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Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

bloomberg.com

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Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#311

Post by Ensorceled »

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.

I've been part of several failed startups ... they ALL provided severance during shutdown. Where is the "obviously" coming from here? You only can't pay severance if you are shutting down because you "ran out the clock" on a clearly failing venture and deliberately screwed your employees.

Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#312

Post by jghn »

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…

In the 2001 DotCom downturn a friend worked at a company where they were informed that the paycheck they had received the prior month was the last payment they'd get. So not only no severance, etc but they also worked a few weeks gratis.

Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#314

Post by [deleted] »

busterarm wrote: post #281
conjecTech wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the worst take I have ever seen. This company just raised $250 million. That is more money than 99% of companies will ever have in the bank. Being a "startup" does not given you license to wantonly play with your employees' lives and wellbeing. As the quote from Dalton above shows, there are norms around these things which companies 1/100 this size regularly abide by. This is not normal behavior for any compa…

They raised $260 million and had at their peak 1500 employees. Think for a moment how far $260 million gets you when you have 1500 tech employee salaries in Seattle to pay. Plus operating expenses. Don't forget to add 15.3% for payroll tax. Median software engineer compensation in Seattle is 219k. Infrastructure and office space isn't free either. Seattle office space averages $43/sqft and the average employee space…

[deleted]

Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#315

Post by hluska »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #300
webdood90 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> to validate what is essentially poor leadership We don't have enough information to know if it was reckless leadership. If the CEO had an email from a reputable lender saying we'll have funds in your bank account in two weeks, it would have been irresponsible for him to shut down the company to pay off creditors, preferred shareholders and severances. I'm not advocating for the CEO. Just against condemning him whil…

You responded to that with even more mental gymnastics - this time a ‘reputable lender’ who will jump in with an emergency loan then run off.

Then you’ve thrown in another red herring claiming this thread argues that tech workers should have more options. Nobody said anything close. Rather, the argument is that letting your company run down to zero is irresponsible.

Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#316

Post by sb8244 »

in_cahoots wrote: post #295
jt2190 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Bloomberg they had a headcount of 1500 at their peak, so assuming that USD 1000000 gets you 5 employees for a year, USD 26000000 would get you 1300 employees for a year. (That’s a lot of hand waving on my part but overall the amount of money burned doesn’t seem mysterious)

You’re off by a factor of 10: it’s $260 million, not $26 million. So that’s 13k employees using your conversion rate.

I think it's clear they forgot the 0, given that 5*250=1250

Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#317

Post by busterarm »

omginternets wrote: post #310
busterarm wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So he already put up and risked his personal money to even start this venture and it failed and you're saying he should continue to lose money on a failed investment even though these people will receive unemployment insurance that his business already paid tax into to fund? Startups are risky and even though you work at one, I don't think they're for you. There's plenty of other union labor jobs with pensions out th…

>Startups are risky and even though you work at one, I don't think they're for you. Fortunately, there are many startups whose leadership is prosocial enough to try to offset some of the risk to its employees. Since you seem like a Chicago School kinda guy, I'll put it in terms I think you can understand: employment is a market , and I am fortunate enough to have a optionality. It's bizarre that you fail to recognize…

Fortunately most employers are waking up to the fact that they don't want to hire the types of employees who are prone to put a gun to their head.

They're shitty coworkers too.

Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#318

Post by bhhaskin »

sangnoir wrote: post #254
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> You don't know it's doomed. It's swell when people gamble with employees well-being on the miniscule odds of a miracle. And even better idea is to offer severance, and those employees with the same appetite for risk can get additional options from the folks who leave. That'd be a win/win, except for the leadership who would rather gamble using other peoples chips but keep most of the winnings. > Everyone who lost t…

That is the risk of working at a startup as an employee though. If you aren't willing to take that risk don't work at a startup.

Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#319

Post by MaxHoppersGhost »

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…

Ah yes, won't someone think of the software engineers who are making 3x-6x the median household income of Americans.

Re: Trucking startup Convoy closes operations with no buyer

#320

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]
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