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The original was posted on /r/Superstonk by /u/elden_eternal on 2024-04-09 16:10:32.

Hi All,

I am a long time lurker and first time poster (this is an alt account). I have been following $GME since January 2021 and made my first purchase February 2021. Needless to say I have been holding since then and currently sit around 6,000 shares with an average of just below $40 per share. Obviously I am sitting on a painful unrealized loss right now, which is unfortunate. I have become motivated enough to start posting because I am seeing a lack discussion on the business.

TL;DR - GameStop appears to be building out a rockstar team to start working on further fine tuning finances and also start working on key initiatives to build revenue. (DISCLAIMER: This post was mostly written prior to earnings. Some of these job listings may no longer be posted.)

The purpose of this post is to report my findings on the new corporate job listings that have been posted on GameStop’s careers website the past few weeks (or so). First I would like to list all jobs of interest (with approximate listing dates from page source code) and then reasonably speculate on them:

  • Technology
    • Staff DevOps Engineer - 2/29
    • Principal Software Engineer - 2/29
    • Lead Software Engineer - 2/28
    • Senior Software Engineer - 3/8
    • Software Engineer, POS - 1/24
    • Senior Business Intelligence Engineer - 3/7
  • Marketing
    • Head of Merchandising - 2/23
    • Director of Performance Marketing - 3/1
    • Merchant - 1/24
    • Associate Merchant - 2/11
  • Accounting & Finance
    • VP of Business Operations - 2/1
    • Sr. Analyst (Activism Experience Required) - 2/7
    • Potentially others in this section of interest, but just touching on these

I’m not going to link them. I encourage you to take a read on the careers website.

I initially decided to take a look at the careers website after it was pointed out that Cohen posted about a desire to find engineers. I think it is a positive that the company is hiring for these roles and that they have mostly all been posted fairly close in date. They have been quite dry, especially with the tech jobs for some time time until now. We obviously don’t know how many of these are backfill vs expansion vs reallocation, but I can say that I have not seen a number of these job titles the past few years, specifically.

Now, let’s actually highlight some points from each of these role’s descriptions. (I’m just going to group standout points by department and not per job):

  • Technology
    • “Design, build, and test products that enhance existing systems or apps, or provide new functionality for the management of cloud-based (AWS) and/or internet-related tools”
    • “GameStop is in the midst of a game-changing metamorphosis, transforming from old school into a modern company that is driven at its core by technology.”
    • “As part of our investment in technology, we are looking for a Principal Software Engineer to play a key role in developing critical back-end systems within our engineering ecosystem, specifically focused on systems related to payments, transactions, and customer rewards.”
    • “Expect to collaborate closely with engineering leadership and numerous other engineering teams throughout our tech organization to build out new systems.”
    • “Help envision and set up a modern technology stack (cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, service-oriented architecture, etc.) to lay the foundation for robust system development.”
    • “GameStop is looking for a Lead Full-Stack Software Engineer to join our Ecommerce team. This will collaborate with a team of engineers, product managers, designers, and business partners. In this role, you will help design, build, and maintain highly scalable microservices and core front-end components, powering products and features that delight millions of GameStop customers.”
    • “Under limited supervision, the Sr. Business Intelligence Engineer focuses on resolving data integration, data validation, business intelligence, and data reconciliation issues and building new data structures and processes.”
  • Marketing
    • “The Head of Merchandising at GameStop, is responsible for the overall strategy and execution of product assortment, promotion, pricing, and placement in-store across all categories to maximize sales and profit. You will provide leadership by empowering direct reports with ownership over their categories and meeting the target metrics of sales, COGS, margins, inventory productivity, market share, Private Label penetration, and overall profitability.”
    • “You are a hands-on leader that cultivates a culture of collaboration across the organization to optimize work processes that improve quality, customer satisfaction, sales, and profitability. As the Head of Merchandising, you are motivated by challenges and establishing goals that achieve business growth.”
    • “Manage vendor relationships to maximize COGS in every negotiation. Is firm and is willing to push, will take a risk and ask for more, while maintaining professionalism and health of the long-term relationship”
    • “Partner closely with Sponsored Ads, Integrated Marketing, Merchandising, and Ad Platform stakeholders to drive the channel strategy and deliver best in class execution across setup, optimization, and creative iteration”
    • “Proven ability to develop media campaigns or working directly with media teams”
    • “Familiarity with media campaign setup across platforms such as Google, Meta and others”
    • “Works with Visual team and Merchant Director on Store Visual Presentations”
    • “…execute SKU introductions and exits as it applies to store sets, margin, and sales goals”
    • “In addition, the Associate in the role will work closely with leadership on optimizing store design to positively impact financial results.”
  • Accounting & Finance
    • “You will focus on planning, directing and coordinating the company’s daily operations and ensure that key initiatives, targets and projects are on track.”
    • “Collaborate with CEO in executing the organizational vision and operations strategy.”
    • “Create clear operational plans to meet company goals for profitability.”
    • “As a Sr. Analyst, you will report to the CEO and be responsible for conducting comprehensive financial analysis and strategic planning to optimize budgeting, spending, and operational efficiency.”

There has clearly been a lot of thought put into these comprehensive job listings. I bet that Cohen was directly involved in pretty much all of them. I also thought COO Nir Patel was heavily involved, but since he was let go, I assume he was not delivering for the bundle he was being paid.

My take:

  • They appear to be looking for further modernization and optimization of technology, which could save a significant amount of money depending on how much legacy tech they still support. Data cleansing is also a priority as I’m sure it is unruly.
  • Making an effort to leverage technology at the core of your business speaks to the commitment leadership has with this modern vision
  • Payments, transactions, and customer rewards are in need of a lot of work, so it is great they are addressing them. I can speak to specifics in a future post.
  • Profitability, sales and growth are echoed numerous times
  • The talk of media campaigns means they will be looking at how they can be effective with a modern marketing strategy
  • SKU intros and exits may be paid a little more care, which is severely needed
  • There is a financial analyst role that will report directly to Cohen who seems to be responsible as someone who is looking for any sort of cost optimization within the company

In conclusion:

Based off of all the information in these job posts, it should be quite apparent that Cohen and key players have not been sitting on their hands, but have been building and translating high level strategy into lower level plans they can start building specific actions to execute on in order to deliver results.

I think most of these tech jobs will be a part of the same team which will be at the helm of transformation and enhancement that are severely needed. They point out some of this, but in a future post I would like to discuss some of the specifics in more detail that I think they should (and probably will) address. This team will not just be doing day-to-day-work, but will be building a bridge for other tech teams.

I think marketing will be in R&D for some time in order to build out all of their new channels for optimizing sales and advertising, and just figuring out what may work for them in the areas mentioned above.

I could drone on, but I’m tired and this post is already too long. I may add some edits later when I am more awake.

Draw your own conclusions. This is just my opinion based off of tidbits of information and speculation. This is not (financial) advice.