The electric scooter Bird startup with big workplace problems | Hacker News Reader

The electric scooter Bird startup with big workplace problems

theverge.com

13 pointszoolander210 comments

I live in the area where Bird is headquartered, and they have an absolutely toxic reputation around town. Not the scooters themselves, but the company. I got congratulated on not getting an offer there by a shocking number of people, something I didn’t even see with Uber before the beginning of their PR debacle.

And not the “oh, it would’ve been a really tough work hard play hard environment” comments, but more of “they seem like jerks” comments. I was genuinely taken aback.

Previously on HN: Bird lays off hundreds via Zoom call

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22707935

Apparently Bird has disputed the part about the announcement being pre-recorded, but not the part about shutting off employees' computers during the call so they couldn't contact each other for support/recommendations. Sounds like some real winners are in charge there.

I’m torn. On one hand, this reads like your typical former-darling hit piece, bedrocked on out-of-context tales told by ex-employees with an axe to grind.

On the other hand, they really are a paint-by-numbers of so many different but oh-so-stereotypical plagues: too much money too early, arrogant and homogeneous leadership, questionable product focus and even more questionable operational discipline.

Truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but it doesn’t matter. They’re boned. Even if they make it to the other side of the pandemic, the unit economics will likely never work and even if a firesale exit emerges, late-stage preferred will wipe out any common by several multiples. The tragedy of course is that by the time that happens, leadership has already taken money off the table multiple times, so they'll be fine and if anything fail upwards to a cushy EIR spot or their next venture, which will be funded solely on the basis of how fast Bird grew and not how it ultimately failed. (Ain't SV grand.)

Ah, you’d think we’d learn these lessons from all the other times this story has been told, but no.

Back in the day there was fuckedcompany.com. It's too bad it doesn't exist anymore because it seems silicon valley just keeps repeating it's mistakes over and over.

How do these tech "leaders" watch Silicon Valley and then behave exactly like the maligned characters and not see themselves as part of the problem?

When you have people who look just like you giving you ungodly amounts of money, it’s easy to believe your superhero story and ignore everything else. And then you hire people who also look just like you to reinforce it.

One sided story. The Verge doesn't get clicks if the story isn't negative.

Well, on one hand you can definitely understand that Bird might need to cut back on spending, but on the other, so many of their decisions just tend to be of bad management and lack of foresight.

Will be interesting to see where the scooter startup bust-boom cycle will end after the COVID-19 situation clears.

Bird’s whole strategy from day one was to give away a service for below market price, “grow” and then... crickets? The thing would never be profitable even in the best case scenario and the current situation is far from a best-case scenario. How did they get funding? Did they lie to investors or were the investors extremely stupid?

On that note I have an amazing, high-growth business idea that will give us millions of users and insanely good PR in a matter of days. We’ll just be selling $10 notes for $1. I’m looking for investors; email in my profile.

This is literally the Uber business model; use a willingness to break the law and mountains of VC funding to bankrupt all competitors, then raise prices once you’ve got a monopoly. It’s dubious if this would ever work in the long run, given the risk of both anti-monopoly prosecution and the rise of competitors hoping to repeat the trick against you.

With Bird it was a bit dicier. They aren’t a straight up replacement for existing services like Uber was. This means there was a new and unique market to capture, but it also means that consumer willingness to pay higher prices later remains a dubious possibility at best.

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