Flexport CEO Says Forwarder Rescinding Signed Offer Letters for New Hires, Offering Office Space
Returning Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen announced he’s “rescinding a bunch of signed offer letters for people who were starting as soon as this Monday.” He made the announcement Sept. 8 on X, formerly known as Twitter, and said a “Flexport team member will reach out to each of you personally asap to explain the move.”
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The news came just two days after Peterson said he is returning as CEO (see 2309070057). In that announcement, he said the company would be pursuing a return to near-term profitability.
“I am deeply sorry to those people who were expecting to join our company and won't be able to at this time. It's messed up,” Petersen said. “But no way around it, we have had a hiring freeze for months I have no idea why more than 75 people were signed to join. Or why we had over 200 open roles ... on our web site. All of those have been canceled except for a handful of roles directly tied to our most important initiatives (eg improving timeliness of our freight services).”
Petersen later tweeted that he would be working to find new jobs for the rescinded hires. "If your company is hiring top tech talent, we have some awesome folks who passed our very high bar that we are rescinding offers to," he continued. "It sucks. I'm deeply sorry. But would love to connect with companies adding software engineering and related talent. I hope they will all land on their feet as we'll do what we can to help. DM me and I'll connect you to our recruiting lead running point on this."
Two-and-a-half hours later, he said “over 100 companies big and small have reached out,” and that Flexport is “creating a process to match them.”
Petersen also tweeted the morning of Sept. 8 that Flexport is offering “grade A office space to sublease” “all around the world.” The CEO said: “We have way too much for our size--we rented space for a 2x bigger team!! New official flexport real estate policy is we don't get new office space til there's always a line at the bathroom in the current office space."