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0 pointsJumpCrisscross2y ago0 comments

> 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 while in the maelstrom. More fundamentally, there is a thread through this discussion which essentially holds that tech workers--we're highly paid!--should have post-termination benefits others don't.

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hluska2y ago

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.

JumpCrisscrossOP2y ago

If the hypothetical of terms on the table for a loan is a red herring, so is the supposition that management had months of visibility into their demise.

Convoy wasn't a pure software business. It didn't operate on massive gross margins; it was operationally (and financially) levered. Decades-old trucking companies are going down unexpectedly; I'm not sure why HN's armchair executives figure they could have called this cleaner.

FireBeyond2y ago

At least two ex-Convoy employees have posted in this thread saying they are "extremely unsurprised" that this happened, and could see it coming.

Handwaving away things like you have doesn't add value - many of us have worked at startups, and the warning signs are common and repeated. A handwaving dismissal along the lines of "plenty of companies have turned things around at the last moment, running on fumes, so it would have been irresponsible for Convoy to do anything but run it to zero!" is disingenuous, fatuous or both.

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