5 ms·

Additional information on Dave Clark's impact: "Some Flexport insiders say layoffs and an influx of former Amazon leaders are wrecking morale."[1] '"These peo

Additional information on Dave Clark's impact: "Some Flexport insiders say layoffs and an influx of former Amazon leaders are wrecking morale."[1] '"These people do not have conversations — they make demands," one laid-off employee said. Unsatisfactory answers could be met with harsh feedback, sources said. One laid-off Flexporter said an Amazon veteran told them, "I don't believe a word you're saying," during a presentation they said took months to prepare. Clark was asked at Tuesday's conference whether his Amazon hires meant he wanted to change Flexport's culture. "The only place I've really worked in my life is Amazon. And so I didn't get out much. And I worked in supply chain so most of the people I know are Amazon people," he said. "Turns out Amazon's pretty good at moving stuff around."' See also, the Dave Clark effect at Amazon: "Amazon generally delivers later than competitors. That can be terrifying for some of its drivers"[2]. [1]https://www.businessinsider.com/flexport-layoffs-amazon-leaders-change-culture-dave-clark-2023-3?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/flexport-layoffs-amazon-lead... [2] https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/21/tech/amazon-delivery-night/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/21/tech/amazon-delivery-night/in...

throwaway5959 3y ago
“The only place I've really worked in my life is Amazon. And so I didn't get out much.” Hard pass.
- TX81Z 3y ago
  So many people in leadership at top companies just won the start-up lottery as a junior employee and had the internal drive to get promo at all costs to gradually get to the top. As soon as they leave the bubble it’s clear how few real skills they possess. Likewise, the degree to which Director+ jobs just hire based on current title at a competitor alone is bonkers. I’ve worked under people who are utterly clueless but managed to make VP at the place up the street. So they just get to be a VP at the next place.
  - wombat-man 3y ago
    Sounds rad as hell if you're a VP
  - mkii 3y ago
    This is indeed all too common but sadly not unbelievable. Most mid-to-higher manager roles are not to be effective with a mission necessarily (which would require "real skills"), but instead to hold responsibility over a particular function. If the proverbial storm hits the fan, these Directors/VPs can migrate to another company, bringing all their previous cronies with a nice title/pay bump.
  - tyingq 3y ago
    The key milestones for VP often are - Luck landed them in a leadership spot on a project that was already successful or headed that way - They didn't do anything to abruptly change that course - They are skilled at managing up with the right words, phrases, actions Then, they move up in the chain they are already in, where everything is very familiar. Goes well enough until they move outside that bubble.
  - throwboatyface 3y ago
    Yup. If you got your foot in the door at the right place and people in leadership liked you, you're on the track to be a director in 6-8 years. Usually the people who promoted you were themselves early employees with no experience being executives, who just peter-principled into senior director/VP roles. I've watched these failsons get promoted to senior director/VP, leave before they were ever accountable for their bad decisions, and then bring all their cronies over to the new place at the same levels.
    - ryandrake 3y ago
      If I could go back to the 70s and re-do my character creation, I'd put all my skill points into Charisma and would have been a CEO by now. Why bother with Comp Eng and business degrees if I could have instead just "be liked".
  - jahewson 3y ago
WisNorCan 3y ago
This is the scariest part of the whole article “during a presentation they said took months to prepare.” This sounds like what I would expect in the federal government or IBM. Not a fast growing startup changing the world. I hope Ryan can change this part of the culture or they are dead.
- mhb 3y ago
  Didn't Ryan hire him?
  - WisNorCan 3y ago
    Steve Jobs hired John Sculley III. And then came back to rebuild the company.
- jerglingu 3y ago
  Lines up with the sentiment about Flexport being a tech retirement home
  - psunavy03 3y ago
    Pretty provincial attitude probably propagated by some overpaid MAANG bro who doesn't realize that there's an entire industry of tech folks out there who aren't making $300K/yr TC. So if you are making that . . . a little humility is in order.
    - jerglingu 3y ago
      I indeed was a former “MAANG bro”, but this is sentiment gleaned from both a cohort of former coworkers who had stints there, along with general Flexporter attitude on Blind (which, for its imperfections and distortions, gives pretty good signal on company morale and culture).
      - psunavy03 3y ago
        I'm saying for what you call a "retirement colony," there are dozens of businesses in which the vast majority of the tech industry actually work. Blind is where spoiled rich people complain about being rich in the wrong way.
pknomad 3y ago
I've experienced something similar at Peloton where a C-level kept bringing former reports at Uber for key roles and started to push out the existing employees. It's business at the end of the day but I do think there's a graceful way of bringing people in from former companies.
- dave78 3y ago
  Same thing at my company, only it was a former Microsoft employee who brought along all his buddies. They screwed up a bunch of stuff because they didn't understand our market or customers, and then all slowly got let go before having to contend with the full consequences of their bad decisions. We're now in a multi year recovery process.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    You don't happen to work at Nokia do you? ;)
  - tsunamifury 3y ago
    This hits so hard and so painfully. Had a VP from Amazon come into google Cloud and he seemed to have no clue about the ladder or discipline he was executive over. We had to explain his job to him several times. He was an absolute incompetent in every sense of the word and fired high quality workers the entire time until he himself was fired.
  - tortue0 3y ago
    Felt this too with MSFT folks. I never want to hear "rhythm of the business" again.
  - fuzztester 3y ago
    This practice of bringing in former reports or buddies is very common in the industry, both in startups and established companies. You just have to look at the About us / Management/ Leadership page on the company web site and correlate a few names, current positions and positions in former companies, to get it.
gausswho 3y ago
I don't like to look askance at alumni of particular employers, but I have had one too many a poor experience from ex-Amazon hired into leadership roles. The above matches my experience. For me, the worst casualty as various lackeys followed arrival (also ex-Amazon) was the choking out of candidness. Second worst was turning the company into a document factory.
- mrbonner 3y ago
  You have me at “document factory “. Writing a doc is good to convey your intentions. Revising a doc for the fucking 20 times because of unsettled sentences, paragraphs are a waste of time.
- pottertheotter 3y ago
  Can you elaborate on the document factory part?
  - chef-steph 3y ago
    Not OP, but have worked in a similar situation run by ex-Amazon leadership. Project leaders focus mainly on writing docs on their "ideas". These docs are then spread around to other project and org leaders. Most of their time is spent reading or commenting on these and planning meetings for feedback. Typically the last people to read these documents are engineers who then have to make sense of and build whatever was laid out in the documents. Many times after all this is done the project is then shelved or engineering shuts it down so it was a waste of time. Project managers can then point to these documents as promotion material and take credit for "leadership". Obviously I'm being a bit harsh here and that in no way represents the average - but it is something I've seen too often.
  - wilsynet 3y ago
    Both Amazon and Google have document writing cultures. If you want to propose an idea, you write a doc about it. The value of a doc writing culture is that writing things down encourages rigor and thoughtfulness. Docs can be widely distributed, and you can read it, think about it, and add comments. Exchanging ideas can be asynchronous rather than meeting oriented. But also it can all get a bit carried away (because these artifacts become an important component to promotion). I work at Google, which is a doc culture. But I worked most of my career at startups where we never wrote anything down. Overall, I prefer doc cultures. But yes, left to it’s own devices it can seem like you are working at a doc factory.

throwaway5959 3y ago

“The only place I've really worked in my life is Amazon. And so I didn't get out much.” Hard pass.

TX81Z 3y ago
So many people in leadership at top companies just won the start-up lottery as a junior employee and had the internal drive to get promo at all costs to gradually get to the top. As soon as they leave the bubble it’s clear how few real skills they possess. Likewise, the degree to which Director+ jobs just hire based on current title at a competitor alone is bonkers. I’ve worked under people who are utterly clueless but managed to make VP at the place up the street. So they just get to be a VP at the next place.
- wombat-man 3y ago
  Sounds rad as hell if you're a VP
- mkii 3y ago
  This is indeed all too common but sadly not unbelievable. Most mid-to-higher manager roles are not to be effective with a mission necessarily (which would require "real skills"), but instead to hold responsibility over a particular function. If the proverbial storm hits the fan, these Directors/VPs can migrate to another company, bringing all their previous cronies with a nice title/pay bump.
- tyingq 3y ago
  The key milestones for VP often are - Luck landed them in a leadership spot on a project that was already successful or headed that way - They didn't do anything to abruptly change that course - They are skilled at managing up with the right words, phrases, actions Then, they move up in the chain they are already in, where everything is very familiar. Goes well enough until they move outside that bubble.
- throwboatyface 3y ago
  Yup. If you got your foot in the door at the right place and people in leadership liked you, you're on the track to be a director in 6-8 years. Usually the people who promoted you were themselves early employees with no experience being executives, who just peter-principled into senior director/VP roles. I've watched these failsons get promoted to senior director/VP, leave before they were ever accountable for their bad decisions, and then bring all their cronies over to the new place at the same levels.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    If I could go back to the 70s and re-do my character creation, I'd put all my skill points into Charisma and would have been a CEO by now. Why bother with Comp Eng and business degrees if I could have instead just "be liked".
- jahewson 3y ago

WisNorCan 3y ago

This is the scariest part of the whole article “during a presentation they said took months to prepare.” This sounds like what I would expect in the federal government or IBM. Not a fast growing startup changing the world. I hope Ryan can change this part of the culture or they are dead.

mhb 3y ago
Didn't Ryan hire him?
- WisNorCan 3y ago
  Steve Jobs hired John Sculley III. And then came back to rebuild the company.
jerglingu 3y ago
Lines up with the sentiment about Flexport being a tech retirement home
- psunavy03 3y ago
  Pretty provincial attitude probably propagated by some overpaid MAANG bro who doesn't realize that there's an entire industry of tech folks out there who aren't making $300K/yr TC. So if you are making that . . . a little humility is in order.
  - jerglingu 3y ago
    I indeed was a former “MAANG bro”, but this is sentiment gleaned from both a cohort of former coworkers who had stints there, along with general Flexporter attitude on Blind (which, for its imperfections and distortions, gives pretty good signal on company morale and culture).
    - psunavy03 3y ago
      I'm saying for what you call a "retirement colony," there are dozens of businesses in which the vast majority of the tech industry actually work. Blind is where spoiled rich people complain about being rich in the wrong way.

pknomad 3y ago

I've experienced something similar at Peloton where a C-level kept bringing former reports at Uber for key roles and started to push out the existing employees. It's business at the end of the day but I do think there's a graceful way of bringing people in from former companies.

dave78 3y ago
Same thing at my company, only it was a former Microsoft employee who brought along all his buddies. They screwed up a bunch of stuff because they didn't understand our market or customers, and then all slowly got let go before having to contend with the full consequences of their bad decisions. We're now in a multi year recovery process.
- justinclift 3y ago
  You don't happen to work at Nokia do you? ;)
- tsunamifury 3y ago
  This hits so hard and so painfully. Had a VP from Amazon come into google Cloud and he seemed to have no clue about the ladder or discipline he was executive over. We had to explain his job to him several times. He was an absolute incompetent in every sense of the word and fired high quality workers the entire time until he himself was fired.
- tortue0 3y ago
  Felt this too with MSFT folks. I never want to hear "rhythm of the business" again.
- fuzztester 3y ago
  This practice of bringing in former reports or buddies is very common in the industry, both in startups and established companies. You just have to look at the About us / Management/ Leadership page on the company web site and correlate a few names, current positions and positions in former companies, to get it.

gausswho 3y ago

I don't like to look askance at alumni of particular employers, but I have had one too many a poor experience from ex-Amazon hired into leadership roles. The above matches my experience. For me, the worst casualty as various lackeys followed arrival (also ex-Amazon) was the choking out of candidness. Second worst was turning the company into a document factory.

mrbonner 3y ago
You have me at “document factory “. Writing a doc is good to convey your intentions. Revising a doc for the fucking 20 times because of unsettled sentences, paragraphs are a waste of time.
pottertheotter 3y ago
Can you elaborate on the document factory part?
- chef-steph 3y ago
  Not OP, but have worked in a similar situation run by ex-Amazon leadership. Project leaders focus mainly on writing docs on their "ideas". These docs are then spread around to other project and org leaders. Most of their time is spent reading or commenting on these and planning meetings for feedback. Typically the last people to read these documents are engineers who then have to make sense of and build whatever was laid out in the documents. Many times after all this is done the project is then shelved or engineering shuts it down so it was a waste of time. Project managers can then point to these documents as promotion material and take credit for "leadership". Obviously I'm being a bit harsh here and that in no way represents the average - but it is something I've seen too often.
- wilsynet 3y ago
  Both Amazon and Google have document writing cultures. If you want to propose an idea, you write a doc about it. The value of a doc writing culture is that writing things down encourages rigor and thoughtfulness. Docs can be widely distributed, and you can read it, think about it, and add comments. Exchanging ideas can be asynchronous rather than meeting oriented. But also it can all get a bit carried away (because these artifacts become an important component to promotion). I work at Google, which is a doc culture. But I worked most of my career at startups where we never wrote anything down. Overall, I prefer doc cultures. But yes, left to it’s own devices it can seem like you are working at a doc factory.