Flexport slashes 20% of global workforce over weak 2023 volume forecast • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by AYBABTME » Thu, Jan 12, 2023, 8:01 AM UTC

qqqwerty wrote: post #167

AYBABTME wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With China dropping its zero-covid policy, I think we're realistically on the way out. However there's no avoiding that we need to pay for 2-3 years of lost global productivity. I mean picture yourself stopping work for 2-3y with zero planning, living on debt and pretending like nothing happened. At some point the bills come due.

I am not sure what to think about China. Dropping the zero-covid policy feels like just the start. They still might go through a couple of waves of covid before things get back to normal. Or things could snap back fairly quick, hard to predict. Another factor working its way through the system is the "reshoring" of manufacturing. A lot of companies gave up on China and are moving their manufacturing to other countrie…

I think at least the China situation or lack of manufacturing capacity will resolve itself by the end of the year. Reshoring will change things but I think over the next 2-3y, making it so that overall the big turbulence we live now goes down slowly until the end of the year and then stabilizes at a higher inflation rate than expected (3-4-5% out of my magic hat), but not as wild as now.

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

#242

Post by grey-area » Thu, Jan 12, 2023, 8:08 AM UTC

themitigating wrote: post #180

grey-area wrote: post #138

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…

"Unemployment is the goal of this Fed policy - that is the point - cause unemployment so that inflation goes away." Why would this be a goal?

It’s the only lever the Fed has, so that is what they can use. They don’t have control of fiscal policy only monetary.

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

#243

Post by pharmakom » Thu, Jan 12, 2023, 8:32 AM UTC

deltree7 wrote: post #238

themitigating wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But technology is replacing entry level jobs Self checkout, food delivery robots, robotic waitresses, etc.

They are not. It's easy to build an AI that write code than to build an AI that change sheets

I don’t think we know that yet. GPT is less capable than StackOverflow, and a service like that using cheap human labour has not yet replaced programmers. In the absence of AI that can write code or change sheets how can we know?

Meanwhile, farm automation has flipped the overall percentage of labour force from >90% farm to <10%

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

#244

Post by refurb » Thu, Jan 12, 2023, 10:24 AM UTC

Spartan-S63 wrote: post #193

grey-area wrote: post #138

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…

I really wish we had other tools than the Fed at our disposal. Legislation could be passed to create surtaxes on profits that exceed the current rate of inflation to help curb the inflation spiral. Likewise, we could pass legislation restricting the ability of private banks to grant lines of credit (so as to shrink the money supply on the supply-side rather than the demand-side). Either way, it would be nice to see t…

Likewise, we could pass legislation restricting the ability of private banks to grant lines of credit

That’s already happening. Bank reserves are being tightened up. Plus banks do that anyways when economic outlook looks poor.

I think it would be terrible to legislate any of this. The fed is already under enough political pressure.

Can you image politicians trying to control the economy? They’d screw it up for sure.

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

#245

Post by refurb » Thu, Jan 12, 2023, 10:27 AM UTC

Spartan-S63 wrote: post #194

yebyen wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is I think that inflation is caused by too much money supply in circulation, caused by overemployment, and the only cure for that is less employment. It's a lot like how inflation and deflation are two sides of the same coin, but you wouldn't "root for deflation" because that's just the opposite extreme – Fed doesn't want everyone to lose their jobs, "just a healthy amount"

This the reality because there's no political will for Congress to act, so we're left the Fed to implement anti-inflationary measures. A sufficiently empowered legislature might attack this on the supply-side so that nominal increases in wages could become real increases in wages while discouraging the supply-side from increasing prices to rent-seek those nominally increased wages. It sucks, but it is what it is. The…

Price controls were tried in the 70’s and it failed spectacularly and often led to shortages. We had almost a decade of stagflation - poor economic performance AND inflation.

It wasn’t until the fed took control of the money supply in the late 70’s did inflation get under control.

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

#246

Post by blippage » Thu, Jan 12, 2023, 11:21 AM UTC

SilverBirch wrote: post #111

dakiol wrote: post #86

Perhaps I'm naive, but I think companies are doing massive layoffs these days because of some sort of "domino effect". There are companies out there who would love to lay off half their staff, but in regular times they couldn't just do it (because it wasn't a common thing, and makes them look "bad"... everyone would protest). But since nowadays every damn company is doing massive layoffs (and not unknown companies, b…

This is literally what interest rate hikes are meant to do though, and everyone plays along. You hike rates, which switches people to saving instead of spending, since no one is spending companies cut costs and downsize instead of spend for growth and hey presto, demand collapses. In a cheap money environment you take the money and you gamble for growth, in an expensive money environment you do your best to run lean.…

> In a cheap money environment you take the money and you gamble for growth,

It's a classical Austrian economists nightmare. The argument is that cheap money stimulates malinvestment. That is to say that corporate projects that would not have made adequate returns on capital under normal circumstances seem to look feasible.

It's all fun and games until the tide turns, and then the whole edifice collapses like a house of cards because it was built on shaky premises that no longer hold.

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

#247

Post by nsonha » Thu, Jan 12, 2023, 3:15 PM UTC

This is one of those companies that were always hiring when I checked HN's jobs page. Honestly I thought they seemed like they have trouble hiring, but good for them that at least they've hired enough to get to the point they need a reduction.

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

#248

Post by RC_ITR » Thu, Jan 12, 2023, 4:45 PM UTC

themitigating wrote: post #183

RC_ITR wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One interesting concept is that falling inequality will look exactly like this. Wealthy people have gotten used to increasing the gap and therefore assume that trouble at the top is much worse below. But what’s actually panning out is that Internet technology is great at replacing white collar jobs and awful at replacing blue collar jobs (I don’t think electricians are losing sleep over ChatGPT).

But technology is replacing entry level jobs Self checkout, food delivery robots, robotic waitresses, etc.

I would actually very strongly disagree with that assertion.

Delivery robots are limited to certain college campuses, robotic waitresses are far from the mainstream, and self-checkout appears to still need 1-2 workers manning it for loss-prevention/general help.

Meanwhile, Robotic Process Automation is gutting the "I download a PDF and transcribe it to Excel" worker category at banks.

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

#249

Post by themagician » Thu, Jan 12, 2023, 9:31 PM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #157

themagician wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I'm seeing this right now in retail, actually. Particularly retail that got snapped up during the pandemic by private equity which already had high levels of debt. They are opening new stores left and right… and their expansion seems unabated by recent rate hikes. I have to imagine that can not last forever.

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

#250

Post by makestuff » Thu, Jan 12, 2023, 10:35 PM UTC

gdulli wrote: post #142

makestuff wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My roommate worked at a freight forwarder, but from what he told me, the entire thing is a mess of excel spreadsheets and highly inefficient. I think the pitch of flexport is what if we modernize the technology and make it more efficient by reducing or removing the need of all of these people managing the forwarding via excel.

If you asked me whether I've seen more net inefficiency in my life resulting from underengineering with Excel-like workflows vs. overengineering through the "best" software engineering practices at a given time I really don't know if I could say.

Flexport's success/failure will be a good datapoint into this.