It seems odd to use the term “departing Flexporters” as the identity of those employees who are being let go.
Missed opportunity to call them Exporters
Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce
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Re: Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce
#12Flexport were advertising for roles on HN a few months ago. I'm sure they come up regularly for roles?
Bit of shake up going on. Their billionaire founder is coming back into a CEO role, cleaned house at the top (of folks that came in from Amazon), and after rescinding job offers a month ago and 20% layoffs 9 months ago, they're now trimming another 20%.
Internet rando analysis: Flexport most likely surfed the COVID wave of shipping, but the new macro makes the go forward much more challenging with aggregate demand declining (you can see this in both marine and over the road shipping volume declining). Boom time->war time transition as an org, hit by both rapidly rising interest rates (cost of capital, equity valuations) at the same time as volume declines precipitously.
https://www.flexport.com/research/post-covid/
https://www.flexport.com/research/after-the-boom-evolving-e-...
https://www.flexport.com/blog/how-long-will-covid-impact-las...
https://www.freightos.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/FBX-Oce...
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/24/economy-is-in-a-freight-rece...
https://www.ccjdigital.com/economic-trends/article/15543395/...
https://talkbusiness.net/2023/02/u-s-freight-volumes-fall-to...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Re: Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce
#13This isn’t great optics: https://archive.ph/pxy91 Serious question: with how much instability there is with this company, why would anyone want to work there? Are they the best in their business and just have hit a rough spot? Why is Flexport so commonly discussed here?
why would anyone want to work there?
Because they can’t get offers elsewhere?
Re: Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce
#14[deleted]
Re: Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce
#15Apparently they’ll have a billion in net cash after this change, which is over a million dollars per “departing flexporter.” And yet the employees get a barebones 9 week severance. Lame.
What's the logic, that if a company has cash available then it should just go to the employees?
If the money is all borrowed and meant to keep the company running, why would employees get more than is a reasonable severance package? And by the way, 9 weeks of severance on pretty good tech job salaries is far more than many are lucky enough to get, lest you live in too much of a bubble to realize.
Re: Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce
#16This isn’t great optics: https://archive.ph/pxy91 Serious question: with how much instability there is with this company, why would anyone want to work there? Are they the best in their business and just have hit a rough spot? Why is Flexport so commonly discussed here?
why would anyone want to work there? Because they can’t get offers elsewhere?
A colleague who had an engineering manager offer from Flexport rescinded was able to find an alternative offer in less than ~2 weeks. n=1.
Regardless of reason why someone wants to work at an org, it's likely they can find gainful employment elsewhere.
Re: Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce
#17> I evaluated every role in the company and its relationship to solving important supply chain problems for our customers And somehow that ended up with the nice round number of 20%.
"I evaluated every role in the company and its relationship to solving important supply chain problems for our customers, which made me realize that myself and the entire C-suite are useless parasites, but we have to cut costs somewhere, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"
Re: Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce
#18> I evaluated every role in the company and its relationship to solving important supply chain problems for our customers And somehow that ended up with the nice round number of 20%.
"I evaluated every role in the company and its relationship to solving important supply chain problems for our customers, which made me realize that myself and the entire C-suite are useless parasites, but we have to cut costs somewhere, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"
The article says CFO and head of HR were also let go.
Re: Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce
#19do they make much money? and what sort of moat do they have?
They're a freight-forwarder branding themselves as a software company, competing with the likes of DHL, DSV and 100s of other smaller organisations. In short, they have a very viable business model, but freight forwarding is a cut-throat industry.
Re: Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce
#20This isn’t great optics: https://archive.ph/pxy91 Serious question: with how much instability there is with this company, why would anyone want to work there? Are they the best in their business and just have hit a rough spot? Why is Flexport so commonly discussed here?
> Why is Flexport so commonly discussed here?
Because they're a YC start-up https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flexport
and their founder CEO is well-connected like other tech start-up CEOs https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2021-10-28...