How Shopifys pandemic bet led to losses and layoffs
b'This week, days before a call to investors that announced net losses and a \\u201ctransitional\\u201d period for the company, Canadian tech giant Shopify laid off 1,000 employees \\u2013 10 per cent of its workforce.\\n\\nNot long ago, Shopify\\u2019s numbers told a very different story. The online shopping juggernaut hit it big during the pandemic, at one point becoming the most highly valued company in Canada, with a market cap of $177 billion.\\n\\nCEO Tobias L\\xfctke announced this week that during the pandemic the company made a bet \\u2013 that online shopping would \\u201cpermanently leap ahead\\u201d by years \\u2013 and hired accordingly to meet the growing demand. \\u201cIt\\u2019s now clear that bet didn\\u2019t pay off,\\u201d he said.\\n\\nTo break down where the company goes now \\u2013 and what this says about the tech industry more broadly \\u2013 Temur Durrani joins us from the Globe and Mail.'