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When we get Komooted

bikepacking.com

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Re: When we get Komooted

#171

Post by mr_mitm »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #17
StrLght wrote: post #5

I don't feel like I've been Komooted. There are alternative apps that I'll switch to. However, it really sucks for employees. I know a guy who joined Komoot a few weeks before the sale, and who was among 80% fired right after the sale finalised. They've been negotiating the terms of sale and hiring people simultaneously -- that's just insane.

It makes sense if you realize that there's no certainty a sale will go through and you don't want to pause all operations with the blind hope that a sale will happen Having said that, if someone just joined before the sale and is laid off, they should get a generous layoff package similar to longer term employees since they may have just quit a job to go there and are now back on the market.

Ironically, German law says that the first six months are a trial period for both sides, and you can be fired during that time with a two week notice for no reason.

Re: When we get Komooted

#172

Post by nradov »

jodrellblank wrote: post #169
nradov wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a serious question. I have a family to feed and a 30-year mortgage, and I would much rather live in a place where I can be laid off with zero notice (and I have been a couple times). This makes it faster and easier to find a new job. A dynamic economy benefits everyone.

> " A dynamic economy benefits everyone " Everyone is equal, just some are more equal than others. It benefits people who are highly skilled, clever, healthy, wealthy, young, with market-desirable skills in a market-desirable area, with no external family or life problems or responsibilities, and those who own and run companies, more than 95% of everyone else. > " where I can be laid off with zero notice (and I have…

There's no need for either designated probationary periods or notice periods. Social safety nets are a good thing in general but should be provided directly by governments rather than by private employers obeying government mandates. Imposing any requirements on employers beyond basic health and safety rules slows down economic growth and hurts everyone in the long run.

Re: When we get Komooted

#173

Post by raffael_de »

subpixel wrote: post #162
raffael_de wrote: post #101

I've been using Komoot a lot for bike tours in Germany and never have been particularly happy with it. It served the core purpose of telling me where to go but there were so many obvious flaws about it that I sometimes wondered if the people at Komoot actually even use it themselves. Then there is the obvious Geschmäckle of taking advantage of OSM (a free open source project) while not providing a way to give back to…

Poor one out for local Mitfahrzentrale!

And ze Mitesszentrale [1]

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBKu6r-fn7k

Re: When we get Komooted

#174

Post by brabel »

sneak wrote: post #161
dfc wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hiring senior employees sounds like it requires crystal ball level planning. Are there any tricks to make growth easier?

The trick that most startups seem to use is to simply operate in a different country. (I write this comment from Berlin, where I wish it were much much easier and simpler to start and operate a business.)

The trick I see the most is actually hiring consultants. They're basically like employees but it's not you who hire them, it's the consultancy company. So you can have them working for your startup in short contracts of a few months (which can be prolongued and without much trouble even terminated early). But normally, they also have clauses against trying to hire the consultants directly, so if they are really good and write a good chunk of your stuff, when they leave you might be left in a bit of trouble.

Re: When we get Komooted

#175

Post by zoobab »

dijital wrote: post #7
BozeWolf wrote: post #3

I felt betrayed as well. Just paid €30,- the month or so before because I liked the app and the service, but I also needed more maps. It offered great value to me. If I knew 80% of the employees would be fired, inevitably leading to a degrading service, I would have never done that. It is weird, but I do not trust the app any more in planning routes either. Sometimes i have the feeling bugs in the planning part alrea…

The article mentions one example: https://wanderer.to/ . Haven't used it personally but seems promising (albeit less "social" than something like Strava).

I organise an mtb event, always refused to use Komoot, Strava or other apps just to display an XML file on a map.

I have used brouter.de as a GPX editor instead of going on site to the route, and used Umap on OSM.ch to upload a GPX:

https://brouter.de/brouter-web/ http://www.vintagemtb.org/maps https://umap.osm.ch/

Re: When we get Komooted

#176

Post by jtbaker »

thomasahle wrote: post #43

Other than entirely community-driven projects (like https://wanderer.to/ mentioned in the article), are there company "forms" that legally protect against this kind of sell-out? Like non-profit or public-benefit-corporation? If users are contributing the content of the app, it seems they should have a way to hold the owners accountable.

Wow, this is awesome! I had seen the little Strava plug-in, but didn’t realize it was something that was self host able!

Re: When we get Komooted

#177

Post by goopypoop »

kelvinjps10 wrote: post #136
michaelt wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In principle, we can imagine jobs that contribute positively to the world. When a builder builds a house, or a doctor mends a broken arm, the community has one more home and one less broken arm - and the community is left richer even after the builder and doctor have been paid. That house will be keeping a family warm and dry 20, 40, 100 years into the future, and the patient will be using that arm for the rest of th…

In the workers side they could be doing good but on the corporations side not, like insurance companies charging way more for the broken arm than it should be and the house prices being way more higher than they should

plus the sepsis and subsidence

Re: When we get Komooted

#178

Post by smallpipe »

I see a lot of love for Komoot but for me that died when their "top 10 ride in " had a bunch of auto-generated routes linking points of interests, that tried to take me through horrible paths or 4 lane roads.

Re: When we get Komooted

#179

Post by zoobab »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #119
pentamassiv wrote: post #11

Next years article: When We Get Bikepacked Never believe a company that you are part of a community if the content you create for them cannot be exported and published somewhere else. I am especially sceptical if someone says they never sell.

This happened to pinkbike.com when they sold out; you need to view these sites and communities as vectors. https://bikepacking.com is good right now and there are a lot of legit contributors who really care about bikes. This will change so engage how you want with open eyes.

About Pinkbike Trailforks, I submitted some trails to their platform to find out users needed to be logged in to download the GPX, also to discover they had edited the GPX XML to force/steal their own copyright on top of mine.

Re: When we get Komooted

#180

Post by theamk »

pydry wrote: post #124
bjackman wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be in case 1 and find meaning in what you do. That's where the blacksmith is. There's absolutely nothing wrong with doing a good job for 40 hours a week in return for a salary. Being a competent professional who does quality work is rewarding! I just think if you're doing work of that nature (which _most of us are_, BTW) you need to recognise it for what it is. Don't burn yourself out trying to squeeze every…

At the same time we can maaaaaaaybe start pushing back on all of the "capitalism is not the problem" and "capitalism is the least worst of all available options" memes? Or is it too soon already?

It's not like there are good options out there. USSR showed what state-controlled socialism looks like, and the picture is not pretty. A most damning example is that it was impossible to leave USSR during the most of its existence, and people had to do crazy things like jump off cruise ship and swim many miles [0] just to get out of country.

If I have a choice between being jailed in the country and having VCs drive some companies into the ground, I'd choose the latter every time.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Kurilov

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