Carvana laid off 2,500 employees today via a pre-recorded message through zoom
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Re: Carvana laid off 2,500 employees today via a pre-recorded message through zoom
#2Note that for legal reasons many of the layoff announcements are HEAVILY scripted. It's possible that the "pre-recorded" message was a teleprompter read or something else that does not allow a lot of back and forth.
There are so many causes for legal action these days the announcements in general have to be very bland.
Note I forget who it was, but there was a post or short video a while back predicting exactly this - 10% layoffs. Some driven by sales, others by companies using the cover of the economy to drop folks they'd like to have rotated out etc. This sounds superficially sales related, but don't know how carvana is doing to judge
Re: Carvana laid off 2,500 employees today via a pre-recorded message through zoom
#3How has Carvana been doing over the past year? They focused on reducing the friction in buying/selling used cars, right?
I wonder if they could have suffered from the supply crunch. Last I checked, 5-year-old Corollas were pushing $20k, and a new base model is about the same price.
Anecdotally, I checked Carvana and local dealers when I was looking for a car recently, because I usually buy $5k beaters and drive them into the ground. This time, it didn't make sense to risk a lemon when I could get a bumper-to-bumper warranty for the same price. So I waited until I could find something new at MSRP, and that was that.
Re: Carvana laid off 2,500 employees today via a pre-recorded message through zoom
#4Did they comply with the WARN Act? I wonder how the "single employment site" is applied to remote workers? Perhaps it's one unforeseen "benefit" of working from the office?
Re: Carvana laid off 2,500 employees today via a pre-recorded message through zoom
#5How has Carvana been doing over the past year? They focused on reducing the friction in buying/selling used cars, right? I wonder if they could have suffered from the supply crunch. Last I checked, 5-year-old Corollas were pushing $20k, and a new base model is about the same price. Anecdotally, I checked Carvana and local dealers when I was looking for a car recently, because I usually buy $5k beaters and drive them…
I sold a car to them the other day that was 10 years old for 18k.
I dont think inventory is their issue, but rather the fact they are a lender more than a dealer. They just make a lot of questionable loans and repackage them for sale, sort of.
Re: Carvana laid off 2,500 employees today via a pre-recorded message through zoom
#6I went to our new Carvana in Houston last week to see it work. The security guard type who was on duty was almost openly hostile. There was no acknowledgement that I might be a current or future customer. How would he know?
This person was so unpleasant, I decided on the spot I would never buy a car from them, no matter how cool the vending machine or how great the deal.
Having worked in car sales and finance, I can tell you this is a big mistake. If Carvana's plan is to replace dealership staff with a robot and a security guard, then they will soon be out of business.
Re: Carvana laid off 2,500 employees today via a pre-recorded message through zoom
#7The tweet doesn't make it clear, but are these remote or on-site employees? If remote, while cold, I don't see the issue with a remote notification.
Re: Carvana laid off 2,500 employees today via a pre-recorded message through zoom
#8The tweet doesn't make it clear, but are these remote or on-site employees? If remote, while cold, I don't see the issue with a remote notification.
I have been laid off once in my career. Wasn't a big surprise since it was the 4th round of layoffs and the company was in the middle of a financial scandal. All employees were onsite and the layoffs all occurred via a scripted conference call. HR folks distributed the document packets in person but would not speak except to say they were not allowed to say anything to us.
Re: Carvana laid off 2,500 employees today via a pre-recorded message through zoom
#9How has Carvana been doing over the past year? They focused on reducing the friction in buying/selling used cars, right? I wonder if they could have suffered from the supply crunch. Last I checked, 5-year-old Corollas were pushing $20k, and a new base model is about the same price. Anecdotally, I checked Carvana and local dealers when I was looking for a car recently, because I usually buy $5k beaters and drive them…
Seven months ago they were "thriving".
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28733634
Stock now down over 90% from high.
Re: Carvana laid off 2,500 employees today via a pre-recorded message through zoom
#10How has Carvana been doing over the past year? They focused on reducing the friction in buying/selling used cars, right? I wonder if they could have suffered from the supply crunch. Last I checked, 5-year-old Corollas were pushing $20k, and a new base model is about the same price. Anecdotally, I checked Carvana and local dealers when I was looking for a car recently, because I usually buy $5k beaters and drive them…
A friend of mine was in the market for new(used) car and was shopping offers for his old car and Carvana was the highest by a significant margin while Carmax effectively told him "thanks but we've got used vehicles coming out our ears". This was also shortly after the whole Zillow/Opendoor debacle - we started talking about how ridiculous it was that they were offering so much for a depreciating asset, plus covering storage and transporation costs and all the other attendant overhead. He opened a short position and I think closed it after he made about 4x or 5x his initial investment (I think they were at like 70 dollars per share at the time).