Wix Is the Latest To Cut 20% of Jobs While Citing AI (fastcompany.com) 45
Wix is laying off roughly 20% of its workforce, about 1,000 employees, as CEO Avishai Abrahami cites both the rapid evolution of AI and currency pressure from a stronger Israeli shekel against the dollar. The web developer joins a growing list of tech companies making similar cuts, including Amazon, Block, Cisco, Cloudflare, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle and Intuit. Fast Company reports: "We have witnessed the most significant shift in how companies are built since the invention of modern programming languages in the 1970s," [wrote Abrahami]. "This is not just about adopting new tools -- it is about rewiring how companies are built, how they think, how they manage, and how they operate. Companies that embrace this change will not only build faster; they will build things the previous generation literally could not have imagined."
Abrahami also cited the poor exchange rate between the Israeli shekel and the U.S. dollar. The Israeli currency has significantly strengthened in the past few quarters against a weakening dollar, and the shekel is up nearly 30% against the greenback over the last year.
"As the majority of our teams are Israel-based, a very meaningful portion of our costs are shekel-denominated, while our revenue is largely dollar-denominated," Abrahami explained on X. "This creates a structural pressure on our ability to operate at our current scale. It is a reality that directly shapes what is sustainable for our company."
Abrahami also cited the poor exchange rate between the Israeli shekel and the U.S. dollar. The Israeli currency has significantly strengthened in the past few quarters against a weakening dollar, and the shekel is up nearly 30% against the greenback over the last year.
"As the majority of our teams are Israel-based, a very meaningful portion of our costs are shekel-denominated, while our revenue is largely dollar-denominated," Abrahami explained on X. "This creates a structural pressure on our ability to operate at our current scale. It is a reality that directly shapes what is sustainable for our company."
TIL (Score:5, Informative)
That Wix is Israeli.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
That Wix is Israeli.
Hell, I was trying to figure out why we were suddenly talking about oil filter manufacturer layoffs here..
https://www.wixfilters.com/ [wixfilters.com]
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No problem but people might have ethical concerns about trading with a company under threat of Iranian drone strikes.
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And that it's not about oil filters [wixfilters.com].
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If you hear "Israeli" and immediately translate it to "ALL JEWS IN ALL THE WORLD", the problem is you.
AI companies are begging them to stop (Score:2, Troll)
But they really want companies to stop blaming layoffs on AI because it's weird but with AI devouring jobs, water and electricity the public isn't entirely happy with it. I can't imagine why.
Re: When The Replacements, aren't. (Score:3)
Is Twitter operating just as well?
The gutted moderation lead to a lot less advertisers bidding on views.
The unreliability of the service during the transition to being so far reduced dramatically reduced the number of daily users.
The company isn't public, so we don't know if it's making more/losing less money than it was. But we can be pretty certain that the operations are not the same (reduced users less money per user).
How? (Score:3)
and currency pressure from a stronger Israeli shekel against the dollar
Is the Shekel really stronger? Or is the dollar just going into the toilet? I'm seeing more and more international boycotts against Israel.
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As well there should be. At this point they're not much different than Russia.
Re:How? (Score:4, Informative)
For the fragile types who can't take any criticism of Israel. https://www.bbc.com/news/artic... [bbc.com]
Re:How? (Score:4, Insightful)
Israel has a population of 10 million and the USA gives them billions of dollars every year. Do the math on that one.
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JPG 10 year is at 2.6% yield. US Treasury 10 year is at 4.44%.
Whose debt burden is the problem here?
Oh, not that Wix (Score:3)
I was worried for a moment, but it's not these guys.
https://www.wixfilters.com/en-... [wixfilters.com]
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I was worried for a moment, but it's not these guys.
https://www.wixfilters.com/en-... [wixfilters.com]
True. Makes you wonder what could come from AI-enhanced 3D printing of filters though.
LEAP 71 is already doing incredible things with rocket engines.
Ride that wave over the cliff (Score:5, Funny)
The glory days of using AI to build a shitty web site with 20% fewer people hours, right before everyone realizes that there's no point to building web sites anymore.
Lack of imagination (Score:4, Interesting)
Companies that embrace this change will not only build faster; they will build things the previous generation literally could not have imagined.
Says someone who obviously has never read any science fiction ever.
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Funny thing is that it's literally the opposite, it's the worst at stretching the imagination.
Just saw a claude commercial, and their pitch was "hey, you can use us to make a knock-off dropbox"
Their big stunt a while back was "we made a knock-off C compiler"
Everything is about making knock offs because that's what GenAI can do. It can certainly tailor the knock off in ways that were easier than what it formerly took, but roughly knock-off in their bread and butter
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Everything is about making knock offs because that's what GenAI can do. It can certainly tailor the knock off in ways that were easier than what it formerly took, but roughly knock-off in their bread and butter
Eh, only in the sense that literally everything is a "knock-off".
I mean, I didn't invent php. Or programming. Or API integrations. So whether I use an LLM to help me program a new integration with some obscure service, or whether I do it all myself, either way I guess it's a "knock off", in some sense.
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Here you are pretending not to get the point again.
Oh lovely. I have a stalker now, lol
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Did you frolic today sir?
Well, this is believable... (Score:3)
A generic site builder... Yeah that's pretty firmly in the reach of GenAI...
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I expect they're worried about being replaced by AI themselves. Cost cutting here is probably pre-emptive.
You can build pretty decent sites with $20 Claude Pro, no WordPress or other knowledge required.
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Website building seems to be one of those edge cases like transcription/translation where AI is indisputably useful. Allow me to explain...
Watch normal people use these "vibe coding" tools, and what you'll see is them spending the majority of their time and attention on the UI. (No wonder, it's what they can see and comprehend.) Very little if any attention given to the logic. (Hopefully the bot got the vibe right.)
Many "small business"-type websites are just informational, or have a very simple contact for
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Agreed, AI is a direct competitor to Wix. I recently used Copilot to revamp my own little informational website. I had built it in the 1990s using one of those dumb little website builder software tools back then. I told Copilot to rebuild it as a Bootstrap site, it had no problem at all doing that. If I wanted to build a mom-and-pop shop website now, I'd just use AI, and skip Wix.
tools (Score:2)
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The point where you let your people go is the same as always: because for one reason or another, you failed to find enough work for them to do
No, work backlogs are massive at most companies. They aren't laying people off because there's no work. It's because cutting jobs to make money takes no thought and is assured to lower opex for the next fiscal year compared to doing something clever or innovative.
Re: tools (Score:2)
Such a trivial difference (Score:2)
We're spending trillions on AI. If your business plan is sucking wind on 0.3 of an x, you lack the vision to stay in the game.
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On the other hand, building simple websites is something AI is really good at, so Wix is far more exposed to AI competition than other types of software. AI can literally do exactly what Wix does, and you don't have to learn the Wix Way. Just tell it what you want in English. That's great for a lot of business owners who aren't that technical, but need a Website.
It's ... (Score:1)
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Simply put, scale.
When you have 300 million customers, you can't just use a tool like...Wix...to build your website.
A single handyman can build a backyard shed in a day or two, for a few hundred dollars. It takes millions of dollars and lots of people with specialized roles, to build a high rise office building. Both tasks are building a building, one is far more expensive than the other. Scale matters, a lot.
Re:It's .. (Score:1)
Making a multi tenant service with a lot of user customization is usually gnarley work but once you've got a SaaS product that's worth paying for you want as many people as possible to know about it so you get sales and marketing departments that are sized according to their ROI and hopefully their projected ROI.
They also offer 24/7 support even on their cheapest plans and given their target audience is people too dumb to make a web page, I'll bet their support queue gets hammered compared to SaaS platforms
Slop (Score:2)
I'm sure their revolutionary new operating model will allow them to not just disrupt new markets, but delve into a symphony of synergies.