10 ms·

I'm sure there's some juicy details behind the curtains, but people are too professional to air it publicly. Here's some fun but baseless theories: 1) Typical

by whack 3y ago

I'm sure there's some juicy details behind the curtains, but people are too professional to air it publicly. Here's some fun but baseless theories: 1) Typical big-company guy fails to adapt to startup life. A year ago, Flexport's tech team was 400 people. That's minuscule compared to what Dave's used to at Amazon. He came in, insisted on a bunch of unnecessary hiring, bloated the tech team with deadwood, internal kingdoms and politics, and a "move slow and don't break anything" mentality. Founder got fed up and showed him the door, though presumably they were gracious enough to let him hit his 1-year cliff 2) Almost-CEO-of-Amazon tries to build the next Amazon. Makes a bunch of wildly risky investments into random moonshots, because he doesn't want to settle for a single-digit-billion company. Founder is initially taken in by bigshot's vision. But after 1 year of minimal progress and changing market conditions, founder tells CEO to get back to basics and focus on freight logistics. CEO decides that's not sexy enough for him. Waits for his 1-year cliff, then resigns Exited to hear more wild theories from others.

deleted 3y ago
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hitekker 3y ago
Both your scenarios blame the new CEO instead of the old CEO. I'd wager the old CEO created a huge mess that the new one couldn't clean up.
ryandrake 3y ago
I vote for the more mundane: 3) Bored mega-millionaire wants a neat hobby to try for a year. His previous Amazon compensation for 2021 was $56 million[1], so it's not like he needs to try anymore, or make money basically ever again. 12 months later he's still bored. Maybe he quit to spend more time bathing in bathtubs full of hundred dollar bills. 1: https://fortune.com/2022/06/08/amazon-former-no-2-dave-clark-co-ceo-flexport/# https://fortune.com/2022/06/08/amazon-former-no-2-dave-clark...
- infecto 3y ago
  Probably not but who knows. My own experience is usually these type of people keep going for quite a while. It’s how they make it to where they are.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  IME you don't make $56 million by being the type of person who is looking for a neat hobby to try for a year. It's not about the money for these types. If it was they would've retired long ago, before they became top lieutenants.
  - nitwit005 3y ago
    Some of them talk openly about running companies as a hobby. You need something to do with the remaining decades.
  - projectazorian 3y ago
    Wouldn’t be surprised if he got passed over for the CEO job at Amazon, and was quietly ushered out the door.
philip1209 3y ago
The story I told myself while reading this article: "Wartime founder thought he wanted to retire, brings in solid peacetime CEO. Founder decides peacetime isn't best for company, and comes back to turn it back into a startup." Not dissimilar from the early Steve Jobs story at Apple.
psunavy03 3y ago
3) Amazon grad takes hold of a freight forwarder, and then realizes freight forwarding is not a tech company, nor is it just warehousing and distribution. And then realizes his competitors rely as much on grizzled logistics veterans and their corporate knowledge about customs brokerage and how to Get Shit Done and Get Shit From Point A to Point B as they do on a cool tech stack. And then goes "shit." Don't get me wrong. From a tech perspective, a lot of Flexport's competitors could use a size-18 boot in the ass. But tech is an enabler for them, not the core business. So there's only so much willingness to fork out cash for what senior leaders see as a supporting function. I mean, if their 40-year-old COBOL backend still works, they DGAF that it's outdated. At least until it can't keep up with the modern side or it starts falling over when all the devs retire, which is a separate story.
- AdamJacobMuller 3y ago
  Unsatisfied with their IBM mainframe which had a 99.99% uptime (seriously how much missed opportunity cost is that hour of downtime per year!) with a kubernetes microservice application where each of the 1000 components had an extremely impressive 99.999% uptime.
  - psunavy03 3y ago
    The problem is that the legacy applications running on that mainframe are tightly-coupled and thus a bitch to test. They're also hard to automate and hard to scale, because design choices made in the 80s and 90s based on people using them at the speed of manually typing on keyboards fall down when you hook up APIs to them for automated testing and for connections to modern applications. And most of the people who know how to develop for them are about to retire. When was the last time you heard of a modern CS or IT degree program offering a COBOL elective? And they're not easy to migrate, because you have 40+ years of business logic locked up in that legacy COBOL application, many of the developers of which are retired or flat-out dead. Did they document it perfectly? LOL! And oh, we're dealing with customs brokerage around the world and also potentially accounting info for a publicly-traded company, which means if you fuck up badly enough, people potentially go to jail.
deleted 3y ago
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bfung 3y ago
combo 1 & 2, can substitute AMZN w/other large corps… I see & hear you. ;)
AndrewKemendo 3y ago
Pretty sure he just wants to run for governor which is what article said
- hef19898 3y ago
  if true, the answer is way to easy for an online discussion.
n8med 3y ago
1 seems most likley true. Startups are hard.
oblio 3y ago
Such a nice guy: https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/03/dave-clark-the-longtime-head-of-amazons-consumer-division-departs/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/03/dave-clark-the-longtime-he... > Clark has been unapologetic about his cavalier style, once telling Bloomberg that he favored “lurking in the shadows of … warehouses and scoping out slackers he could fire” during his early years at Amazon.
flappyeagle 3y ago
Wild unfounded speculation is the definition of negative value commentary

by whack 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

hitekker 3y ago

Both your scenarios blame the new CEO instead of the old CEO. I'd wager the old CEO created a huge mess that the new one couldn't clean up.

ryandrake 3y ago

I vote for the more mundane: 3) Bored mega-millionaire wants a neat hobby to try for a year. His previous Amazon compensation for 2021 was $56 million[1], so it's not like he needs to try anymore, or make money basically ever again. 12 months later he's still bored. Maybe he quit to spend more time bathing in bathtubs full of hundred dollar bills. 1: https://fortune.com/2022/06/08/amazon-former-no-2-dave-clark-co-ceo-flexport/# https://fortune.com/2022/06/08/amazon-former-no-2-dave-clark...

infecto 3y ago
Probably not but who knows. My own experience is usually these type of people keep going for quite a while. It’s how they make it to where they are.
HDThoreaun 3y ago
IME you don't make $56 million by being the type of person who is looking for a neat hobby to try for a year. It's not about the money for these types. If it was they would've retired long ago, before they became top lieutenants.
- nitwit005 3y ago
  Some of them talk openly about running companies as a hobby. You need something to do with the remaining decades.
- projectazorian 3y ago
  Wouldn’t be surprised if he got passed over for the CEO job at Amazon, and was quietly ushered out the door.

philip1209 3y ago

The story I told myself while reading this article: "Wartime founder thought he wanted to retire, brings in solid peacetime CEO. Founder decides peacetime isn't best for company, and comes back to turn it back into a startup." Not dissimilar from the early Steve Jobs story at Apple.

psunavy03 3y ago

3) Amazon grad takes hold of a freight forwarder, and then realizes freight forwarding is not a tech company, nor is it just warehousing and distribution. And then realizes his competitors rely as much on grizzled logistics veterans and their corporate knowledge about customs brokerage and how to Get Shit Done and Get Shit From Point A to Point B as they do on a cool tech stack. And then goes "shit." Don't get me wrong. From a tech perspective, a lot of Flexport's competitors could use a size-18 boot in the ass. But tech is an enabler for them, not the core business. So there's only so much willingness to fork out cash for what senior leaders see as a supporting function. I mean, if their 40-year-old COBOL backend still works, they DGAF that it's outdated. At least until it can't keep up with the modern side or it starts falling over when all the devs retire, which is a separate story.

AdamJacobMuller 3y ago
Unsatisfied with their IBM mainframe which had a 99.99% uptime (seriously how much missed opportunity cost is that hour of downtime per year!) with a kubernetes microservice application where each of the 1000 components had an extremely impressive 99.999% uptime.
- psunavy03 3y ago
  The problem is that the legacy applications running on that mainframe are tightly-coupled and thus a bitch to test. They're also hard to automate and hard to scale, because design choices made in the 80s and 90s based on people using them at the speed of manually typing on keyboards fall down when you hook up APIs to them for automated testing and for connections to modern applications. And most of the people who know how to develop for them are about to retire. When was the last time you heard of a modern CS or IT degree program offering a COBOL elective? And they're not easy to migrate, because you have 40+ years of business logic locked up in that legacy COBOL application, many of the developers of which are retired or flat-out dead. Did they document it perfectly? LOL! And oh, we're dealing with customs brokerage around the world and also potentially accounting info for a publicly-traded company, which means if you fuck up badly enough, people potentially go to jail.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

bfung 3y ago

combo 1 & 2, can substitute AMZN w/other large corps… I see & hear you. ;)

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

Pretty sure he just wants to run for governor which is what article said

hef19898 3y ago
if true, the answer is way to easy for an online discussion.

n8med 3y ago

1 seems most likley true. Startups are hard.

oblio 3y ago

Such a nice guy: https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/03/dave-clark-the-longtime-head-of-amazons-consumer-division-departs/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/03/dave-clark-the-longtime-he... > Clark has been unapologetic about his cavalier style, once telling Bloomberg that he favored “lurking in the shadows of … warehouses and scoping out slackers he could fire” during his early years at Amazon.

flappyeagle 3y ago

Wild unfounded speculation is the definition of negative value commentary