Former Bench user here - I selected to opt-out and download my financial data over an hour ago. I still haven't received it and am getting concerned. Has anyone actually received their data from Bench yet?
Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down
71–80 of 92 posts
Re: Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a right way to do this and a wrong way and they picked the wrong way. The right way is to say "we will do 2024 and work with you to transition for 2025".
There was barely enough money to pay for the last week of wages, would you expect employees to volunteer to achieve that? I'm not defending what they did, but doing the work even one more week was not an option afaik. At best they could have wrapped up earlier?
A business should know approximately when it will run out of money. Ethically, they should have warned their customers that their financial situation was poor and thus they might close.
They should have done that months ago... Maybe they would have been acquired without all the drama...
Re: Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down
#73The new Bench site asks us to click a button saying we "consent to continue using Bench as part of employer.com." Has anyone clicked that? I'm hesitant, since it does not state clearly what I am "consenting" to.
Re: Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down
#74Would you trust Employer when their "About" page looks like this? https://www.employer.com/about "Our Story There are many variations of passages of available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don't look even..."
They've secured investments from Logoipsum, Logoipsum, Logoipsum and Logoipsum so they must be legit.
Ha!
Re: Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a right way to do this and a wrong way and they picked the wrong way. The right way is to say "we will do 2024 and work with you to transition for 2025".
Where does the money come from to pay for that? As an employee, would you want to work for 6mo, for no promotions, bonuses, stock? Seems like they could have had huge layoffs, to try to maintain, but maybe they thought the sale would go through before the shutdown, meaning no one gets laid off. But the buyer waited until after the shutdown to grab it
From the fees the customers are paying for the bookwork.
Re: Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down
#76> Your service will continue seamlessly with the platform you’ve always trusted. Uh, I think that trust may be a bit compromised until they explain what the hell happened.
[deleted]
Re: Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where does the money come from to pay for that? As an employee, would you want to work for 6mo, for no promotions, bonuses, stock? Seems like they could have had huge layoffs, to try to maintain, but maybe they thought the sale would go through before the shutdown, meaning no one gets laid off. But the buyer waited until after the shutdown to grab it
From the fees the customers are paying for the bookwork.
If they were profitable, then they wouldn’t have shut down…
Presumably, their cost to serve was higher than what their customers were collectively paying.
Re: Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was barely enough money to pay for the last week of wages, would you expect employees to volunteer to achieve that? I'm not defending what they did, but doing the work even one more week was not an option afaik. At best they could have wrapped up earlier?
A business should know approximately when it will run out of money. Ethically, they should have warned their customers that their financial situation was poor and thus they might close. They should have done that months ago... Maybe they would have been acquired without all the drama...
Problem is, if they thought that there was any chance of making it, telling people “we might have to shut down soon” will ensure that they do shut down.
Re: Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down
#79Quoted post unavailable.
It's never that smooth. In fact 2M requests arrived on December 23rd from Claude alone for a single site. Average 25qps is definitely an issue, these are all long tail dynamic pages.
Curious what your robots.txt looked like, if you have a link?
Re: Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down
#80Seems like a last second deal. Doesn't inspire confidence. For context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42523061 And former CEO's post: https://x.com/ianwcrosby/status/1872724231999381790
Now with a list of Board of Directors https://x.com/amasad/status/1873018020895047744
The lust for a simple good guy vs bad guy narrative is insatiable.