containment.

My ex-politician of a lady was all over it.  There's MUCH more of course.  But Poly-Tickly was all about Cuba not pumping oil hence the involvement of Hallibut Inc. (LOL but not so much...)

[frankenhobbit]

OK, I admit I am lazy and not going to read through nearly 300 responses, especially the lengthy pontification ones. 

BUT, I would imagine more than 1000 people quit working for ebay every year. So 1000 layoffs could easily be achieved by attrition anyway. Lay off 30 percent of your staff? Newsworthy. 1000? Snoozeworthy. 

[mam98031]

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@vintagecraze50 wrote:

I just heard it on the news. Also 3 million on criminal charges for the Steiner episode, ands we wonder why people are getting laid off. What a bleeping mess that is.

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Yes, this was share at least a couple times on this long thread.  Ebay has had something like 64 million set aside for at least a couple of years to pay for what they felt was coming on the horrendous treatment of the Steiners'.

"EBay has set aside $64 million to cover potential liability from the Steiners' case, a potential related settlement with the U.S. Justice Department and some other unrelated matters."

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/couples-case-over-ebay-stalking-campaign-can-move-forward-u....

[chapeau-noir]

Most corps have a cookie jar fund set aside to pay off lawsuits. I mean, we're not talking about keeping cash in shoeboxes - corps have enough money to pay failed CEOs like Wenig multi-millions just to fulfill a stupid sign-on contract and get rid of them. $64 mil is chump change.

[mam98031]

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@chapeau-noir wrote:

Most corps have a cookie jar fund set aside to pay off lawsuits. I mean, we're not talking about keeping cash in shoeboxes - corps have enough money to pay failed CEOs like Wenig multi-millions just to fulfill a stupid sign-on contract and get rid of them. $64 mil is chump change.

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IDK if that is "chump change" for the purposes the fund is intended.  The Steiners' will certainly win big, but we just have no idea of how much that will be.

[vintagecraze50]

I think when Liz posted about the three year monitoring of activities she was referring to the criminal charge case with the Steiners.  Not sure. That was the bad behavior I was referring to. 

[vintagecraze50]

Yep, I know. What a waste of resources for one of the most incredibly stupid acts in history.

[valueaddedresource]

@mam98031  @vintagecraze50  yes, I was only talking about the deferred prosecution agreement eBay signed with the DOJ on the criminal side of the cyberstalking case.

For clarity on the $64 Million -  that was an amount set aside for potential losses related to the cyberstalking case as well as EPA and DEA investigations into illegal or restricted items being sold on the site.

From eBay's 10-K filed with SEC on December 31, 2022:

I think many of us (myself included) naturally figured the bulk of that would be in relation to the cyberstalking because what happened to the Steiners was so egregious - and maybe (hopefully) there will be a much larger number in play by the time the civil case resolves.

But wait..there's more! 

In a 10-Q filed with SEC on September 30, 2023, eBay disclosed they added another $50M to the pot, bringing the total set aside for these legal matters so far to $114 Million.

That additional amount likely reflected the fact that they were in negotiations on the criminal side of cyberstalking case, close to resolving that and this DEA deal, so they had a better idea on those numbers, but since they've chosen to fight the EPA suit (for now) and the civil side of the cyberstalking is still ongoing, there's still a lot up in the air.

So $3 Million to to government for criminal cyberstalking and $59 Million to the government for pill machines knocks out $62M, leaving $52M still set aside for the EPA case and civil side of cyberstalking...and of course more could be added in future disclosures.

[mam98031]

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@vintagecraze50 wrote:

I think when Liz posted about the three year monitoring of activities she was referring to the criminal charge case with the Steiners.  Not sure. That was the bad behavior I was referring to. 

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There is no Criminal case with the Steiners that I'm aware of.  There is however a Civil Suit that has not yet gone before the judge.  I'm sure they were waiting for the DOJ case to complete.

[johnson_junk_company]

Correction. Only about 10,000 people work for Amazon, the rest are independent contractors that really don't work for them!