[HN Gopher] A third of Stitch Fix employees quit after new CEO e...
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A third of Stitch Fix employees quit after new CEO ends flexible
work hours
Author : adamhowell
Score : 158 points
Date : 2021-08-20 14:15 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.buzzfeednews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.buzzfeednews.com)
| kilroy123 wrote:
| I was an early adopter of their service and I've noticed the
| quality has gone down hill the past year or two. About the same
| time they went public. I'm not too surprised to hear of internal
| issues.
| cronix wrote:
| This sounds like a great opportunity for those ~500 past
| employees. 500 is a pretty big number to start a competing
| business that would work for the employees the way they wanted it
| to.
|
| > "We knew from the beginning we were teaching the algorithm,"
| said an East Coast-based stylist who requested anonymity because
| she still works at the company. "We know the ultimate goal of
| Stitch Fix was to get rid of us."
|
| I have a hard time with the above statement. If you "know" you
| are training your replacement, or believe you are, and stay
| anyway, and then you get replaced/eliminated... that just seems
| to ignore the writing on the wall and being upset post fact when
| you had full knowledge of it up front, or so you say. It rings
| kind of hollow. I understand losing a job is an emotional gut
| punch, even if you're kind of expecting it.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| "One Midwest-based employee said she had started working for
| Stitch Fix on top of her full-time day job..."
|
| ...and that is why the current levels of remote work aren't going
| to completely stick. I work remotely, but I also am not a
| "permanent" employee, so the fact that I can work for more than
| one company at a time is fine, because they haven't hired me as
| an employee. Most companies are not looking for that, or if they
| are it's a consultant/contractor, not an employee with benefits.
| If you're working for more than one company at a time, you're not
| an "employee", rather those companies are your customers. It's a
| different relationship. If you want that flexibility, you'll
| probably have to give up the (alleged) security that goes with
| being an employee, and just work as a consultant or contractor.
| avianlyric wrote:
| You're aware that huge swathes of the economy is run by
| "flexible" labour that doesn't get any guaranteed hours, and is
| forced to work 2 or 3 job simultaneously to make ends meet.
|
| Most of these individuals don't want this scenario, they would
| much rather have one full time job that paid the bill. But with
| minimum wage in the US basically being a glorified slave-wage,
| that's not a realistic ambition for many people.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > The new CEO, she said, "thinks that the [technology] can do
| better than us, and that clients don't care ... that there's not
| a person behind the computer."
|
| That's surprising. The only reason I've ever considered Stitch
| Fix is specifically because there might be a person with better
| taste than me on the other end.
|
| An algorithm is just going to give me a mix of what's popular and
| what I've liked in the past, which is precisely the information I
| already had before coming to their service. Wouldn't people
| eventually realize they don't need to be told to keep buying
| things they already like?
|
| I'd be more interested if they not only kept the people around,
| but doubled down on having consistent relationships and
| interaction between stylists and clients.
| [deleted]
| nightski wrote:
| I use Stitch Fix and personally I don't care. So far the
| selections have been great.
|
| It sounds like the stylist is provided data from an algorithm
| already any way and just fine tunes the selections.
|
| Not only that they have a lot of ways to build out the style
| you already received which is great.
| tmp_anon_22 wrote:
| I mean the whole gimmick is about off-loading hard-to-sell
| inventory at immense mark-ups by bundling items together. Yea
| some absurd combinations will be sent back but it will still
| profit an order of magnitude more then displaying it in a
| department store for months. A lot more room for JIT style
| and data-driven logistics without the lag-time of presenting
| within a store.
|
| You can't be that mad at a company when it is so obvious what
| their value proposition and consequences are to a consumer.
| skellera wrote:
| You can see the difference in recommendation by something
| like Trunk Club which has the entire Nordstrom catalog to
| pull from. The stylists who work there also tend to be
| higher quality.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _The only reason I 've ever considered Stitch Fix is
| specifically because there might be a person with better taste
| than me on the other end._
|
| If the ex-workers in the article are representative, they
| aren't trained stylists at all; they're housewives and other
| normal people looking for extra income. Using StitchFix is
| basically letting your Uber driver select your wardrobe.
| gowld wrote:
| If they have good taste, works for me.
| zippergz wrote:
| I'd venture a guess that the average "normal person" is
| better at picking out clothing than I am, so I don't see the
| problem with this. Vanishingly few people who choose clothes
| for others, whether it's a Stitch Fix, Nordstrom, or styling
| celebrities, are "trained stylists." It's about taste, not
| training.
| Tarsul wrote:
| I'm still wondering how many "stylists" are good enough for the
| job. Or maybe I'm just too picky and thus find it hard to
| imagine that many stilists would be able to find what the other
| person would like without it being too obvious (hey, I noticed
| you liked blue things. here's another blue one!). In my
| imagination it's a very thin line between obviousness and
| misunderstanding (and the fine line being the absolute
| understanding of the customer).
| ctvo wrote:
| Yes, it's very difficult to tell your style from your photos,
| social media presence, and explicit instructions provided
| when you signed up. This is sarcasm if you didn't pick it up.
|
| People who are as picky as you outlined self-select out of
| services like this.
|
| What they have that the customer doesn't, is knowledge of the
| space of products that may match your taste. They also know
| more brands than you do, and may match you with one that you
| weren't aware of. Like most services, we can do it ourselves,
| but we pay others because we don't have the time.
| Tarsul wrote:
| yeah, you're probably right. It should get easier to find
| adequate stylings for people who stay longer with the
| service, as the database fills. And that's probably also
| the moment where less stylists are needed because your "AI"
| can do (more of) it.
|
| btw. how they treated their workers judging from the
| article is absolute appaling and another indictment of gig
| companies.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| You also do not want just what "I like". A stylish friend did
| a shopping trip with me and made me buy stuff I didn't really
| like: too tight, too colourful, etc. Not outlandish, just way
| outside my comfort zone. Apparently I look really good in
| red.
|
| OMG. The compliments. From co-workers, random people on the
| street and staff in stores. I was shopping for a nice watch
| for my wife, went to a place and was ignored but saw a watch,
| went back a few days later in my new clothes, and the same
| staff was super friendly and helpful. It really changed how I
| viewed the importance of style and fit.
| whoisjuan wrote:
| > An algorithm is just going to give me a mix of what's popular
| and what I've liked in the past.
|
| That's exactly the same thing a human stylist would do + making
| sure the outfit pieces look good together (Which I assume the
| algorithm is also trained to do).
|
| As much as I want to believe that a human in the end would do a
| better job, I think an algorithm is capable of becoming a more
| accurate and dynamic stylist than a human.
|
| Unless you want to be a trend-setter or do some artistic
| expression through your clothing. In those cases a human
| stylist does make sense. But for the regular Joe, I think a
| well trained algorithm can perform better than a human.
| weego wrote:
| This is just a misunderstanding of how creative people work
| vs algorithms.
|
| An algorithm will aim to make you look similar to what other
| people like you look like. It will not push boundaries or
| riff on creative 'happy accidents' because it can't.
|
| A real stylist will do those things and more.
|
| I don't know whether it's an age thing or just pure cognitive
| dissonance because people in tech have the hubris to think we
| can optimise and improve everything because technology, but
| this machine-learning nihilist thinking is profoundly sad.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| > An algorithm will aim to make you look similar to what
| other people like you look like. It will not push
| boundaries or riff on creative 'happy accidents' because it
| can't.
|
| An algorithm can aim to push boundaries and riff on
| creative 'happy accidents' in ways that people like you
| like. It's not even that explicit with typical supervised
| learning/recommenders. It will find things people like you
| like, whether that means pushing boundaries in ways those
| people like or just making you look like they like.
|
| I feel the same as you do about ML being in too many places
| too confidently, but you're assuming a lot about the kinds
| of algorithms used.
| asdff wrote:
| There is no way for you to buck the pattern here since it
| is using a statistical estimation for whether you like
| something. You could very well be an outlier datapoint
| rather than someone in the median, at which point the
| model fit for you is extremely poor. If you had an actual
| person on the other end you could tell them explicitly
| what you want rather than have some likelihood estimation
| based on metadata that might not have any relevance to
| this particular decision you are making at this time.
| mrRandomGuy wrote:
| It's honestly the latter.
| nemo44x wrote:
| I think you missed this part of their comment:
|
| > Unless you want to be a trend-setter or do some artistic
| expression through your clothing. In those cases a human
| stylist does make sense. But for the regular Joe, I think a
| well trained algorithm can perform better than a human.
|
| And your comment:
|
| > An algorithm will aim to make you look similar to what
| other people like you look like. It will not push
| boundaries or riff on creative 'happy accidents' because it
| can't.
|
| Correct - I think that's what most people want. Style is
| defined at the high end to a very limited audience and
| derivative variations of it are built on further derivative
| variations as it flows down the classes until it so
| distorted it simply dissolves. Every turn of that crank is
| another group of people trying to look like other people
| (and thus offending the tastes of the group being copied).
| robocat wrote:
| > Style is defined at the high end to a very limited
| audience and derivative variations of it are built on
| further derivative variations as it flows down the
| classes
|
| That is a very cliched haute couture definition -- a la
| "Devil Wears Prada - Cerulean Top"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL-KQij0I8I
|
| That trickle-down definition of style is relevant perhaps
| within some groups of people.
|
| I think that most subcultures have their own highly
| independent styles, and within that you have people with
| their own independent riffs on the general subculture
| style.
|
| Do you not think that many subcultures have their own
| style that isn't derivative/trickle-down?
| dnissley wrote:
| A real stylist _can_ do that, but very well may not. The
| question is not whether an algorithm /AI can beat stylists
| at the 90th percentile of how great they are, it's whether
| it can beat stylists at the 50th percentile.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Sorry but could you please give a definition of creativity
| which is not a weaker or more limited version of mine:
|
| > Creativity is the preference for low(er) priority edges
| in a graph
|
| There is virtually no difference between an algorithm and a
| human except that the human may have better heuristics for
| what "works", which by definition is a form of bias and an
| algorithm can assess many orders of magnitude more nodes.
|
| If Lee-Sedol the world champion at Go could be left
| dumbfounded by what he claimed to be a creative move, a
| move generated by a laptop performing monte-carlo tree
| search with an ANN doing pruning, and have his world
| shattered, then I don't see how anyone else could claim
| that algorithms can't be creative.
|
| If we go by something like this [1]:
|
| > Creativity is defined as the tendency to generate or
| recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be
| useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and
| entertaining ourselves and others. (page 396)
|
| Then the tendency is reweighting of priorities of
| heuristics, the generation of ideas is walking the varius
| edges, recognizing is nothing but an evaluation of the new
| state, and alternatives and posibilities that may be useful
| is nothing but searching deeper within the graph.
|
| [1] https://www.csun.edu/~vcpsy00h/creativity/define.htm
| whoisjuan wrote:
| I don't disagree with what you're saying in a general
| sense. Creative people output will be better and higher
| quality than an algorithm...But I don't think that's the
| case for this business model.
|
| Although I believe there is creative merit in composing an
| clothing outfit I don't believe that merit is even remotely
| close to things such as designing the actual clothes or
| creating the drawings and art that goes into the clothes or
| designing the stores in which these clothes are sold...
|
| So I stand by my original statement. I do believe an
| algorithmic stylist for the avergage person can be vastly
| superior than a human stylist, because the inputs that the
| former takes are not that different than the inputs of the
| latter. Furthermore, the reasoning is essentially the same:
|
| People want good fitted clothes, that are in fashion and
| that go in accordance to what they like. I don't think
| there's a lot of room for creativity here. I'm sorry that
| it sounds like a machine-learning nihilist take, but in
| practice I don't believe there's a good match between what
| people want from something like Stitch Fix and what a human
| stylist can do for them.
|
| I dooubt that someone who relates to clothing in an
| artistic way would ever use something like Stitch Fix, so
| my assumption is that for the average Stitch Fix user, an
| algorithmic stylist could give them the same desired output
| at a better cost.
| [deleted]
| JustARandomGuy wrote:
| Would HN recommend Stitch Fix? I was thinking of signing up if
| there was a personal stylist recommending clothes, but now I'm
| not sure. How good is the AI in picking a wardrobe?
| spoonjim wrote:
| How does a stylist learn "style" and why could an algorithm not
| perform the same?
| ta2987 wrote:
| GPT-3 could have come up with a better comment than this,
| spoonjim.
| paxys wrote:
| It's not like you are getting top-tier fashion designers,
| interior decorators etc. on services like these. The company
| has a fixed catalog, decided based on what deals they can get
| from vendors, and their reps are all outsourced and following a
| script/reading out algorithmic results.
| gowld wrote:
| "In the future, your job will be performed by a robot, but
| the robot will be you."
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Im the same. I don't mine the algo but i wanted a human as
| well. This is disappointing. Ive been really pleased with what
| they sent me.
| mdaniel wrote:
| Wow, they _had_ 1500 employees? That 's a lot of ... shipping?
| shopping? customer service?
|
| I'd laugh if the shareholders fired the CEO over a boneheaded
| move like that, since (at least in my mind) it would seem
| replacing 1500 people is not a good use of the organization's
| time and energy and such an exodus was self inflicted
| echelon wrote:
| These were clothing style pickers, and it sounds like the CEO
| intended to get rid of many or most of them.
|
| It wasn't just quitting. They were offered $1000 in severance.
| Only a third of the workers took the offer.
|
| It seems like they're trying to get consistency from fewer
| staff that are more focused on the job. And less costly to
| employ. That, or eventually replace them with algorithmic
| picking.
|
| The company missed revenue targets, lost multiple senior staff,
| and the new CEO is from Bain capital. They're doing this on
| purpose.
| jessaustin wrote:
| _...the new CEO is from Bain capital._
|
| That explains the introduction of black-box management-
| solely-via-P&L. If _any_ position could be automated away,
| one would think that that sort of CEO could...
| asdff wrote:
| Maybe that's how we solve capitalism, we use machine
| learning to replace the capitalists!
|
| I can't help but imagine that Neutral Planet from
| _Futurama_ would be the end result of that, constant model
| fit of the median until the market doesn 't even cater to
| the outliers, and everyone wears the same grey jumpsuit.
| sunshinerag wrote:
| replace the capitalists with who?
| jessaustin wrote:
| Quite right, one might as well speak of replacing
| vampires with werewolves: it still won't be safe to walk
| at night! Of course the point is to be rid of them all.
| jwong_ wrote:
| What sort of costs go into these employees? I think I'm
| missing something, but not very familiar with costs of a
| worker who: * has no benefits * BYOD * not eligible for
| benefits (they are explicitly called out in TFA as not
| eligible to become employees)
|
| Is it just the cost of scheduling these workers?
| moate wrote:
| In the long term, they cost more than the code that is just
| optimizing delivery of what's in the warehouse to "what
| each consumer has been surveyed as preferring/purchasing".
|
| This seems like an inflection point for the company where
| their software is starting to be more useful than their
| employees. It's the equivalent of McDonald's replacing
| counter people with kiosks.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| I think the CEO is missing a major point. Their competitive
| advantage might be that they AREN'T algorithmic.
|
| Shopping algorithms seem really good at finding very similar
| items in my experience. That's great when I'm shopping for a
| cheap router, or some other commodity. When shopping for
| something like clothing, you frequently want VERY dissimilar
| items to compare, OR you want complementary, but differently
| categorized items.
|
| Get rid of the human touch at your own peril. Especially when
| your business model is built on taste.
|
| Looking at stitch fix pricing it is not cheap. It looks a lot
| like you would expect somewhere like Nordstrom's to price.
| It's worth noting that Nordstrom's is more than happy to have
| an employee act as a personal stylist at no cost.
| jfengel wrote:
| I have a dark suspicion that their best target market might
| be to pretend they're not algorithmic, but actually being
| so.
|
| Most people, almost by definition, have rather ordinary
| tastes. They will want to imagine that it's slightly better
| than average, but not outrageous.
|
| I don't know much about fashion, but I see it a lot in food
| marketing. Restaurants differentiate themselves on trendy
| but safe choices. It works down from the high end: Gordon
| Ramsey splashes something with truffle oil, and a few years
| later you can get New Burger King Truffle Fries. A lot of
| "mom & pop" restaurants are just heating up things off of
| Sysco trucks.
|
| I don't mean that to sound snobbish. People should enjoy
| whatever they like. I'm slightly turned off when it's
| marketed as being really innovative while smaller, more
| interesting things languish, but that's just the market at
| work.
|
| As it applies here, I suspect that most people really could
| be very happy with algorithmically applied clothing. A
| truly personal stylist would be much more expensive and
| outside of most people's comfort zones anyway -- unless
| they did basically the same thing as the algorithm.
|
| What Stitch Fix can offer is the illusion that you're being
| truly stylish without any of the risks. Which is a fine
| thing, as far as I'm concerned, if it makes them happy.
| That excludes a market which really does want a truly
| personal, human stylist, but I suspect that market isn't
| nearly as large, and even smaller if you ask them to pay
| what hours of attention would really cost.
| the-dude wrote:
| Have the algo do the work, have a human present the
| solution.
| jfengel wrote:
| Adding a very thin veneer of humanity on top would be a
| big win. Have the AI do most of the work, then have a
| human being sanity check it and add a personal note
| (maybe something derived from their conversations...
| which could itself be mined by the AI and then massaged
| by a human).
|
| If it's nothing more than "You mentioned that you liked
| the coat that [celebrity] wore, and this was a similar
| sort of look but in [color] you said you liked", that
| could potentially give people a really positive
| experience. Even if many people are wearing the same coat
| because the algorithm recommends it.
| hadlock wrote:
| 1500 employees, 1/3rd quit. Supposedly, many of those who quit
| were working less than 20 hours a week, previously a minimum of
| 5 hours a week was required. At that rate it would take 8 part
| time employees to work 40 hours...
| stagger87 wrote:
| They certainly anticipated it and in all likelihood hoped for
| it. I doubt they plan on replacing every employee that left.
| phaedryx wrote:
| I was thinking of signing up for them, but this gives me pause.
| Any other recommendations in this space?
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The headline buries the big number: They claim a whopping 1/3 of
| the workforce quit after the announcement.
|
| But they also buried the other big factor: They offered everyone
| $1000 to quit. They also didn't actually completely end flexible
| working hours, they just raised the minimum working hours to 20
| per week and required that they be performed during core hours:
|
| > employees would now be required to work at least 20 hours per
| week on a set schedule during regular business hours; their log-
| on and log-off times would be tracked, and stylists would at
| least temporarily no longer be allowed to become full-time
| employees. Those who couldn't work within the new rules were
| offered a $1,000 bonus to quit
|
| So it's not as simple as the headline makes it sound. It would
| have been helpful to know how many of those employees who quit
| were already working the minimum of 20 hours per week during core
| hours.
|
| If they lost a lot of key workers, that's a big deal. If they
| lost a lot of people putting in a few hours here and there and
| those workers got $1000 for it, then this is a non-story. I
| suppose we can't really know.
|
| From personal experience: Flexible work is great, but infinitely
| flexible working hours quickly becomes a huge pain. Without
| setting core hours and minimums, you end up with a long tail of
| workers who want to put in a couple hours here and there at weird
| hours. This might work if you workload is 100% asynchronous,
| requires virtually no training, and has minimal managerial
| intervention, but eventually the odd hours and inconsistent
| working schedules take a toll on everyone else who has to work
| around the flex employees. Constraining flex hours to certain
| windows and requiring a minimum is actually a very reasonable
| policy, IMO.
| Areibman wrote:
| Thank you for this.
|
| I've noticed that Buzzfeed News almost always intentionally
| buries these crucial details to create sensationalist pieces.
|
| If the domain were banned from HN, I wouldn't be upset.
| dahdum wrote:
| According to the article the minimum working hours isn't 20
| hours a week, they are forcing their employees to block off 20
| hours during core working times to be available _in case_
| Stitch Fix wants them. If Stitch Fix guaranteed those 20 hours
| were paid I 'd be more understanding.
|
| > While the new policy requires that stylists be available at
| least 20 hours per week, company guidelines reviewed by
| BuzzFeed News said they can be scheduled for as little as zero
| hours as "availability does not guarantee a certain number of
| working hours each week."
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Yeah, that is retail level bullshit.
| x0x0 wrote:
| so it's basically unpaid on call
| BizarroLand wrote:
| That sounds like being engaged to wait. I don't know this
| company but that seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen.
| kevinmgranger wrote:
| > They also didn't actually completely end flexible working
| hours, they ... required that they be performed during core
| hours
|
| These are always equivalent in my experience. I've never seen a
| company that didn't use "core hours" to mean some large window
| centered around the middle of the day.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've put "a third" in the title above. Thanks!
| heisenbergs wrote:
| This. This was basically a lay off in disguise, and yet it's
| being portrayed as the opposite. Stichfix has continually
| automated many of their processes using their 100+ data
| scientists. This is no different.
|
| The company's executive has continually failed at PR though,
| which is hammering the stock price. Unbelievable that they're
| letting this narrative just persist.
| Traster wrote:
| That's if you beleive the scientists are there for the
| product instead of being there for the investors. I don't
| know about stitch fix but there's a lot of unrealistic "Oh
| we're going to automate away all our staffing costs"
| tbrooks wrote:
| "Letting this narrative persist"
|
| As if it's in their purview to control. Ask the poor PR folks
| at CFA (chicken QSR)
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Chick-fil-a? You can say that here without getting sued.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Is Stitch Fix one of those podcast advertiser regulars? I feel
| like I've heard about them before even though I'm not anywhere
| near their target audience, and podcasts are a good way to reach
| people who are not in your target audience.
| ketzo wrote:
| Yep, big time. If you've listened to a podcast regularly in the
| last five years, you've almost definitely heard an ad for them
| (or similar competitors).
| spoonjim wrote:
| For years, Stitch Fix stylists have been training Stitch Fix ML
| models to do their jobs. Now the CEO doesn't need them and showed
| them the door. This is just the way of doing it which makes the
| company seem like a victim of its own incompetence instead of a
| ruthless capitalist automating its people out of their jobs.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Very lucky that the new ceo took over just as they became
| expendable...
| 1billionstories wrote:
| i was a stylist (left few months ago). even though management
| would always tell us they don't plan to replace us with AI, it
| was pretty clear they were lying.
| Traster wrote:
| Every employer wishes magical AI would come along and replace
| all of their workers. It doesn't mean it's actually a feasible
| goal. To be honest, if you could build an AI to do what stitch
| fix does, it probably just devalues what stitch fix does.
| kazinator wrote:
| In time didn't save nine, it seems.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Speaks to the strength of the current labor market. The jobs had
| low value, and those who stuck behind either want the job or have
| no other choice.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Or they're working 2 jobs and cannot comply with the new core
| hours rule.
| alberth wrote:
| I wonder how much of this help Stitch Fix stock narrative (and
| bottom line).
|
| Stitch Fix has market valuation as if they are a tech company
| (due to unique machine algorithm cloth matching).
|
| Having 1,000s of employees is counter to that narrative and might
| make wall street reassess their valuation.
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