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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

#71

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

gogogo_allday wrote: post #23
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.

The main reason I know Flexport exists is because up until probably a year or two ago there was constantly a Flexport is Hiring being promoted on the front page of HN. Either it’s unprecedented growth or there’s some turnover requiring that level of constant posting. Starting to uncover that it might have been the latter

Re: Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce

#73

Post by antonvs »

paulddraper wrote: post #54
pdntspa wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that, but I think these hiring posts should allow comments. It is suspicious to me that they don't. If these companies are truly as great a place to work as they claim to be, then they should be able to very easily defend that in a comment thread. The silence from a lack of discussion on these hiring posts is deafeaning.

Are there comment sections on linked in jobs? Indeed? Of course not don't be silly

Neither of those are discussion sites.

The real issue is one of expectations: those kind of job ads are shoehorned into the site’s format, but then seem out of place because they don’t offer one of the most basic and central features that this site offers.

Re: Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce

#74

Post by paulddraper »

antonvs wrote: post #73
paulddraper wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there comment sections on linked in jobs? Indeed? Of course not don't be silly

Neither of those are discussion sites. The real issue is one of expectations: those kind of job ads are shoehorned into the site’s format, but then seem out of place because they don’t offer one of the most basic and central features that this site offers.

LinkedIn is as much a discussion site as this

Re: Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce

#75

Post by smartbit »

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?

A major competitor is Maersk Go started [0] as Twill https://maersk.com/twill. After Sanne Manders [1] in 2014 left BCG for startup Flexport, BCG went to the board of Maersk and explained them about the upcoming competitor of Damco https://maersk.com/damco. Maersk and Berlin based BCG Digital Ventures https://bcgdv.com subsequently co-founded Twill in the summer of 2016, initially in Berlin and in march 2017 moved to The Hague across the street of Damco headquarters.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20220807165943/https://www.twill...

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/in/sannemanders

Re: Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce

#76

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

teraflop wrote: post #49
pdntspa wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Flexport is hiring" posts were popping up like weeds here on HN for a while. And they never allow comments, which I found to be highly suspicious.

"We're hiring" ads from YC companies get special placement on the front page, and (AFAIK) they always have comments turned off. Nothing nefarious about that.

I’ve been frequenting here for perhaps 5-6 years both lurking and posting and no one other company as far as I can tell has even remotely made as many “X is Hiring” posts as Flexport. Maybe Smarking. I bet it’s possible to pull numbers to prove me wrong but my memory at least says that Flexport is a specific outlier in terms of how many times they have posted vs other YC companies

Re: Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce

#77

Post by supernova87a »

DannyPage wrote: post #43
supernova87a wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> And by the way, 9 weeks of severance on pretty good tech job salaries is far richer than many get. It's drastically shorter than their cohort of tech companies, which is the comparison they sell themselves as. Between that and the rescinded offers, if they do ever make it out of this trough, they'll have a hard reputation to shake and have to pay up with signing bonuses.

Possibly. But personally, I don't think the generosity of any severance package is a deal-breaking factor in most people's decisions to work for a company or not. Or for most people getting a job offer, that the company has reneged on some recent offers -- there are far more fundamental questions than those specific actions.

Re: Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce

#78

Post by hef19898 »

dshibarshin wrote: post #66

Unfortunate, yet unsurprising. I always looked to Flexport to drive the logistics industry forward, but they are still limited by the extreme inefficiencies between ocean carriers, customs brokers, warehouses and truckers. There’s no standardized data format that can be handed off at each step without human involvement. It would be optimal to have an algorithm handle the ocean freight, import clearance, and booking t…

Not really sure what you are talking about. The standardized data format, one that works from Rotterdam to the Gobi desert, is paper. These papers are standardized for sea and air freight world wide, road paper work is stanardized e.g. across Europe.

There are systems that link all those parties together, available as SaaS of the shelf, and used by giants like DHL.

What people don't see, tech only gets you that far in logistics until information disparity and people-business problems hit you.

Re: Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce

#79

Post by ZephyrBlu »

florin_g wrote: post #56
SteveNuts wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's stopping you from doing this since it's incredibly lucrative?

I mark it up. I am a builder. The point is, you need to bring measurable value.

Tech companies are structurally different to the plumbing/building business, you can't make this comparison.

Plumbing and building have static value. They will always do the same thing. The value of code is highly dependent on the context. SWEs are highly paid because they can create systems which can be reused and built upon over time.

Hiring an engineer to build a system doesn't make sense when it handles $0 in GMV, but makes a lot of sense when it handles millions in GMV. Tech companies are asymmetric bets.

Re: Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce

#80

Post by red-iron-pine »

paulddraper wrote: post #74
antonvs wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither of those are discussion sites. The real issue is one of expectations: those kind of job ads are shoehorned into the site’s format, but then seem out of place because they don’t offer one of the most basic and central features that this site offers.

LinkedIn is as much a discussion site as this

corporate virtue signaling is not commentary
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