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Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce

cnbc.com

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Re: Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce

#21

Post by choppaface »

mtmail wrote: post #18
kibwen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

That's more of a tantrum move than a financial strategy move. It would likely have saved the company money of these two stayed on to help with the post-layoff chaos and prepare for the next round where they'd then depart and be done. That said, maybe their golden parachutes were large enough they opted to leave.

Re: Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce

#22

Post by renewiltord »

Checks out. He hired a many person company guy to take over his few person company. The many person company guy tried to make the few person company a many person company. He then went to Burning Man. On hella psychedelics, he had the full realization that his tweet quality tended to zero after he decided on content marketing to pump up his Founder's Fund deal flow which should be near infinite in the first place and that his FF work is not as important as his company. So he came back from Burning Man to his company and fired the many person company guy he got and decided to take the reins and run it like he would: lean and green.

I'm positive this is what happened and you can't make me believe anything else.

Re: Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce

#23

Post by gogogo_allday »

throwaway5959 wrote: post #9

This 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?

Flexport is commonly discussed here because it’s a ycombinator company and brands itself as a tech company.

Re: Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce

#24

Post by todoG »

supernova87a wrote: post #15
dangus wrote: post #8

Apparently 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.

[flagged]

Re: Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce

#25

Post by peyton »

dangus wrote: post #8

Apparently 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 about the other 80%? That’s what, 250k per? Not a lot of runway.

Re: Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce

#26

Post by nitwit005 »

throwaway5959 wrote: post #9

This 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?

Flexport made a large number of hiring posts on this site, so most people here have presumably heard of them.

Re: Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce

#27

Post by pjd7 »

imran-iq wrote: post #10

So shopify cut its logistics to flexport, who are now cutting 20% of its company. Must be really shitty to anyone unlucky enough to go through that :(

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/flexport-to-launch-eastern...

The leasing or contracts on the air freight must be a bit of a problem if shopify has trimmed their business to flexport. Probably needs to free up cashflow to cover the expenses.

Wonder how the % of business shopify was for flexport.

Re: Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce

#28

Post by frellus »

Ouch, after a prior 20% cut in January.

https://www.flexport.com/blog/flexport-co-ceos-note-to-emplo...

Layoffs suck, they drain the moral when things are already hard and negative feeling. This is why it's critical to celebrate wins as often as being transparent about disappointing news.

Re: Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce

#29

Post by addicted »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #12
aranw wrote: post #6

Flexport 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 de…

The major red flag to me appears to be the fact that they couldn’t beat Amazon to a logistics contract with Shopify.

It seems a lot of these actions followed that failure.

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