Foreflight - major layoffs

ateamer said:
With no warning we were all fired yesterday morning via email.
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Not that I'm a fan of the new FF owners, but I've been reading about this all day. Seems that "...we were all fired..." is a bit of an overstretch. While other reports are 40-50%, it sounds like that may be in one devision and not 40-50% of all FF employees.

And in a different group, someone pointed out that in a huge number of software companies, coders (sorry, "software engineers" :D) are being layed off right and left as AI is being incorporated. Again, not supprorting this change, but it seems to be the way a number of companies are going, not just FF. I believe Amazon also layed off approx. 40% at the end of 2025 as well. So the bubbles seems to have burst, time to crank out the AI books and start transitioning.
 
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You’re take on this is probably right, a percentage of a particular group within the company. If that proves to be true, it goes to show you how a full story and context matters. It doesn’t make it any better though. If it’s engineers that support then service will deteriorate, remaining staff may get overloaded, and the customer will see the negative results. Maybe AI will prove this wrong. If the replacement is offshore, then it stinks.
 
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M20K said:
Not that I'm a fan of the new FF owns, but I've been reading about this all day. Seems that "...we were all fired..." is a bit of an overstretch. While other reports are 40-50%, it sounds like that may be in one devision and not 40-50% of all FF employees.

And in a different group, someone pointed out that in a huge number of software companies, coders (sorry, "software engineers" :D) are being layed off right and left as AI is being incorporated. Again, not supprorting this change, but it seems to be the way a number of companies are going, not just FF. I believe Amazon also layed off approx. 40% at the end of 2025 as well. So the bubbles seems to have burst, time to crank out the AI books and start transitioning.
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What? Internet users providing appropriate context instead of using hyperbole and blowing things out of proportion to generate reactions like we’ve seen in this thread? Put their heads on a pike and burn them at the stakes!
 
So.... I have ForeFlight and IFly. I do like ForeFlight for planning on the ground, it does that quite well. But being a competitive market place, I Fly is getting better, it's already better in the air, and it could fill the gap if FF went away. I have a 2026 FF subscription because it is a product I want at a price I'll pay.

Private Equity bad? As said before, it serves a purpose. Purpose of a company is to make value, which is measured in profits. Even if a company has great salaries and generous benefits, if it is earning less than a Federal Money Market or the S&P 500 mutual fund, it should be dissolved.

As good as FF is for use in General Aviation, if the market isn't there for them to make a profit commensurate with the risk, then they should change into something else even if it means shutting down their GA business.

I'm not entitled to a product or service. FFlight exists because at one point it made value/profit for someone. If the company became too large/too much overhead, if it added too many features that were "beyond the point of diminishing returns", then it needs to be adjusted.
 
WDD said:
Purpose of a company is to make value, which is measured in profits. Even if a company has great salaries and generous benefits, if it is earning less than a Federal Money Market or the S&P 500 mutual fund, it should be dissolved.
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I don't agree with that at all. Yes, I understand the logic from the standpoint of an investor. But many people run marginally profitable companies because of the love of what they do or the industry they're in. I'd wager that includes a significant portion of general aviation businesses. Such companies provide value far beyond the top level profit, employing people, providing a product or service that other people need, and generally making the world (or at least the overall economy) a better place.

PE firms do none of that; they just suck what they can out and leave the dying carcass. PE really stands for "Plunder Equity".
 
WDD said:
Purpose of a company is to make value, which is measured in profits.
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No. The purpose of a company is to deliver value to its customers, which is measured by profit. 'Making value' is too general and can be interpreted as 'increasing the stock price.' Many companies have declined while increasing their stock price by offering worse and worse value to their customers until the customers all vanished, taking with them profits and stock price.

Software creation should be viewed more like construction than anything else. Once the house is built, a new contract for a new building is needed, not a 'new and innovative' way to charge the building owners for 'improvements and maintenance' on the completed building.

'Improvements and Maintenance' on buildings are handled by A/C repairmen, plumbers, electricians, and others, not construction crews. The software industry needs a similar division.
 
2-Bit Speed said:
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'Improvements and Maintenance' on buildings are handled by A/C repairmen, plumbers, electricians, and others, not construction crews. The software industry needs a similar division.
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The challenge is most software is intellectual property, the secret sauce if you will. That kind of stuff is not always suitable for outside help taking a peek under the hood.
 
2-Bit Speed said:
No. The purpose of a company is to deliver value to its customers, which is measured by profit.
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OK - we disagree on what is the best way to run a company. In the end, whatever the right way is will prevail anyway, as the company making the most profit will prevail and the others will go away.

But..... while fun to think about, no one is asking me to run the economic system. I do believe as long as we have economic freedom things will sort things out in the end. People and companies making choices knowing what they want and need will always do better than a centralized planning bureaucrat guessing.
 
TCABM said:
In more ways you can imagine. Your safety critical nuclear power plant controller logic needs an update. We’ll just call Bob’s Shade Tree Software Repair using unlicensed and unqualified repair technicians to write a couple lines of code.
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I didn't realize that there was a total lack of industry standard licensing and qualifications for electricians. Huh... You learn something new every day.
 
2-Bit Speed said:
Whence come profits? From customers or shareholders?
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Customers of course. If there are profits to be made. If not, then move on to another product/service.

If delivering value to customers is the company's primary goal, then the company would give the product away for limited profit. And then the company would die, replaced by something else.

IF the goal of the company is to create value for the owner(s), then it will in the most efficient way possible to use resources to produce a product that people want or need at a price they will and can pay that provides the maximum profit.

The latter can drive a company, especially when in the beginning / start up phase, to do anything possible to deliver an better product at a better price to the customer. So we get to your goal of "customer value", but within the extremely important guidelines of maximizing profit.

Why people think maximizing profit automatically means the cash cow mode is a puzzle. But there are times when cash cow is appropriate.

Companies years ago made vacuum tubes. They either stopped investing in it - including customer service - and switched to develop transistors, or they became irrelevant. Kodak provided great customer value with its film business right up to the point they went out of business. Why did customers leave? They went to other products created by companies seeking profit by selling digital cameras.
 
2-Bit Speed said:
No. The purpose of a company is to deliver value to its customers, which is measured by profit.
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No. The purpose of a company is to deliver value to it's owners. That value can be profit, which can be achieved by delivering value to customers, as you point out, or via monopoly leverage (conventional or government enforced via patents or trademarks) or a few other ways.

That owner value can be delivered by quality of life. Or pride of ownership. Or love of the game. Or benefit to humanity. Or build something that outlasts the founder/leaves a mark on the world. Or work on the projects you want to work on, rather than the ones that are simply the most profitable.

As far as I can tell, it is a uniquely american notion to claim that the only point of business (or capitalism for that matter) is simply profit and ignore all the other reasons people are motivated to start companies.
 
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DesertNomad said:
It’s all the aviation companies being bought by PE… the costs go up, quality goes down. My planes are still worth something for now.
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I think a bigger concern is US general aviation businesses that are owned by Chinese entities (Cirrus, Continental..). There really isn't any GA to speak of in that country, so their interest in U.S companies can't be because they believe in advancing GA technology.
 
sarangan said:
I think a bigger concern is US general aviation businesses that are owned by Chinese entities (Cirrus, Continental..). There really isn't any GA to speak of in that country, so their interest in U.S companies can't be because they believe in advancing GA technology.
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2-Bit Speed said:
I didn't realize that there was a total lack of industry standard licensing and qualifications for electricians. Huh... You learn something new every day.
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Welcome to the joys of home ownership. Not all electrical jobs require a licensed electrician. Many apprentices are also left unsupervised without their work being checked. Then, there’s the unscrupulous operators out there.

The world is as it is, not as we aspire it to be.
 
TCABM said:
Welcome to the joys of home ownership. Not all electrical jobs require a licensed electrician. Many apprentices are also left unsupervised without their work being checked. Then, there’s the unscrupulous operators out there.
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But you acknowledge that the industry attempts to regulate itself and attempts to ensure the people available for hire have the skills to do the work safely? That they're not all 'unlicensed and unqualified repair technicians?' Would you go so far as to admit your prior statement was mean-spirited, disingenuous comparison without merit?
 
172andyou said:
No. The purpose of a company is to deliver value to it's owners. That value can be profit, which can be achieved by delivering value to customers, as you point out, or via monopoly leverage (conventional or government enforced via patents or trademarks) or a few other ways.

That owner value can be delivered by quality of life. Or pride of ownership. Or love of the game. Or benefit to humanity. Or build something that outlasts the founder/leaves a mark on the world. Or work on the projects you want to work on, rather than the ones that are simply the most profitable.

As far as I can tell, it is a uniquely american notion to claim that the only point of business (or capitalism for that matter) is simply profit and ignore all the other reasons people are motivated to start companies.
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I started my business because I wanted a product, profit was a secondary consideration.
 
Private Equity gets tainted with the bad actors just like Venture Capital. They are tools and they can be good or they can be abused (I've been involved in both). As I stated, I've been ripped worse by publicly traded companies, and you'll have to remember that Boeing was the one who sold FF to the bastards to begin with and I've seen them take perfectly viable aerospace companies and ruin them.
 
ateamer said:
From Reddit:
With no warning we were all fired yesterday morning via email. I would expect worsening service over the coming weeks and months, as many engineering teams who supported various features were simply removed with no opportunity for knowledge transfer. This happened due to ForeFlight's sale to private equity (Thoma Bravo) last year, who plans to move all engineering offshore. ForeFlight was an incredible company to work for with amazing benefits and so much emphasis on pilot safety and support as well as product quality. This is a huge shame and disappointment and many incredible engineers lost their jobs.

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Honestly, did anyone working at FF not believe this was their future. This is all about share holder return on investment. The functions will likely be off shored to India, customer service will be reduced and plan on at least a 20% price increase of the next 5 years. Garmin will be on their heals with pricing. And all those who purchased Garmin transponders? Pay up if you want to use the functions.
 
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Your point is taken- a company needs to adapt somehow. One way is to sell to a niche market.
WDD said:
Kodak provided great customer value with its film business right up to the point they went out of business.
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New Kodak film? In 2025?!
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Ironically, they were a pioneer in digital imaging- they created the first digital camera in 1975.

WDD said:
Companies years ago made vacuum tubes. They either stopped investing in it - including customer service - and switched to develop transistors, or they became irrelevant.
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Hamamatsu still manufactures photomultiplier tubes and these are still the standard for sensitivity and low noise.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
I have yet to ever see a PE deal be a good thing for a company, and the worst companies I've ever worked with were PE owned.
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There's a whole bunch of observational bias in this. I'll bet you deal with successful PE portfolio companies every day and either don't know it or don't think about it.
 
Businesses are run for a variety of purposes and goals, ranging from pure greed to saving the world.

However, all businesses have one thing in common: if they cannot establish and sustain a positive rate of return (profit), they will eventually fail. If they fail financially, then they will not accomplish whatever other purposes they aspire to.

Those of us who have owned and run a business know you balance several motivations. Profit, growth, customer loyalty, employee welfare, and community service all factor into decisions. But we also know that if you fail to manage the financial side, everything else collapses like a house of cards.

When a business loses money, that money comes from somewhere. Guess where?
 
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Happy to hear that iFLY is still around. I was one of the early adopters and a beta tester back in the early days. I simply loved mine and was able to sell my unit when I hung up the headsets many year ago.
 
2-Bit Speed said:
But you acknowledge that the industry attempts to regulate itself and attempts to ensure the people available for hire have the skills to do the work safely? That they're not all 'unlicensed and unqualified repair technicians?' Would you go so far as to admit your prior statement was mean-spirited, disingenuous comparison without merit?
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Industry or occupation. Makes a big difference, because not every job requires someone with a specific occupation to do that job. I live in the county and do not required licensed individuals to perform many jobs that, if I go a few miles down the road, the city does require a licensed professional to perform.

The city also requires permits for many things the county does not. The county also subscribes to different versions of various codes than the city does and that’s before we look at inspections.

It’s kind of like the difference between EAB and certificated aircraft maintenance. You can build an RV-10 in your basement. Should AirTextrOeing hire you off the street to modify their aircraft’s electrical system?
 
Bill said:
Anecdotal of course, but my one experience with private equity is they will squeeze every last dollar from the company, then stop paying vendors, and when the vendors stop sending raw materials they declare bankruptcy and chain the doors.
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It's called a 'bust-out'. It's been SOP in the mafia for decades. PE just found a way to do it legally.
 
TCABM said:
In more ways you can imagine. Your safety critical nuclear power plant controller logic needs an update. We’ll just call Bob’s Shade Tree Software Repair using unlicensed and unqualified repair technicians to write a couple lines of code.
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And end up with the guy that wrote the code in the first place. Because he got fired when the PE firm took over the company he was working for when he wrote that code. ;)
 
GeorgeC said:
You're supposed to:
* build on the backs of the beta testers and then pivot, and/or
* make a lowest common denominator that runs poorly on all platforms, and/or
* collapse under your own weight of feature creep that nobody asked for, and/or
* be dual use, where superficially it looks like an EFB but in reality it's sigint for advertisers who are the actual paying customers.

How are you supposed to extract more money from the customer when they are satisfied with the product? You can't. You need to fire those deadbeat customers.

When you accidentally make something that's too good, you no longer have leverage, so you have to remove functionality, wait five minutes so they forget, and then you can sell it back to them again like it's new. This pattern happens all the time.
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That right there is so incredibly cynical. And pretty much spot on.
 
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