eBay to slash about 1,000 roles, or approximately 9% of full-time employees | Hacker News Reader

eBay to slash about 1,000 roles, or approximately 9% of full-time employees

cnbc.com

48 pointsmfiguiere41 comments

I've been an eBayer for almost 25 years, and over the last two years I've started buying more and more items. It's easier to find a "deal" compared to Amazon or other online dealers.

I miss the really old days when it felt like a community and people basically knew the sellers and buyers. It's more of a flea market now, the sellers are willing to wheel and deal, and you get more individual items along with all of the random alibaba crap everyone sells.

"Iannone said the job cuts are necessary because eBay’s “overall headcount and expenses have outpaced the growth of our business.”"

Growth, when they're already effectively the dominant marketplace, maybe excluding Craigslist or whatever is within Facebook (no account and refuse to sign up).

Where is there left to grow? They're a completed service.

I also have trouble imagining they have 1000 of anyone, aside from Customer Facing roles / fraud defense.

Craigslist and Marketplace largely serve non-commercial, local sales.

Ebay serves that, but also non-local, commercial, used and new.

They go toe-to-toe with Amazon and Ali-express for drop-shipping type stuff, especially international. Small scale international eComm is a huge, and growing market.

Ebay has certainly cornered some niches, but it can really pick up a lot of ground in some truly massive markets.

If I want to buy a specific electronic prototyping board, my choices are eBay or AE.

If I want to buy a part for my older cars: EBay. I just had a hard to find steering bushing shipped direct from Japan, in fact.

EBay especially dominates markets for unique things. Vintage cameras, watches, collectibles, etc.

Etsy is a competitor in some spaces. Bring a Trailer is offering increasing competition to eBay Motors.

Exactly, the market is expanding, and those are both pieces of the market that eBay would like to (re)capture.

Facebook Marketplace now has shipping, so they're trying to serve a larger market.

eBay's largest category is still used clothing.

FB marketplace has shipping in the USA. It is not a feature available to everyone.

Ebay was great. You could sell non local and paid a bit in fees sure but you could still actually get some money back from stuff you had "outgrown".

Now? As a casual seller of stuff that clutters the house? Or your old laptop when you get a new one? Fat chance I'll send that around the country for all the fees I'll be paying to Ebay. Fake Facebook profile and various other online and completely free flea market type sites are the only thing we use.

Ebay is dead to us. I bet we're not the only ones.

StockX has 1000+ employees and they only do used sneakers and clothes. I remember reading about eBay spending a lot to compete with them a few years ago, seems they lost. It’s valued at 3.8 billion so not an insignificant chunk of eBay’s market cap.

Does that include their terror and customer intimidation department?

Where can I read more about this?

Just google "ebay execs terrorizes couple"

“EBay Execs stalking and harassing couple”

The employees involved in that incident were all fired in 2019.

What's the deal with every company deciding that decimating their workforce is a good idea?

How do we know it's a bad idea? Companies may have overhired (esp. during the pandemic).

Executives are, if anything, even more susceptible to fashion, superstition, and herd-following than the rest of us.

eBay has raised fees and not invested in the platform.

I used to sell tons of stuff on eBay but with the fees and poor support I’ve had better luck with Facebook marketplace lately.

eBay buyers don’t pay and they used to at least give unpaid time strikes, they don’t care now.

> I’ve had better luck with Facebook marketplace lately.

Is the item still available?

My relative recently sold something on eBay and actually after the deal was done the fees made it to where listing was negative for him. He would have done better to have donated/wrote it off rather than sell on eBay. He also complained about having to prove his bank account info and identity just to get the money from the sell of said item.

eBay has done almost no innovation in the last 5 years it needs a skeleton crew to maintain on the dev side

Why are the only hiring news we see are firings? pretty sure thats only half of the story..

Nobody hires 1000 people in a single day. If they did we would hear about it.

We also don't hear about most firings, since no one really cares when a few people are let go, or a position is left open.

We hear about things like this because it is the company sending a strong signal. We can safely say that eBay made a massive management error in hiring, or they are in financial trouble, or both.

In fact, the latest "Jobs Created" stat and the "New Unemployment Applications" figures are regularly covered as financial news and often in the general news cycle as soon as the gov't "prints" them.

https://www.bls.gov/

Why do we hear about bombs being dropped over a country but not all the babies born there over the year?

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