from Hacker News

Flexport is laying off 20% of its workforce

by codex_irl on 10/12/23, 10:03 PM with 79 comments

  • by throwaway5959 on 10/12/23, 10:58 PM

    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?

  • by renewiltord on 10/12/23, 11:32 PM

    Checks out. He hired a many person company guy to take over his few person company. The many person company guy tried to make the few person company a many person company. He then went to Burning Man. On hella psychedelics, he had the full realization that his tweet quality tended to zero after he decided on content marketing to pump up his Founder's Fund deal flow which should be near infinite in the first place and that his FF work is not as important as his company. So he came back from Burning Man to his company and fired the many person company guy he got and decided to take the reins and run it like he would: lean and green.

    I'm positive this is what happened and you can't make me believe anything else.

  • by frellus on 10/12/23, 11:46 PM

    Ouch, after a prior 20% cut in January.

    https://www.flexport.com/blog/flexport-co-ceos-note-to-emplo...

    Layoffs suck, they drain the moral when things are already hard and negative feeling. This is why it's critical to celebrate wins as often as being transparent about disappointing news.

  • by xebus on 10/12/23, 10:41 PM

    It seems odd to use the term “departing Flexporters” as the identity of those employees who are being let go.

  • by imran-iq on 10/12/23, 10:59 PM

    So shopify cut its logistics to flexport, who are now cutting 20% of its company. Must be really shitty to anyone unlucky enough to go through that :(

  • by dshibarshin on 10/13/23, 1:06 AM

    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 the warehouse and trucker to handle it from there.

    Maersk took a shot at a standardized data system and called it quits due to limited support. But Maersk does have a platform offering realtime rates on container bookings on their own vessels, import clearance, and trucking through their platform. I believe other carriers like MSC and ONE-Line are following this approach to get their customers on board.

    What’s promising is that if one major carrier does succeed with a standardized data process, they can more easily integrate it within the ocean carrier alliance that they are part of. The 3 major ocean carrier alliances control 83% of global capacity. This seems like a more straightforward way to take a stab at setting a standard for millions of containers moving worldwide. Large companies would plug in and to manage their supply chains using their logistics suite, and smaller companies would simply use the ocean carriers dashboards.

    For now it appears that it’s still cheaper to hire from the worldwide supply of low paid logistics workers than it is to get everyone on a unified system.

  • by Aeolun on 10/13/23, 12:43 AM

    At some point I had a good impression of Flexport (right when they were starting out). It was a bit ruined after a call with a recruiter about their tech practices, but the public news just takes the cake.

  • by toomuchtodo on 10/12/23, 10:07 PM

  • by dangus on 10/12/23, 10:56 PM

    Apparently they’ll have a billion in net cash after this change, which is over a million dollars per “departing flexporter.”

    And yet the employees get a barebones 9 week severance.

    Lame.

  • by aranw on 10/12/23, 10:52 PM

    Flexport were advertising for roles on HN a few months ago. I'm sure they come up regularly for roles?

  • by kyleee on 10/13/23, 3:09 AM

    They’re just righting the ship

  • by formvoltron on 10/12/23, 10:47 PM

    do they make much money? and what sort of moat do they have?

  • by ChrisMarshallNY on 10/12/23, 10:30 PM

    Oof.

    Friday the 13th.

  • by EduardoBautista on 10/12/23, 10:54 PM

    > I evaluated every role in the company and its relationship to solving important supply chain problems for our customers

    And somehow that ended up with the nice round number of 20%.