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Flexport slashes 20% of global workforce over weak 2023 volume forecast

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Re: Flexport slashes 20% of global workforce over weak 2023 volume forecast

#151
post #3

The original source seems to be posted at https://www.flexport.com/blog/flexport-co-ceos-note-to-emplo...

Interesting that they say: > At Flexport, 2023 is going to bring extraordinary velocity – we are in the process of doubling our software engineering talent and moving to single threaded business organizations to build world class products faster, and we will continue to invest in delivering best-in-class operational execution for our customers. Looks like they are laying off non-tech workers who they have made (or wi…

You don't layoff workers that you replace through automation. You simply don't renew their contract. It's much smoother and cheaper, and automation does not happen overnight anyways.

Re: Flexport slashes 20% of global workforce over weak 2023 volume forecast

#152

A global recession is coming against a backdrop of the Fed raising rates, that is going to be very painful. A lot of people here don't seem to realise this is the case or are in denial. This is a bubble bursting, this is serious. Lots of companies are laying off workers or at least freezing hiring because they anticipate earnings cratering, or are already seeing it happen. They haven't reported on it yet, but they wi…

As far as I can tell, layoffs seem concentrated among high-earning folks - I can definitely see how anyone browsing HN would think we're headed straight for a recession. But it seems like overall, and especially in lower-wage jobs, employment is still humming along and people are very much not getting laid off. That actually really gives me hope for a soft landing - those high-wage folks are much less likely to have…

total revolving consumer credit aka credit card debt is a straight line up

going to hit $1 trillion soon for the first time. seems not great in face of high interest rates.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CCLACBW027SBOG

Re: Flexport slashes 20% of global workforce over weak 2023 volume forecast

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There will not be a soft landing. The reality is we cannot see the future of our incredibly complex, ever-changing economy. Sure, this hasn't happened in the past, but on the other hand the economy today is vastly different than it was even fifty years ago. Not to say we couldn't end in a recession - of course that is a distinct possibility - but the reality is that we don't have a ton of history to draw on when it…

>I wonder if you've shorted the equities markets to the greatest degree practically possible given your financial situation? If not, then I think you're phrasing things with too great a degree of absoluteness. The equities market doesn't have great correlation with the common pleb's job outlook so it makes no sense to short the equities market based on these kind of predictions.

The prediction was that we are guaranteed to go into a recession. Are you suggesting that we might have a recession in which the stock market doesn't decline? Bear in mind that this is a situation in which we can be sure the Fed will not prop it up, since they're the cause of it going down in the first place.

If we're making predictions about recessions based on history, then it seems pretty clear that the result of one will be a market decline.

Re: Flexport slashes 20% of global workforce over weak 2023 volume forecast

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My understanding is that the fed is leaning into this particularly hard in order to dislodge the stubborn housing bubble. They are trying to reduce inflation. The housing bubble certainly played a part, but inflation was hitting nearly everything. A big concern here, is that many smart people think a fair bit of that inflation was due to COVID related supply chain disruptions (which still persist, see China and COV…

To visualize how much of an outlier this "recession" already is, just look at bond vs stock returns since 1871: https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2022-12/50a56fbc-65fc-4... 2022 was the worst performing year ever for bonds and among the worst-10 for stocks -- we've never been this deep in the "negative returns across sectors" quadrant as we are right now, and there's no clear indication or catalyst to suggest we'r…

Wow. Take the maximum of both axis, which represent the ceiling of what you can earn with a conservative stock or bond portfolio, and it blows the rest out of the water. Really enjoy the way they distilled this down.

Re: Flexport slashes 20% of global workforce over weak 2023 volume forecast

#155
post #74

Remember when everyone cut jobs and canceled orders at the beginning of the pandemic and it really bit them? I'm like 49% sure that's going to happen again. Something funny is in the air.

It’s slightly different dynamics. At the beginning of the pandemic, people thought the world was going to end (either in literal terms or just economic ones). The massive hiring came after people realized that life would go on. What’s happening today is a result of the free money spigot being turned off. The layoffs and hiring freezes are going to be a bit more sticky.

I'm skeptical. I think companies are still in denial about just how thorough the upper quintile of the labor force was hollowed out during COVID. This is easy to miss -- especially in industries like tech -- where title inflation for junior workers has cause executives to over-estimate the fungability of veteran labor.

Re: Flexport slashes 20% of global workforce over weak 2023 volume forecast

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My understanding is that the fed is leaning into this particularly hard in order to dislodge the stubborn housing bubble. They are trying to reduce inflation. The housing bubble certainly played a part, but inflation was hitting nearly everything. A big concern here, is that many smart people think a fair bit of that inflation was due to COVID related supply chain disruptions (which still persist, see China and COV…

To visualize how much of an outlier this "recession" already is, just look at bond vs stock returns since 1871: https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2022-12/50a56fbc-65fc-4... 2022 was the worst performing year ever for bonds and among the worst-10 for stocks -- we've never been this deep in the "negative returns across sectors" quadrant as we are right now, and there's no clear indication or catalyst to suggest we'r…

Good lord that is gloomy. Thanks for sharing

Re: Flexport slashes 20% of global workforce over weak 2023 volume forecast

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FED is currently raising rates to fight inflation. One of the FED's main goals is slowing down demand, as policymakers can't control supply. So, to fight that elevated inflation they are killing demand, and when demand sharply drops, you can't keep paying your workers as before (because you sell less goods!). Moreover, companies simply got fat during the pandemic and over hired. I mean, there are probably also a…

Another impact of rising rates and declining demand is decreased credit lines and increased costs. The world, particularly business in the US, really did get used to cheap borrowing for everything. Using a line of credit for everything or acquiring massive amounts of easy to service debt has been basically a standard business practice for the last 20 years. I am actually surprised things haven't imploded yet. So many…

I mean, we have seen this before. This is particularly classic in retail, with a lot of overleveraged expansion of new locations by both department and big box stores in the US.

Some dominoes took longer to fall than others (Circuit City was fast, Sears took half a century)

Re: Flexport slashes 20% of global workforce over weak 2023 volume forecast

#158

Remember when everyone cut jobs and canceled orders at the beginning of the pandemic and it really bit them? I'm like 49% sure that's going to happen again. Something funny is in the air.

I wonder if this is what drove a lot of pandemic hiring. A bunch of companies froze their hiring in March-April (some did layoffs), realized they made a mistake, and in the Summer went on a hiring spree. A bull-whip effect, but for employment.

Places with a brick and mortar aspect to their business had major cutbacks. Anything tech related blew up right from the start.

Re: Flexport slashes 20% of global workforce over weak 2023 volume forecast

#159

A global recession is coming against a backdrop of the Fed raising rates, that is going to be very painful. A lot of people here don't seem to realise this is the case or are in denial. This is a bubble bursting, this is serious. Lots of companies are laying off workers or at least freezing hiring because they anticipate earnings cratering, or are already seeing it happen. They haven't reported on it yet, but they wi…

As far as I can tell, layoffs seem concentrated among high-earning folks - I can definitely see how anyone browsing HN would think we're headed straight for a recession. But it seems like overall, and especially in lower-wage jobs, employment is still humming along and people are very much not getting laid off. That actually really gives me hope for a soft landing - those high-wage folks are much less likely to have…

This is a good point that I had not previously considered.

Inflation has been pretty stubborn. I assume some of that is coming from supply chain issues, but some of it also could be due to higher-earning households not being as price sensitive as they would have been in previous eras. i.e. a Google engineer is not going to really notice or care that milk is 50% more expensive. They might not even notice or care that their new car now costs $40k instead of $30k. Their annual stock options probably fluctuate by that much on a daily basis. That level of economic comfort used to be the exclusive purview of the professional class, i.e. doctors, lawyers, etc... But the tech boom has expanded that class (upper middle, lower rich?) considerably.

Will be interesting to see if this is the straw that can break the inflation camel. Overall, I am getting the impression that these layoff announcements, while grabbing headlines, are not very indicative of the market at large. But it does seem like they are picking up steam, and of course, these things can also reinforce each other. For example when you let go of 10% of your staff, that means you also reduce your per-seat SAAS software spend, and that money was someone else's revenue.

Anyways, I am rooting for a soft landing but still feel like these things are too hard to control. Would be nice if we could just let some air out of the more bubbly parts of the economy while keeping everything else chugging along. Previous recessions usually result in those who can least afford it getting hit the hardest, so a change of pace on that front would be welcome. Fingers crossed.

Re: Flexport slashes 20% of global workforce over weak 2023 volume forecast

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it seems like overall, and especially in lower-wage jobs, employment is still humming along and people are very much not getting laid off. There will not be a soft landing. When has there ever been a soft landing and how would raising rates into a recession ever result in one? Raising rates takes 1 year to come through to the real economy - we haven't even seen the impact yet, only on stock prices which foreshado…

> There will not be a soft landing. The reality is we cannot see the future of our incredibly complex, ever-changing economy. Sure, this hasn't happened in the past, but on the other hand the economy today is vastly different than it was even fifty years ago. Not to say we couldn't end in a recession - of course that is a distinct possibility - but the reality is that we don't have a ton of history to draw on when it…

I don't short stocks, but I would not buy the US market at the moment. There will be bear market rallies but I do think this is still a bear market and will take years to play out.

High interest rates causing unemployment and reducing investment is the lever they will use to defeat inflation, it's very very hard to get right and the Fed has a long track record of getting it absolutely wrong (including over the last decade when they stoked a massive asset bubble in the US and all sorts of crazy behaviour like NFTs and crypto speculation). I suspect they will get it wrong this time too.

The Fed created this bubble (and arguably others since 2000) with loose monetary policy, and now they're trying to kill it with tight monetary policy - what could possibly go wrong!

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