
Stitch Fix to Lay off About 1,400 Employees in California - seibelj
https://www.wsj.com/articles/stitch-fix-to-lay-off-about-1-400-employees-in-california-11591053525
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nostromo
This is more interesting than all the other layoff stories in that they're
axing 1,400 California jobs but adding 2,000 in lower-cost locations like
Dallas, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Minneapolis and Austin.

It's like offshoring -- but off-Californiaing.

~~~
onemoresoop
I wonder if they gave the employees the option to relocate with out of
calofornia salary. Not sure if that’s legal but it would have been worth
giving them an option, some might as well take it, everything’s too expensive
in cali, one cannot easily start a family there

~~~
mc32
They gave them the option to stay on if they relocate. Doesn’t say they keep
their CA salary though.

>“ Most of the layoffs will take place in September and those affected will
have the opportunity to relocate and stay with the San Francisco-based
company.”

~~~
klenwell
The two Stitch Fix stylists that I've known both worked remotely and I got the
impression that most of them did.

Is that not true? If it is true, how do you relocate a remote worker?

~~~
paxys
"We are going to cut your salary in half. You should move to a cheaper city to
make up for it."

~~~
Melting_Harps
> "We are going to cut your salary in half. You should move to a cheaper city
> to make up for it."

To think that less than 4 months ago People were ridiculing Andrew Yang and
other proponents of UBI. I admit having it be, initially anyway, State
sanctioned bothers me a great deal; but the fact is gainful employment is no
longer a reliable aspect of modern Life for many in Society. This will
continue to cut deeper and deeper, and for anyone not paying attention these
protests and riots in the US have a much deeper sense of resentment than just
Police Brutality against black males. And it's felt throughout the spectrum of
underemployed, highly indebted underclass. Its like the bottled and pent up
anger from the Occupy movement coming back.

In many ways this reminds me of the London Riots of 2011, when London police
killed a young black male named Mark Duggan [1] and it exposed a myriad of
sociological, and socio-economic issues that quite frankly still remain to
this day.

1: [https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/three-riot-
lesson...](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/three-riot-lessons-from-
londons-2011-experience)

~~~
koolba
Context matters. The current economic climate is in no way representative of
normalcy as we just shut down a large chunk of it indefinitely.

That aside, the idea that you can finance life in the highest cost living
areas of the USA as a “stylist” (picking items for a clothing subscription) is
lunacy. Clearly that work can be done anywhere and it’s only a matter of time
till it’s pushed to the lowest cost areas. I wouldn’t be surprised if the cost
of such labor goes to near zero as they attempt to start “paying” people with
publicity instead.

~~~
godzillabrennus
The job of a stylist will largely be automated away with AI. There will be a
few needed to keep training the machines but it’s a career path akin to the
horse and buggy maker.

~~~
dlkf
I'm not convinced of this. We could easily have used software to procedurally
generate outfits from a selection of components since the 1980s. Why hasn't
this already happened?

~~~
greedo
The same reason that Jobs (and Ive) were the arbiters of what Apple shipped
for many years; you can't program taste or style.

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safog
Note: These are stylists and not engineers.

I've tried StitchFix twice and found their stylists pretty lacking in terms of
value they add. They don't listen to your requests and I'm sure most of them
just have templates of stuff they send out w/o looking at what you liked /
disliked. I'm fairly certain it's a role that can be very easily filled
regardless of the Zipcode.

In fact, I was pretty convinced until now that the stylists were just
algorithms but it looks like I was wrong.

~~~
culturestate
> I was pretty convinced until now that the stylists were just algorithms but
> it looks like I was wrong

Katrina Lake talks a little about the way they've structured this during her
How I Built This interview[1]. They seem to have a pretty large engineering /
data science org, and it feels like the stylists are effectively human
curators of algorithmic recommendations.

1\. [https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759594143/stitch-fix-
katrina-...](https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759594143/stitch-fix-katrina-lake)

~~~
achow
" _Today (Sep 2019), it has about three million customers and brings in more
than a billion dollars in annual revenue._ "

Wow!

~~~
lotsofpulp
It always amazes me what people will pay for that seems to have zero utility
from my perspective.

~~~
xnyan
In the face of a billion dollars of revenue, what do you think is more likely:
1) everyone using stichfix gets "zero" utility from it or 2) You don't
understand the thing you also have an opinion about for some reason?

For some people, buying clothes is a really stressful and difficult
psychological process. You really don't know anyone who does not like shopping
for clothes and would be willing to buy away that stress from a personal
shopper/algorithm ?

Maybe you personally don't find value in that, or your tastes don't agree with
Stichfix's style, but it seems quite understandable to me that many people
would want this.

~~~
lotsofpulp
Of course people are getting utility from it. But I was stating if I was
presented with StitchFix as an investment opportunity, I wouldn’t be able to
imagine how it would be valuable to people, so I might pass on it. I’m not
denigrating anyone who does get utility from it.

~~~
6gvONxR4sf7o
That seems to be a systemic problem in tech. Most VCs are dudes and they can’t
see the value in startups that do things men are less interested in, making it
harder to get funding to solve problems women have. Might be why some folks
are (rightfully) sensitive about the topic.

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dmode
This is just a wave of low cost shoring. I work for a SV company and we are
“offshoring” all our support from Midwest to Canada. I can see this trajectory
play out for Stitch Fix and other companies. Pretty stylists here are
commodity jobs and plenty available in Canada. Best part is that it is an
English speaking nation as well

~~~
wobbly_bush
> all our support from Midwest to Canada

Is Canada lower cost than Midwest?

~~~
dmode
Yes, because of Canadian dollar

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greenyoda
Another story about this, which isn't paywalled: [https://www.msn.com/en-
us/money/companies/stitch-fix-is-layi...](https://www.msn.com/en-
us/money/companies/stitch-fix-is-laying-off-1400-employees-in-california-and-
plans-to-hire-in-lower-cost-us-cities/ar-BB14TMxx)

------
dpau
recent somewhat related article discussion:

Remote work means anyone can take your job
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23337857](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23337857)

~~~
valuearb
They can if your skills aren't unique.

~~~
taneq
There's not too many of us with truly unique skills. And even those can
usually be covered by different combinations of employees.

~~~
valuearb
Unique in this context doesn’t mean absolute uniqueness, it means your skills
aren’t widely available.

The world needs experienced Go developers for an example. Being able to hire
one remotely may increase the available pool of Go developers you can hire,
but it doesn’t make them cheaper. That’s because hiring remotely also
increases the number of employers chasing the same few Go devs.

------
chrischen
This is fairly surprising since most ecommerce businesses have been doing well
because of coronavirus shelter-in-place rules across the country.

~~~
dreamcompiler
Speaking as a Stitchfix customer (and nerdy engineer who loves their service
and hates shopping for clothes), I semi-permanently paused my subscription a
couple of weeks ago. I haven't left my house in two months, so there's not
much point in buying new clothes.

~~~
chrischen
I know of at least 1 luxury clothing startup that is doing extremely well due
to the increased online activity. Maybe it's just stichfix's market segment?

~~~
csmiller
Which one?

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neonate
[https://archive.md/zQh5e](https://archive.md/zQh5e)

------
Cyclone_
Kind of interesting they picked Austin as a low cost alternative. I get it's a
tech hub, but surely there are other cities less expensive?

~~~
dreamcompiler
Austin is ridiculously expensive by Texas standards. Super cheap by California
standards.

~~~
jessaustin
Lots of Texas is cheaper, but executives don't want to drive three hours in a
rental car after their flight.

~~~
vonmoltke
Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio are cheaper than Austin and do not require a
3h drive from the airport.

~~~
jessaustin
I'm sure you're right, but I'd like to better understand how a city surrounded
by sparsely inhabited wasteland could have a shortage of anything of which
those other cities have plenty. Austin is practically a suburb of San Antonio
anyway, and has no obvious qualities that aren't shared by ten other cities
and big towns in Texas.

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purplezooey
Pure horse shit, about "lower cost areas". I suspect there is a right wing
shill hiding somewhere here. The founder's appearance on Shark Tank has the
smell of it. Why else would you go for such a ridiculous headline.

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pests
I hope this doesn't impact my first box just ordered last night.

------
cwilkes
I’m surprised they had that many stylists — most of this could be done by AI
and a handful of tastemakers.

Unless by stylist they also mean customer care, which they probably do as this
article mentions hiring 2k people in lower cost US cities.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/01/stitch-fix-is-laying-
off-140...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/01/stitch-fix-is-laying-off-1400-in-
california-18percent-of-workforce.html)

~~~
gbear605
My understanding is that it in large part was done without AI because a lot of
the input requests are too complex to summarize in any form other than
language.

“I work in an semi-casual office but I want to try adding some new colors to
my wardrobe to spice things up. Next month I’m going to a wedding and I need a
new bracelet and a pair of gold earrings for that. I don’t need any more
scarves this fall but I’d love a nice knitted hat in cool colors. Stripes
don’t flatter me.”

And I could go on for a while longer talking about a wide range of clothing
choices. Could you give options for all of that? Yes, with some work. Would
that be a good user interface that keeps a wide range customers returning? I
doubt it.

Plus their user base just prefers at least the illusion of having an
individual stylist, so you receive a detailed note with each package talking
about the ways that the clothing choices fit your style, wardrobe, body type,
and activities.

~~~
sheenobu
You are right about the input requests being too complex. From this
microservices presentation[0], they do use machine learning to generate
recommendations which are then curated further by the stylists, specifically
for this reason.

But I've always wondered about the grouping and parity between stylist and
customer. IIRC, they say it in the presentation but they do not say how much
bucketing happens. Is Person of archetype-A grouped with 100 other people and
given to Stylist A? 1000 other people? Or do they only do additional curation
if you reject so many items and write so many input request words?

Also, is there a good track record for such a request like "I need a pair gold
earrings" working? and working specifically because of human curation and not
pattern matching on color and item description?

0\. [https://youtu.be/E8-e-3fRHBw?t=332](https://youtu.be/E8-e-3fRHBw?t=332)

