Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer • Hacker News Board

Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#271

Post by actionablefiber » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 9:06 PM UTC

vogt wrote: post #55

wooly_bully wrote: post #11

(Ex-)Convoy engineer here. No mystery as to why this happened, sudden tight market and low available capital demolished us. External reasons given in the article were the same we knew and couldn't do anything about considering that none of the M&A options materialized. Detailed the shutdown on a call at 8:30am Pacific this morning. CEO said there'll be no severance or healthcare. Lot of talented folks in Seattle and…

>CEO said there'll be no severance or healthcare. Classy. Learning a lot about how certain people treat their employees during these last couple of admittedly insane years. Good for future reference, I guess - though not much solace now. I feel for the employees. Edit: Wow, more responses than I thought! I admit that the tone of my comment was too reactionary, but my opinion stands. I won't modify the original commen…

What’s the “Very Bad” scenario? Limited liability stops being limited?

Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#272

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 9:06 PM UTC

andlarry wrote: post #249

llm_nerd wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think having discrete programs for subsets of the population is single-payer. Single-payer to my understanding means that the health system itself has a single payer. Having the government pay for some patients and a myriad of insurance plans covering the bulk of other patients is not single payer. As they said, it is bizarre the lengths the US will go to to maintain its layered system. It seems purpose built…

We do not have universal single-payer but we have a few very large government-run single-payer systems. If you have an example of a country with a single program that has more effective outcomes for a population of similar makeup and size, that would be a useful comparison.

A significant administrative cost benefit to single payer is not having to identify the correct payer, do coordination of benefits, etc.

With multiple “single-payer” systems in the same population (often serving overlapping populations with each other and private health insurance) you've negated that benefit.

You’ve also negated the market power advantage of monopsony purchasing by having multiple of them, and again having them coexist with private health insurance.

(And that's even before considering that while Medicare and some state Medicaid plans have single payer components, Medicare is not a single-payer plan covering the listed number of beneficiaries, but instead just under half are in the single-payer traditional Medicare, and that Medicaid isn't a single payer plan, or even a plan, at all, its a funding mechanism for state-operated plans, each of which may or may not operate entirely as a state-level single-payer plan.)

Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#273

Post by mikeryan » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 9:07 PM UTC

benced wrote: post #72

vogt wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>CEO said there'll be no severance or healthcare. Classy. Learning a lot about how certain people treat their employees during these last couple of admittedly insane years. Good for future reference, I guess - though not much solace now. I feel for the employees. Edit: Wow, more responses than I thought! I admit that the tone of my comment was too reactionary, but my opinion stands. I won't modify the original commen…

Ex-Convoy employee here: if a company is shutting down, it obviously can't provide severance. It's not a matter of class or not.

They had two months of salary and healthcare two months ago. That’s the time to cut bait.

Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#274

Post by gumballindie » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 9:07 PM UTC

thegginthesky wrote: post #74

I work for one of their competitors and I can empathize with them. My thoughts goes to all the employees and their families. The Freight business is collapsing after an unrealistic high during the pandemic. Since April 2022, revenue per load has decreased to about 70%, this means less ways to generate a profit under the same headcount. We also saw a decrease in volume as companies overstocked and consumer spending ha…

> consumer spending has shrunk

Part of the reason being that workers have been ordered back to offices, meaning a significant portion of their income is spent on commute and eating out. Crazy how damaging rto is to everything around us.

Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#275

Post by dudul » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 9:07 PM UTC

robocat wrote: post #148

emgeee wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dang, no severance or healthcare is really brutal and signals to me they probably should have called it earlier.

Probably to fix that would need legislation specific to start-ups. I would hope most employees know that is a significant risk of working at a startup?! But yes, harsh, regardless of how predictable.

A better fix would be for people to see their health insurance divorced from their employer. That would actually greatly benefit startups and be one step back from corporate serfdom.

Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#276

Post by webdood90 » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 9:08 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #236

sangnoir wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they can do this, they can pay salaries another month If leadership decides to use the remaining funds on salaries rather than severance - then they should be judged on that! What good is buying one extra month for a doomed company? That month is more valuable to individual employees who can use it to look for new jobs

> What good is buying one extra month for a doomed company? You don't know it's doomed. Plenty of companies have turned around while running on fumes. This is fundamental to start-ups. > month is more valuable to individual employees who can use it to look for new jobs Everyone who lost their jobs at Convoy is eligible for unemployment. The same unemployment most workers get when they're fired. Perhaps the discussion…

> Perhaps the discussion should be around improving this benefit for everyone?

Red herring

You're participating in mental gymnastics to validate what is essentially poor leadership. Why?

Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#277

Post by toast0 » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 9:08 PM UTC

hotpotamus wrote: post #65

dragonwriter wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COBRA isn't employer-paid healthcare, its an ex-employee option to pay for the previously-employer-offered plan, while the employer offers a plan to current employees . If there are no more company operations and no current employees, there is also no plan and no COBRA. This could also be an issue if a company restructured so it didn't have to offer employees health care because of size or everyone being part time or…

You know, it's rather impressive the lengths the US will goto to avoid socialized/single-payer health plans (for anyone who isn't in the military or poor or over 65 at least). That sounds rather cockamamy to me.

I don't think military medical coverage really counts as single payer; it's an in-house employer plan, it's just that the employer is the federal government. Just because the federal government is paying for it, doesn't make it single payer.

Re: medicare, I think a reasonable way towards universal single payer (or whatever you call medicare advantage plans, as a sibling notes) would be to drop the eligibility age over many years, and eventually get full coverage; and at the same time, add all kids to medicaid. Ex: years 1-10, reduce medicare eligibity age by 1, have medicaid cover kids less than year number; after ten years, medicare covers you at 55, medicaid covers kids less than 10. Years 11-20, reduce medicare eligibity age by 2, still increase kids by one year per year; after twenty years, medicare covers you at 35, and medicaid covers until 18. Years 21-28?, add medicare one year from both ends, and I think at year 28, everyone is covered. Congress should adjust the rollout schedule regularly, as scaling problems emerge, or don't; if after a couple years it becomes obvious that it's too slow or too fast, it can be adjusted; it'd also work, but be more complicated, to do it on a % basis --- once a year, determine what age (years + months even?) would result in a 1% enrollment increase, and do that, you'll finish before 100 years, but I'm not doing the math to figure out how much sooner.

Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#278

Post by climatekid » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 9:09 PM UTC

vogt wrote: post #55

wooly_bully wrote: post #11

(Ex-)Convoy engineer here. No mystery as to why this happened, sudden tight market and low available capital demolished us. External reasons given in the article were the same we knew and couldn't do anything about considering that none of the M&A options materialized. Detailed the shutdown on a call at 8:30am Pacific this morning. CEO said there'll be no severance or healthcare. Lot of talented folks in Seattle and…

>CEO said there'll be no severance or healthcare. Classy. Learning a lot about how certain people treat their employees during these last couple of admittedly insane years. Good for future reference, I guess - though not much solace now. I feel for the employees. Edit: Wow, more responses than I thought! I admit that the tone of my comment was too reactionary, but my opinion stands. I won't modify the original commen…

Wonder how big of secondaries the founders took

Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#279

Post by omginternets » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 9:09 PM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #269

omginternets wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The series A startup I work for just laid off 30% of its staff. They got 3 months severance, 6 months healthcare and outplacement support. So you could work for Bezos, or you could work for these guys. I've made my choice.

Your series A startup continues to operate and offers a severance that isn't even required for the purposes of reputation management. They want to be able to hire good people tomorrow so they pay you severance today. The company in question here is dead. There is no more money coming in and no business to operate.

I understand what you're saying, but I think you may be missing my point, which is: Jeff Bezos's reputation is damaged by this. I will not work for anything he touches because I don't think he's behaving decently.

Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#280

Post by throwaway9274 » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 9:10 PM UTC

Hopefully the ZIRP idea that dies is that VC and Big Tech can create companies off a conveyer belt.

VCs today go after shiny baubles, like “27 innovators under 27” nonsense, and have forgotten they’re mainly looking for high talent very resilient technical weirdos and any other characteristics are bonus.