I don't feel like I've been Komooted. There are alternative apps that I'll switch to.
However, it really sucks for employees. I know a guy who joined Komoot a few weeks before the sale, and who was among 80% fired right after the sale finalised. They've been negotiating the terms of sale and hiring people simultaneously -- that's just insane.
It makes sense if you realize that there's no certainty a sale will go through and you don't want to pause all operations with the blind hope that a sale will happen
Having said that, if someone just joined before the sale and is laid off, they should get a generous layoff package similar to longer term employees since they may have just quit a job to go there and are now back on the market.
Ironically, German law says that the first six months are a trial period for both sides, and you can be fired during that time with a two week notice for no reason.
I don't know about German law, but in Finnish law you can only appeal to the trial period if you have an acceptable reason related to the trial period. For example, if the employee isn't performing well, that is a legal reason to annul the work agreement during the trial period. But selling the business to investors or having financial difficulties because of the economy are not acceptable reasons, since they are not related to the specific recently-hired employee.
It cuts both ways: the employee can walk out during the trial period for reasons such as feeling like they didn't fit in, or the work being different from what they imagined. But if they merely find a better-paying job elsewhere, they cannot invoke the trial period but have to give notice in the usual way.
Germany mandates two weeks' notice while person is on probation period, which is usually first 6 months. I haven't heard details about layoff package, but given sentiment I am not sure that it was great.
RideWithGPS. No affiliation with them, but have been paying for service for years. Far less glitzy than Komoot/Strava and far less paid advertising, but for my money it's better for route planning - particularly long distance off-road - than anything else I've come across [0].
[0] a) For instance Komoot's exports for GPS head units were not accurate enough to be as helpful with picking/finding faint/overgrown trails
b) RWGPS UI makes it a bit easier to work with OpenStreetMap's inaccuracies.
c) Its auto routing seems to consistently work a bit better than Google's if I want to ride on a roads where car drivers are less likely to try and kill me. (not sure how well Strava does this)
Isn't this the main point of the article? The community feeds such a service with knowledge and in the users and up paying a lot for the all the knowledge they contributed themselves (possibly after an acquisition, leaving the original philosophy behind). The article mentions https://wanderer.to/, which leads to a community-owned data set.
Of course, some new federated service is most likely going to have a subpar user experience, but we will never get there if we are only feeding into semi-closed ecosystems.
Fun fact about Strava's routing, they don't support ferries, something most other alternatives like RWGPS do. They've been asked for years to support it, just as they've been asked for more than a decade to support multi sport activities, but they don't seem to care. When I was a paying Strava customer I still used RWGPS for routes.
I would expect that in this case it would go even beyond that. In many European countries there are protections against unjustified layoffs. I could imagine the law and judges in various countries to be rather unsympathetic towards "yeah we just hired you but we're now laying off 80% of staff because fuck you that's why".
Especially in cases where there is any evidence that the layoffs were planned before the contract was signed - wouldn't that be problematic even in the US?
In some European countries protection is even stronger. If a position becomes unnecessary, you first have to try to find another position within a company that requires a comparable level of education. You can only fire people for grave negligence or for violating rules, or lay them off e.g. if your company has to in order to survive.
From what I have heard (but IANAL), Germany has weaker protections (which is relevant here). Also, typically people sign away their rights, trading them for a good payout + a good recommendation for a next job.
Germany has a 6 month probation period for new hires in which both sides can terminate the contract with 2 week notice. After that, it is one month, two months after 3 years going up to 7 months after 20 years.
The trick I see the most is actually hiring consultants. They're basically like employees but it's not you who hire them, it's the consultancy company. So you can have them working for your startup in short contracts of a few months (which can be prolongued and without much trouble even terminated early). But normally, they also have clauses against trying to hire the consultants directly, so if they are really good and write a good chunk of your stuff, when they leave you might be left in a bit of trouble.
Komoot was located in Germany. Workers' rights are a bit better over here.
I agree that insane isn't exactly the right word for this. More like "assholish" -- this person has just switched jobs, and now they have to go through all this stress over again. This could have been easily avoided.
Because in Europe we believe that with ownership also come responsibilities. For instance to care about your employees, prevent destruction of nature, etc. Things you can wrap in insane complex laws or just manage through a social contract between the tarif partners (employees and employers).
It's not an equal transaction - it's like a child negotiating with an evil sorcerer.
The reality is that you have little to no power or leverage in labor relationships. You may think you do, because it is very valuable to the other party for you to believe as such. But you do not.
Things being purely transaction can work when it's a fair transaction. When your life is on the line and the other party is risk fuck-all, it's not a fair transaction. When you have a few sheckles at your disposal and the other party has billions, it's not a fair transaction. When you don't know shit about their decision making but the other party knows as much as possible as they can about you, it's not a fair transaction.
The reality is that if you equate a typical employer with an "evil sorcerer" you're so disconnected from reality that you have nothing of value to contribute here.
That's not what I did, please read more carefully.
The power dynamic and information dynamic is that of a child compared to a sorcerer. The sorcerer knows all, and does not need the child. They can turn the child into a frog, and the child cannot perform any magic in retaliation.
You must realize your leverage is close to non-existant in negotiations. You are, frankly, irrelevant, and of the negotiations you can attempt you must do so with just a tiny fraction of the information required.
You hold none of the cards. I'm not even sure how this could be controversial - its just plainly true. Denying reality is one thing, aspiring to something that harms you is another.
Why do people with families to feed and 20-30 year mortgages desire more than a week of job stability when it can take months to find work again? Is this a serious question?
It's a serious question. I have a family to feed and a 30-year mortgage, and I would much rather live in a place where I can be laid off with zero notice (and I have been a couple times). This makes it faster and easier to find a new job. A dynamic economy benefits everyone.
Everyone is equal, just some are more equal than others. It benefits people who are highly skilled, clever, healthy, wealthy, young, with market-desirable skills in a market-desirable area, with no external family or life problems or responsibilities, and those who own and run companies, more than 95% of everyone else.
> "where I can be laid off with zero notice (and I have been a couple times). This makes it faster and easier to find a new job."
I don't see that follows; jobs can have probationary periods where employers can reject new hires quickly, while still having notice periods.
There's no need for either designated probationary periods or notice periods. Social safety nets are a good thing in general but should be provided directly by governments rather than by private employers obeying government mandates. Imposing any requirements on employers beyond basic health and safety rules slows down economic growth and hurts everyone in the long run.
Risk of having your life upended by someone else's whim causes stress, chronic stress on a population has a long term health cost. Imposing requirements on employers reduces stress and helps everyone in the long run.
Yes, absolutely. If you have a family and a mortgage without first having enough savings to support those things through anomalies, you’re acting irresponsibly.
Nobody should be expecting their employer (or any second party, really) to be their income stream’s low pass filter. That’s what your savings account is for.
If you can’t support your family and mortgage through 6-9 months (minimum) out of savings, you shouldn’t have them because you can’t afford them.
(Also, mortgage term is irrelevant here, I’m not sure why you mention it. I would venture a guess that most 30 year mortgages end by being paid off at sale in less than 30 years. A 30 year mortgage doesn’t mean 30 years of mandatory payments, you can sell the place and move and pay off the mortgage at any time.)
The best part about living under the Sword of Damocles is that when it falls on someone else I can lecture them about how they deserved it. I can't imagine it would ever fall on me, because I don't deserve it.
> "you’re acting irresponsibly"
If things were arranged so that you didn't need the savings to cover the constant worry of being fired, then not having the savings wouldn't be acting irresponsibly. Americans need health insurance, not having health insurance is irresponsible. In countries where healthcare is free at the point of use, not having health insurance is not irresponsible. You're arguing a logical tautology.
> "(Also, mortgage term is irrelevant here, I’m not sure why you mention it."
As an example illustration that people do not live life in 1-day or 1-week increments, but in decades. People want to - and do - put down roots and settle in for a long time.
Okay. Why not? This isn't an argument. You aren't making any argument.
Because, to me, this sounds good. Okay, so let's do it. Seems pretty simple and straightforward.
I mean, I want a 401K. Employers should provide that. Okay, then let's do that. They... aren't responsible? Don't we make the laws? Let's just force them to be responsible. Problem solved. I'm happy, you're happy, everyone is happy.
Do you, like, aspire to be exploited? Why are you advocating against your own best interests? Is this selflessness, or some strange form of self-harm I haven't been exposed to?
I aspire to be paid for my labor. Forcing employers to handle things like health insurance and retirement plans is just stupid. It's a waste of resources, detracts from their core mission, and slows down economic growth. I would prefer to handle those things myself without an employer getting involved.
Is this a problem? Can I eat economic growth? I'd be pretty happy to have fewer cars in city and town centers, which would reduce things like death, injury, lung cancer, sleep disruption, and make foot journeys shorter and more pleasant, make biking easier. It would involve making and selling fewer cars and less executive compensation for the CEO of Ford, but that's about the worst reason to argue against it.
The problem is you're not explaining how this would be a preferable situation. Youre mistakenly assuming that if employers don't provide things like 401K match or whatever that instead you would pocket that money.
I have no reason to believe that to be the case. In fact, everything I've seen in my life makes me confident that is not the case. This reads like self-sabotage.
> If you have a family and a mortgage without first having enough savings to support those things through anomalies, you’re acting irresponsibly.
Or maybe it’s the collective us acting irresponsibly because how you get young people to start families if it’s irresponsible until biologically too late?
It's people who make the economy; if the economy makes it so there are no new people, it crumbles under its own weight - see every developed nation in the next 20-30 years when the social security system collapses, and the economy will follow soon after.
The nihilist take here would be that nothing matters, but money is more fake than people.
However, it really sucks for employees. I know a guy who joined Komoot a few weeks before the sale, and who was among 80% fired right after the sale finalised. They've been negotiating the terms of sale and hiring people simultaneously -- that's just insane.