
Fab Lays Off More Than 100 Employees in Europe - antr
http://allthingsd.com/20130730/fab-lays-off-more-than-100-employees-even-as-it-raises-a-massive-cash-war-chest/?mod=tweet
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drx
> Nearly 70 of the employees are being laid off immediately, while the
> remainder have been asked to stay on for a few months through a transition
> period. Another 36 employees are being asked to relocate to New York from
> Berlin.

Does anyone know what the visa situation looks like for them?

Relocating 36 employees to the US can't be easy. There aren't any more H1B's
this year and L1A's (and the equivalent green cards) can only be given to
executives and managers. EB-2 maybe? Or L1B?

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reeses
Tough to do an inter-agency transfer (L1) if it's because you closed your
international location, but they do have a distribution facility in Eindhoven
and an IT center in Pune. (And probably more elsewhere, but I just looked at
the 'careers' page.)

It's amusing/ironic to look through their press kit. Especially "Happy 1 Year
Birthday Fab Europe -3.5M Members And 30% of Fab’s Global Sales-February 21,
2013.pdf", which is all about the growth of the Berlin office.

That said, you don't need a lot of people after the Brennschluss. Amazon laid
off 300+ people in IT after the big initial push. Builders are less important
than processors after a company has established a new capability. You'll often
create a redundant hierarchy to Get S* Done that will become an obstacle to
later growth.

There may also be a bit of German labor law involved as well. Closing the
location entirely may let them dodge termination considerations.

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draz
I'm not intimately familiar with the situation nor their org structure(though
I recently spoke with one of their directors in NY, and it was a pleasant
experience -- it may bias my comment), so this is just speculation: I am
guessing a large portion of these layoffs are of temp, hourly employees. My
first reaction to the title was more of a "uh oh," but now I am thinking it's
more of "they closed their positions with their temps, and they are relocating
their permanent employees to NY." Is that so bad? Did it come as such a
surprise to their temps? I could be wrong, however....

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bowlofpetunias
It's probably mostly temps and/or natural turnover (people that leave and
simply don't get replaced), because it's very hard (and very expensive) to lay
off people in most EU countries unless the company is in imminent danger of
bankruptcy.

I doubt a single person will actually be fired in this particular context.

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kps
Am I the only one who thought this article would be about a fab, rather than
some online retailer?

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untog
Possibly. You clearly haven't been drinking enough startup Koolaid.

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mpr3
It's interesting that in the same article they also mention they are hiring
for new positions. I can't imagine how this feels for both departing
employees, and the ones who remain. I don't know much about the situation, but
I am interested in how flash sales staffing requirements differ so much from
standard catalog-based eCommerce hiring needs.

~~~
thegranderson
I think there a few specific differences for them:

-Flash sales rarely have any inventory, and usually low enough quantities that they just sell through 100% of their buy and close the sale -Inventory-based store models require significant planning months in advance to source the right amount of each product, color, size, etc. They also then have to deal with the extra (you can't just leave products with one size all over your site b/c people will be frustrated) -Typically flash models need more focus on buying/sourcing (ie finding the cool new products to sell) and store models need more focus on planning (ie figuring out how much/when to buy, then managing inventory).

I'm not sure what their EU team was focused on, but from Jason's comments, it
sounds like there was a lot of redundancy in buying/sourcing, which would need
less resources as they pivot to a store model.

In terms of their open positions, it seems like a a company growing as fast as
they have would want to keep the door open for hiring any position they might
need - their open positions look like a broad range of resume collectors...

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tixocloud
Would they have been able to retrain existing employees to fit those new
positions?

~~~
mpr3
This is what I would have assumed, too.

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jonheller
I used to really enjoy this service, back when they offered solid deals and
introduced me to new products at the same time.

Then the deals went away and the once or twice a week emails because 7+. Also
the fulfillment process there was painfully slow, though I suppose them
switching to their own inventory will at least solve that issue.

