[HN Gopher] When we get Komooted
___________________________________________________________________
When we get Komooted
Author : atakan_gurkan
Score : 413 points
Date : 2025-07-27 07:07 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bikepacking.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (bikepacking.com)
| dist-epoch wrote:
| > The owners' assured their long-term commitment with the mantra
| "we won't sell."
|
| Vaguely reminds me of some company with the motto "don't be evil"
| Towaway69 wrote:
| But Apple will never sell my data. They promised it.
| BozeWolf wrote:
| I felt betrayed as well. Just paid EUR30,- the month or so before
| because I liked the app and the service, but I also needed more
| maps. It offered great value to me. If I knew 80% of the
| employees would be fired, inevitably leading to a degrading
| service, I would have never done that.
|
| It is weird, but I do not trust the app any more in planning
| routes either. Sometimes i have the feeling bugs in the planning
| part already appear. The stability of the service for sure
| decreased.
|
| Also there are more nag screens about the premium offer (dude I
| paid for the other great offer already!).
|
| Very unhappy with this. I hope the komooters build an
| alternative. I'm happy to support them. I know that eventually I
| might get betrayed again.
|
| For today I planned another route with komoot. If somebody knows
| an alternative? I like the komoot user photos because it gives an
| impression of the (gravel) roads. Plus the suggested routes and
| the planning ux are great. Im stuck with komoot for now.
| dijital wrote:
| The article mentions one example: https://wanderer.to/. Haven't
| used it personally but seems promising (albeit less "social"
| than something like Strava).
| Eavolution wrote:
| Less "social" would be a feature for me. I just want one that
| can plan routes, track journeys, and give me directions. I
| don't want to be worried that I'm accidentally sharing what
| I'm doing/where I am with the world.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I'll do you one better: I just want the GPS data. I use
| https://alpinequest.net on android which is a 15 euro one-
| time purchase and they focus on the app, and that's all. I
| don't want every activity I do turn into some version of
| facebook.
| r0uv3n wrote:
| Eh, the social features of Komoot were never intrusive to
| me, and among social features of most apps they were some
| of the most well designed. Local community, very much
| focused on actually sharing tracks and trying out other
| people's routes (and maybe commenting with your experience
| afterwards).
|
| There was a guy in his 60s regularly doing very nice
| circular hiking routes of 40 to 60 km in our nearby
| forests, and apart from that just being kind of awesome and
| impressive to see when you look at local routes, actually
| walking his routes was often a very nice experience with
| diverse landscapes often along nice small, less used paths.
| It was great seeing nice weather in the morning, and then
| oftentimes without any pre-planning just walk or bike to
| the forest and just start along one of this guy's routes
| within a few minutes, all in an incredibly hassle free
| manner and with a result which pretty much always beat out
| just following the official hiking trails shown on signs
| etc. I don't know if there's another app right now where
| you can so easily profit from the experience and knowledge
| of your local community.
| prmoustache wrote:
| One only need a web server to share gpx files really.
|
| Planning routes can be easily done offline with desktop apps.
| Don't even start with mobile use, I have never seen a web
| based tool where you could plan a route by tapping on a
| smartphone screen without pulling your hair out of
| desperation.
| r0uv3n wrote:
| Well, Komoot worked quite well for exactly that use case. I
| have also only very rarely found tools even in the desktop
| space that were quite as mature as Komoot for that use
| case.
|
| Also the question remains, what do you navigate the planned
| routes / gpx traces? What happens if you notice you want to
| improvise and replan to hit some target on the way you saw
| in the distance while on the trail? This was (and currently
| still is) absolutely trivial and intuitive to do on Komoot.
| The best alternative I can think of is maybe brouter+
| osmand, but that's really quite clunky in comparison with
| Komoot (similar to the experience you probably mean when
| talking about pulling your hair out)
| zoobab wrote:
| I organise an mtb event, always refused to use Komoot, Strava
| or other apps just to display an XML file on a map.
|
| I have used brouter.de as a GPX editor instead of going on
| site to the route, and used Umap on OSM.ch to upload a GPX:
|
| https://brouter.de/brouter-web/
| http://www.vintagemtb.org/maps https://umap.osm.ch/
| hommelix wrote:
| I've been using https://bikerouter.de/ to plan my ride and
| then import the GPX into OsmAnd~. Works quite well. It is
| possible to host brouter (which is what bikerouter is
| running) on your own http server.
|
| In OsmAnd~ just remember to fix the track to existing paths,
| otherwise OsmAnd~ routing engine may have difficulty to guide
| you. I've never dig into it, but it looks like there can be a
| small offset between the GPX and Osm map.
| ayls wrote:
| I am quite happy with Wikiloc app. Feature wise it is not that
| different from Komoot and the yearly subscription which allows
| me to use it on my watch was only 20 EUR.
| politelemon wrote:
| I'm quite unhappy with it, in Europe. It defaults to the
| completely useless apple maps which is unsuitable for
| outdoors and rural exploration, and its clustering of routes
| near each other is difficult to distinguish and click on. All
| trails had nailed this well by showing clustered trails
| together in a single point and letting you page through them.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Friend of mine wrote this app[0]. It's iOS-only (I'm not the
| target demographic, myself, but he works for a company that
| serves bikers, and is very much a fitness chap). It's quite
| mature, and well-maintained. Personally, I know him as an
| outstanding engineer, so I'm sure it's well-written. It's been
| a labor of love for him, for over a decade.
|
| [0] https://apps.apple.com/app/id605127860
| maqnius wrote:
| I'm really happy with locus maps 3 classic in combination with
| brouter as a local routing engine with my own routing profile
| using my preferences.
|
| In combination with downloadable map tiles, I can plan and ride
| my route completely offline which saves battery and keeps
| things running in the more rural areas.
|
| The route planner is really nice. I actually plan all my routes
| in the smartphone and export to gpx if necessary because it's
| the most comfortable way to do it.
|
| What I also really appreciate is, that it's not a subscription
| based payment model. So you pay once for downloadable tiles
| etc. and for the app and can just use it without worrying about
| updated terms etc.
|
| BUT, and that's a major BUT, the version is deprecated and will
| be ended soon in favour of the subscription based locus map 4.
| I don't miss anything in locus map 3 and don't see any
| benefits. I'll just hope the app will work as long as possible
| without official support.
| StrLght wrote:
| 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.
| GlacierFox wrote:
| Recommend any alternatives?
| lonelyasacloud wrote:
| 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)
| danieldk wrote:
| _paying for service for years_
|
| 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.
| sorenjan wrote:
| 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.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| 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.
| mr_mitm wrote:
| 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.
| jks wrote:
| 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.
| sneak wrote:
| Why is that insane? A job this week is no guarantee, legally or
| practically, of a job next week.
|
| To assume otherwise is foolish and naive. That's simply not how
| employment works.
| dakiol wrote:
| You're technically right. But it's disappointing that that's
| the normal state of affairs.
| nradov wrote:
| Why?
| jodrellblank wrote:
| 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?
| nradov wrote:
| 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.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > " _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.
| nradov wrote:
| 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.
| sneak wrote:
| 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.)
| jodrellblank wrote:
| 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.
| nradov wrote:
| So what. People want a lot of things. Employers aren't
| responsible for providing those things.
| const_cast wrote:
| 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?
| baq wrote:
| > 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?
| oezi wrote:
| 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).
|
| We all lose if this contract is broken.
| nradov wrote:
| Don't presume to speak for "Europe". It's a big place
| with a wide diversity of viewpoints.
|
| We all lose when employers have a paternalistic
| relationship with employees. It's better for everyone to
| keep things strictly transactional.
| const_cast wrote:
| 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.
| akdor1154 wrote:
| > A job this week is no guarantee, legally or practically, of
| a job next week.
|
| It is in Europe - one or three months are the standard notice
| periods I believe?
| danieldk wrote:
| 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.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| 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?
| bakuninsbart wrote:
| 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.
| dfc wrote:
| Hiring senior employees sounds like it requires crystal
| ball level planning. Are there any tricks to make growth
| easier?
| sneak wrote:
| The trick that most startups seem to use is to simply
| operate in a different country.
|
| (I write this comment from Berlin, where I wish it were
| much much easier and simpler to start and operate a
| business.)
| brabel wrote:
| 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.
| bornfreddy wrote:
| The time that counts is when the employee is at the
| company, not their total employment time.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| To be fair, komoot already had plenty of dark patterns in place
| to produce growth and conversion.
| Eavolution wrote:
| Such as what? I found it a very fair deal, you can have
| functionality for your area for free, which will likely be good
| enough for 70%+ of people, but if you want larger regions you
| have to pay. It seems to me a totally fair and transparent
| pricing structure, without resorting to filling the app with
| ads.
|
| The people who need the paid portion of the app are also likely
| enthusiasts, and in that light the pricing seems fair too.
| skrebbel wrote:
| I'd love a founder perspective on this. If they kept saying "we
| won't sell" and then sell, is that just plain breaking all
| promises and selling out, as this article suggests? Or was there
| more going on?
| baq wrote:
| 30M euro each is a lot of money. Do you need more reasons?
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Any time anyone says they will never do X, they are saying they
| will never do X unless they are presented with a very very
| compelling offer. This is generally true in life and not just
| in business.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Even if they did break a promise, and there's some contractual
| _oomph_ behind it... the company responsible is separate from
| the former owner.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Promises only engage those that believe them.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| Everyone has their price. Was the promise legally binding? Was
| the promise making money?
|
| Just another example of degradation of trust within the western
| economies. Trust only money and you'll be on the right side of
| history - unfortunately.
|
| Trust, moral responsibility and kindness aren't profitable - in
| terms of capital.
| tietjens wrote:
| Bending Spoons strikes again.
| xandrius wrote:
| I don't think enough people know about them and their profit-
| squeezing strategies.
| serendipty01 wrote:
| HN Search:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
| Etheryte wrote:
| That's actually both funny and sad, I recently used
| WeTransfer and wondered when their product got so bad. Turns
| out Bending Spoons bought them about a year ago.
| thrance wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > I'll argue that Komoot is neither a moral failure nor an
| outlier but the capitalist system of value extraction working
| exactly as intended for the platform owners.
|
| If it wasn't for Bending Spoons it would have been another
| private equity firm. It's not about them being particularly
| evil, it's about living in a system that makes their existence
| inevitable.
| jml7c5 wrote:
| Podcast with them from October of last year:
| https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/twisting-the-rule...
|
| (Transcript available, search for and hit the "transcript"
| button.)
|
| I wonder how they'll do long-term.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Just look at what private equity did to British Water companies,
| Toy'R'Us and any number of other organizations. Do private equity
| companies perform any useful social purpose? Or are they all
| wreckers, asset strippers and carpet baggers?
| Erikun wrote:
| Freaconomics had a podcast episode on private equity a while
| back. I don't quite remember the conclusions, probably mixed.
| https://freakonomics.com/podcast/are-private-equity-firms-pl...
| Guvante wrote:
| Private equity can sometimes save failing businesses
| unfortunately there aren't a lot of businesses that go public
| out of private equity so it is difficult to measure their
| effectiveness.
|
| Since after all the only time private equity is interested in
| going public is unicorns.
| dzink wrote:
| In the 80s the abuse was concentrated in the management layer
| of companies - executives would store cash and buy private jets
| and lavish properties for the "company" leadership to enjoy.
| Private equity trimmed that fat at the time.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| But presumably all that fat instead went to the private
| equity company instead?
| dzink wrote:
| Public investors have an expectation of not losing their
| money. Thus public companies have to have either
| expectation of growth or strong cash flow to feed
| dividends. If a company has neither of those, Private
| Equity either turns it around or sells it for parts. They
| are the vultures of the business world. They buy the
| company with debt that its cash flows are supposed to pay
| back, and profit from the tax deduction on the debt and
| whatever is left in the end. A company is a machine where
| you put in 1 dollar and it comes back with more than 1.
| Employees get paid with steady reliable income called
| salary before investors do until the machine runs out. By
| law the board has to pay payroll if the employees are not
| compensated, or the board is personally liable for the
| salaries. They also have an inside view with how the
| company is doing better than any investor. They can and
| will bail when something goes funky. Any equity over is the
| perk of taking risk by investing in the company. The stress
| of wondering whether you will make payroll or have a
| business left after you have worked so hard to create and
| sweat so hard to work it is so deep that few would take it
| on - thus you have to give them proportionate carrot to
| look forward to or there would be no jobs.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Are there any examples of private equity improving a company?
| pentamassiv wrote:
| Next years article: When We Get Bikepacked
|
| Never believe a company that you are part of a community if the
| content you create for them cannot be exported and published
| somewhere else. I am especially sceptical if someone says they
| never sell.
| thrance wrote:
| bikepacking.com doesn't look like it's a for-profit company, in
| their about page.
| blitzar wrote:
| bikepacking.com looks like it's a for-profit company based on
| their about page.
| aembleton wrote:
| The owners could still sell it though
| prmoustache wrote:
| It is. And it is a media company, not a "community".
| navane wrote:
| The users were always the real service provider. All the value
| is in what they tell each other through their data. All Komoot
| does is aggregate it, supply the infra structure.
|
| The only way to stop owners pulling the rug underneath all this
| community given content is by keeping the content open source.
| Promise the users you will do best with their data by keeping
| it out in the open so that if you don't, someone else will.
| Keep the door ajar.
|
| Unfortunately this is another "if we all just" solution that
| humanity seems unable to do.
| Zeebrommer wrote:
| Is someone even trying to open source that type of content
| (routes, pois)?
| joshvm wrote:
| Open Street Map.
|
| But otherwise this is really something that tourist
| organisations could champion, in combination with national
| mapping services. It's not like the routes are somehow
| obscure, or user-generated they're often national trails
| strung together. Switzerland Mobility is a good example of
| this. You can also hook official weather providers. The
| fact that we need private apps is bizarre.
|
| https://schweizmobil.ch/en/switzerlandmobility-app
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| This happened to pinkbike.com when they sold out; you need to
| view these sites and communities as vectors.
| https://bikepacking.com is good right now and there are a lot
| of legit contributors who really care about bikes. This will
| change so engage how you want with open eyes.
| zoobab wrote:
| About Pinkbike Trailforks, I submitted some trails to their
| platform to find out users needed to be logged in to download
| the GPX, also to discover they had edited the GPX XML to
| force/steal their own copyright on top of mine.
| baq wrote:
| Just yesterday there was a thread about startups, compensation
| and what happens to promises when real money enters the picture.
|
| Your best bet to keep a social platform for a long time is a
| coop. You'll never get investors, which is the point, but you
| also aren't a foundation or a nonprofit with shackles (unless you
| get to OpenAI levels of creativity.)
| Terr_ wrote:
| Somewhat related: How bankruptcy laws mean many promises like
| "we won't misuse your data" become void in the name of
| extracting value for creditors. (The potential outcome affects
| decisions even if bankruptcy doesn't happen.)
|
| So there's a _system_ that needs to be reformed, it 's not so
| much a matter of executives' personal attitudes.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Sounds like some kind of GDPR law is required so that
| companies don't get to treat people's private data as their
| own. It's ridiculous that in a bankruptcy they can sell off
| the data that belongs to others - companies should be treated
| as merely protecting PII data and can never own it.
| poisonborz wrote:
| The base premise was already bent: sell access to community-
| uploaded material. I know Google Maps does this on a much grander
| scale but at least the data is more or less accessible for
| everyone.
|
| I wonder why there aren't popular free/open projects that do what
| Komoot does. What they did above the contributions seem to be
| doable by a dedicated group or a nonprofit.
| jona-f wrote:
| There is openstreetmaps of course and osmand as a navigation
| app. There is also a biking specific project related to
| openstreetmaps. None of it is as polished as komoot of course.
| Far from it. This sell-out was totally predictable. Why the
| outrage? Do people never learn? It's so frustrating.
| Guvante wrote:
| I think it is fair to be annoyed that crowd sourcing is used
| to enrich a select few.
|
| Honestly the best course of action is to let it die. $300M is
| enough money that losing the user base would be enough for
| similar things to stop happening.
| andrewshadura wrote:
| I've been using https://cycle.travel for a similar purpose. I
| may not be quite as polished, but it does its job, and it's
| developed by a person from the OpenStreetMap community.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| *waves
|
| (I've just commissioned a designer for a bit of a refresh, so
| it should get a _little_ more polished soon!)
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| > I wonder why there aren't popular free/open projects that do
| what Komoot does. What they did above the contributions seem to
| be doable by a dedicated group or a nonprofit.
|
| Well, there are still costs involved (not just financial but
| also labour), and someone has to pay them. We are lucky to have
| a number of great open source and community-driven projects
| where people do contribute time and money to make data freely
| available to everyone, but it's not guaranteed. If there aren't
| enough people who are willing and able to contribute, or the
| costs get too great, the project will founder.
|
| OpenStreetMap seems like it is already doing this to an extent,
| or at least is a good platform on which something like this
| could be built. Hopefully this saga encourages more people to
| contribute that way.
| stef25 wrote:
| Welcome to the capitalist world I guess. Not only does this
| happen all the time, it's the goal of most tech founders.
| atemerev wrote:
| More than that, you won't succeed and your company will
| probably go in the dustbin of nice failed projects unless some
| scalable explicit monetization is the goal.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| But on the other hand it makes business sooooo much simpler:
| have an idea, create much hype and excitement using marketing
| and social media, hire some influencers to promote your
| product, create website that promises a life changing
| difference if you use my product, hire a bunch of people to
| build something, wait and the sell to the highest bidder.
|
| Being caught at a concert with the head of HR can be easily
| turned into a PR success, just add money.
|
| No long term goals necessary, no employee retention programs,
| no social responsibility. Just pure and beautiful monies in
| the bank.
| atemerev wrote:
| Well, no, there are many grifters who do that, and only
| very few of them succeed. But yes, a successful product is
| just 5% or so of a successful business.
| xandrius wrote:
| Whenever you read that your favourite app got purchased by
| Bending Spoons, run away as fast as you can.
|
| There should be a tracker specifically for this.
| Ezhik wrote:
| Oh how I miss the old Paper by FiftyThree. Even have their
| stylus which is no longer supported by the app.
| avhception wrote:
| As someone who always rejected Komoot and stuck to OpenStreetMap,
| and had to justify that decision multiple times: I'll play them
| the world's smallest violin.
| mnmalst wrote:
| I am the same. I use osmand and sync the recorded tracks with
| syncthing to my desktop. Works for me but not comparable to
| sites like komoote of course.
| tonfa wrote:
| Also there can be some really great country specific apps.
|
| E.g. in Switzerland there's the free official Swiss Topo app
| with all the official maps incl. all the trail data. Can
| easily create/import/export tours.
| oreilles wrote:
| This article is about people who liked their company and their
| job and lost it all. It's something to lack empathy, but I'm
| always amazed that there are people so full of themselves that
| they will go out there and proclaim that they don't give a shit
| about other people's fate, as if it was something to be proud
| about.
| avhception wrote:
| Okay, you're right, and I actually do give a shit about the
| employees. The comment was coming from the perspective of
| interacting with users and the app, and I didn't think about
| the employee-side of the story when I wrote it.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| Counterpoint: I used Komoot during the pandemic because it was
| the only app that would recommend new, interesting trekking
| routes every week in the small corner of the world where I was
| at the time. For my SO at the time, who was losing their mind
| due to cabin fever, Komoot was a literal lifesaver. No other
| app that I know of offered that.
|
| I am therefore thankful to the old Komoot Team and I'm sad for
| them.
| dewey wrote:
| That's a bit like saying you don't need a guide book because
| you have a globe at home.
| prmoustache wrote:
| replace globe with a complete set of detailled maps.
| avhception wrote:
| And not at home but on your phone, with integrated GPS
| tracking.
| piperswe wrote:
| OpenStreetMap doesn't have that. Services downstream from
| OpenStreetMap, like Komoot, OsmAnd, and Organic Maps do,
| but OpenStreetMap doesn't have any offline mode or
| anything (and only has very rudimentary GPS tracking on
| the website, for centering the map on your general
| location to make editing easier)
| ramon156 wrote:
| The more I see Bending Spoons in the news, the more I realize how
| shitty of a company it aims to be.
|
| I once applied to their job listing. I adored the idea of working
| there. Now all I can think about is "I'm glad they rejected me"
| ImaCake wrote:
| I mean they own _meetup_ which is one of the worst platforms
| that has failed to die in-spite of how terrible a product it
| is.
| mooreds wrote:
| Network effects + inertia are a hell of a drug.
| bonzini wrote:
| Say what you want of Bending Spoons, but they know what they're
| doing. They buy companies with a faithful user base that are
| losing money, and jack up prices to force the user base to show
| if they really are faithful. Then either they make money or
| they close the service, but it turns out it's the former more
| often than not.
|
| For example, Evernote was losing money on server costs and
| after almost 20 years of existence did they really need a
| generous free tier to build up a user base? All that BS had to
| do for Evernote to make a profit was nerfing the free tier.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| Without 20/20 hindsight, it's hard to be so sure about the
| dividing line between one epoch and another as time marches on.
|
| For instance it took until about 2010 to confirm that we were
| already headfirst into the Garbaceous Period by 2005, but it
| was just not that obvious at the time.
|
| Before you know it the Enshittocene crept up without fanfare
| but the type of extinction it foments might not have been
| possible without the decline in conditions that came before.
| sneak wrote:
| I will never understand why businesspeople consider it a betrayal
| when business happens.
|
| If it's not in the contract, it's not something you should rely
| on.
| Guvante wrote:
| Who says it wasn't in the contract? If they had a terms of
| service that promised to never sell and then revised it to
| remove that clause is that legal? Probably not but good luck
| fighting it.
|
| The problem is legal suits over complex contract law are way
| too expensive for impacted people to legitimately seek
| enforcement in cases like this. Especially since courts hate
| non-monetary enforcement and so at best would allow some
| pittance of money as a replacement.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| The article is really really well written, beautiful! Thank you
| for making it available freely.
|
| I'd say it's about time for the komoot folks to organize and
| create a coop and stick it to komoot. A coop would probably be
| even more compatible with the dirtbag lifestyle!
| jabiko wrote:
| Here is a bittersweet video of the self organized goodbye meeting
| of the ex Komoot team: https://youtu.be/qLJkK4Wn1HI
| dakiol wrote:
| > Komoot, to them, was more than a job; it was a mission and
| purpose. Many had accepted below-average salaries and uprooted
| their lives to commit to the outdoor lifestyle and the dream job.
| Suddenly, they were left scrambling for new work and visa
| sponsors with just a few months' pay as severance. The six
| bosses, meanwhile, pocketed an estimated 20 to 30 million euros
| each.
|
| That's why, and call me unethical, I never do more than necessary
| at work. Never help outside of business hours, never engage with
| rich bosses. Switch every 2-3 years to new places. Maximise my
| income (in real money, not imaginary stocks) while trying to work
| the minimum.
|
| For dreams and craft, I have my side projects.
| lycopodiopsida wrote:
| There is nothing unethical about: you are doing the only sane
| thing in this system and economics. Morons, who work themselves
| to death believing bosses shit-talk about "our mission" and "we
| are in this together" will learn it the hard way.
| benterix wrote:
| Try saying that on LinkedIn and watch the reactions. There is
| a huge difference between what you can feel and do, and what
| you can say.
| baq wrote:
| If you are in a game of smoke and mirrors, you play the
| game according to the rules.
|
| I don't post on LinkedIn. Got better games to play.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Why would you say anything on Linkedin in the first place?
| There is absolutely no reason to engage there unless you
| are PR for a company or self proclaimed career coach liar.
| lycopodiopsida wrote:
| Well, if your boss doesn't say what they think, you
| shouldn't either. And why would even consider posting
| something to linkedin, in the first place?
| MarceColl wrote:
| I saw a post recently on linkedin. A founder was saying "If
| you had one year to live, would you still choose to work at
| this company? That is the bar to join <crappy nonsensical
| startup>". It was so incredibly sad.
| lycopodiopsida wrote:
| Since slavery is forbidden, morons are the next best
| thing, I guess.
| oc1 wrote:
| Boy, please share. I need something depressing to laugh
| about
| MarceColl wrote:
| Managed to find it again, there you go:
| https://www.linkedin.com/posts/arnau-ayerbe_met-brian-
| chesky...
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| > There is a huge difference between what you can feel and
| do, and what you can say.
|
| Agree 100% - if I were to bring my authentic self to work
| I'd be fired in about a minute flat.
| michaelt wrote:
| In principle, we can imagine jobs that contribute positively
| to the world.
|
| When a builder builds a house, or a doctor mends a broken
| arm, the community has one more home and one less broken arm
| - and the community is left richer even after the builder and
| doctor have been paid.
|
| That house will be keeping a family warm and dry 20, 40, 100
| years into the future, and the patient will be using that arm
| for the rest of their life.
|
| I can see how a person _with a job like that_ could take
| pride in the fact they 've contributed to their community, in
| addition to the fact they've gotten paid.
|
| Of course, a lot of jobs _aren 't_ that way, but have tricksy
| bosses who will try to convince you they are. Which is what
| it sounds like happened in Komoot's case.
| kelvinjps10 wrote:
| In the workers side they could be doing good but on the
| corporations side not, like insurance companies charging
| way more for the broken arm than it should be and the house
| prices being way more higher than they should
| goopypoop wrote:
| plus the sepsis and subsidence
| const_cast wrote:
| The unfortunate reality is that a lot of jobs don't exist
| to enrich the community, they exist for the exact opposite
| purpose. They exist to make the world a worse place. They
| exist to make people sicker, or cause more children to die,
| or maybe even to accelerate acts of war.
|
| You don't need to do good things to make money. You can do
| bad things and make lots of money, and actually, that's
| typically a little easier. You can even create your own
| unique evils and then sell solutions to them.
| bjackman wrote:
| I'm gonna copy paste a comment I wrote yesterday that I think
| fits perfectly here:
|
| As an engineer if you are gonna be a rank and file employee you
| need to do it for your own reasons. I think the main good
| reasons to do it are:
|
| 1. It's relatively chill and you value the stability. You
| deliver competence from 9-5 then go home to your family or some
| other thing that's more important to you than work.
|
| 2. You really enjoy the pure engineering side and find meaning
| in the technical artifact you're creating. Probably it's open
| source and has some value/community outside of your employer.
|
| 3. You're gaining valuable experience that you can later
| leverage into something else. Probably you're in the first 5
| years of your career.
|
| If the main thing driving you is growing a business, and you
| don't directly own (not options or RSUs or whatever, actual
| real equity) a significant slice of it, you are very likely
| misdirecting your energy.
|
| ---
|
| It sounds like the staff here thought they were in case 2, but
| they were not. I think that the article explains the reason why
| nicely: the thing they were building was not part of the
| commons.
| A_Duck wrote:
| This is a shame though. We should work towards a world where
| most people can find meaning in what they do.
|
| For now it can work better to be a contractor and have your
| 'meaning' be a positive reputation in your industry.
|
| More like being a medieval blacksmith. You don't mind what
| you're making, but you're known in your village by the
| quality of your work.
| terminalbraid wrote:
| What's your reasoning equating "a medieval blacksmith"
| serving a village directly with their own work and "a rank
| and file employee" which is how the post you're commenting
| on was intentionally framed?
| A_Duck wrote:
| I'm contrasting rather than equating them.
|
| The medieval blacksmith / freelancer may be in a better
| position to feel meaning in their work, compared with an
| employee, because of the system of incentives around
| them.
| bjackman wrote:
| You can be in case 1 and find meaning in what you do.
| That's where the blacksmith is.
|
| There's absolutely nothing wrong with doing a good job for
| 40 hours a week in return for a salary. Being a competent
| professional who does quality work is rewarding!
|
| I just think if you're doing work of that nature (which
| _most of us are_, BTW) you need to recognise it for what it
| is. Don't burn yourself out trying to squeeze every drop of
| initiative/creativity/productivity out of yourself.
| Definitely don't answer emails at the weekend. Don't
| tolerate under-payment. Don't accept non-legally-binding
| promises from the boss.
|
| Just deliver the best work you can in the time you get paid
| for, then stop.
| pydry wrote:
| At the same time we can maaaaaaaybe start pushing back on
| all of the "capitalism is not the problem" and
| "capitalism is the least worst of all available options"
| memes?
|
| Or is it too soon already?
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| All of the same human dynamics will be present under
| socialism or communism or whatever you prefer.
|
| Under capitalism, a boss might try to persuade you to
| work hard harder than you might otherwise for dubious or
| illusionary future reward.
|
| Under some form of collectivism, there will still be
| pressure to attend some sort of goal, even if it is non-
| financial in nature. That pressure will ultimately come
| in the form of a leader of some form, and one of the
| tools they will have to achieve that (possibly
| collective) goal will be to persuade you to work longer
| and harder than you might otherwise for some dubious or
| illusionary future reward. Perhaps this future reward
| won't be in money, but that won't change the underlying
| dynamic.
| pydry wrote:
| You could equally argue that there is no point making
| murder illegal because "all the same dynamics leading to
| murder" will still happen. They will. Society exists to
| either curtail or encourage our instincts for a
| collective purpose.
|
| This is not about that.
|
| This about an _institution_ being rewarded and operating
| entirely within the law which takes a valuable asset,
| systematically disenfranchises the people who made it
| valuable before parasitically sucking it dry for material
| gain.
|
| That _is_ a pretty unique capitalist dynamic, actually.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| You've moved the goal posts.
|
| First, we were talking about an outcome - exploitation of
| workers.
|
| Your claim, if I understand you correctly is that this
| outcome is inevitable under capitalism, (perhaps solely
| possible under capitalism?) and then under some other
| system you prefer, it would no longer happen, or perhaps
| be impossible.
|
| My contention is the incentive to exploit exists in all
| socioeconomic systems, even collective ones. This doesn't
| mean there's no better system, or that we should stop
| caring, or that we should have no laws regarding it. But
| if correct, it means the arguing that your preferred
| system cannot or will not have this outcome, is weak and
| unconvincing.
|
| Instead of engaging directly with the claim, you pivoted
| to implying that my argument was that we should not have
| laws against bad things.
|
| Under capitalism: Both murder and worker exploitation
| should be illegal. Both murder and worker exploitation
| will likely occur to one degree or another.
|
| Under collectivism: Both murder and worker exploitation
| should be illegal. Both murder and worker exploitation
| will likely occur to one degree or another.
|
| If you want to argue that collectivism is better for
| other reasons - go nuts! But if your argument is that
| there will be no power hierarchy, no pressure to achieve
| goals, and no incentive to exploit then I just don't
| think you're serious.
| pydry wrote:
| No. You moved the goal posts actually.
|
| We werent talking JUST about an outcome, we were talking
| about a process triggered by private equity that destroys
| value AND exploits workers and rewards the people who do
| it.
| hansvm wrote:
| The problem with capitalism is that something like it
| (concentrated power begetting additional power at the
| expense of most of the populace) is nearly guaranteed to
| crop up in a society which doesn't burn resources
| actively fighting against it. When fishing for
| alternatives then, you have to consider:
|
| 1. What fraction of our resources do we want to burn
| while eliminating which of the worst parts of
| capitalistic tendencies?
|
| 2. How do we preserve diffuse power distributions in the
| face of actors who will actively work against that goal?
|
| Not to trivialize it too much, (1) is just a policy
| decision. Being completely hands-off is probably sub-
| optimal. Burning 100% of resources fighting fraud and
| other abuses isn't ideal either. It's a reasonable
| framing though for comparing strategies. There's no free
| lunch, so if somebody sells you a governmental structure
| which eliminates the worst parts of capitalism without
| _some_ cost, it's likely snake oil.
|
| Point (2) is the harder one. The majority of people
| wouldn't mind a little extra power and a few extra
| resources. If that's possible, it's also (usually)
| possible to create sub-populations which together have
| much more power than other groups and thus subvert the
| goals of your anti-capitalist strategy. How do you create
| a system that's robust against most individual
| participants (potentially inadvertently) working against
| it?
|
| So, sure, let's do away with capitalism. What do you
| replace it with that's both better and won't revert back?
| pydry wrote:
| This isnt really about using "resources" to fight fraud.
| None of this was illegal and it was all very profitable -
| it was encouraged.
|
| This is about us _consenting_ to capital being put at the
| very heart of society 's locus of control, which is what
| drove this kind of parasitism to be encouraged rather
| than discouraged.
|
| It is a _unique_ feature of western (especially American)
| society - something which actually isnt represented in
| other power centers.
|
| China has "private equity" for instance, but it's not
| really private - it operates like all financial
| institutions as an arm of the state (not run by capital)
| and has no real incentive to destroy healthy and valuable
| companies for profit.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| Yes this is the key point imo - power begets power in any
| system.
|
| However diffuse power distributions aren't a panacea
| either imo. As an example, I hold no particular power
| over the other tenants in my building, and they hold none
| over me, the building owner has significant power over
| all of us. It's easy to imagine a future with no
| landlord, and the power over the plot of land being
| diffused among the current tenants. But then I would have
| some degree of power over my neighbours, and they over
| me, and all sorts of abuses and nastiness are possible
| there.
|
| An uncomfortable possibility we should take seriously is
| that there might not be a perfect distribution of power
| in human societies. That whether power is concentrated or
| diffuse, it will be used for good and for ill.
|
| I am not claiming that I know the answer, or that today
| is just the best that we can do, but I am pretty
| sceptical that we can wave away these fundamentals, or
| that we can design or plan societies like this.
| theamk wrote:
| It's not like there are good options out there. USSR
| showed what state-controlled socialism looks like, and
| the picture is not pretty. A most damning example is that
| it was impossible to leave USSR during the most of its
| existence, and people had to do crazy things like jump
| off cruise ship and swim many miles [0] just to get out
| of country.
|
| If I have a choice between being jailed in the country
| and having VCs drive some companies into the ground, I'd
| choose the latter every time.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Kurilov
| closewith wrote:
| There are many better options right now then US-style
| kleptocapitalism. Just look at the HDI index.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| How about good ol' morals? We don't need to get rid of
| capitalism, but how about getting the proportionality
| back on track? Does a single person need to make billions
| and billions of money? Should I, as a CEO, earn millions
| of dollars while my workforce can barely survive with one
| job?
|
| I don't think so. This is what needs to be fixed on a
| global scale.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > How about good ol' morals? We don't need to get rid of
| capitalism,
|
| Yes we do. Capitalism, even at the somewhat attenuated
| level it exists in the modern mixed economy compared to
| the original system of the same name, creates too strong
| of a reward system for immoral behavior to correct the
| moral problems while preserving the system.
|
| "It is difficult to get a man to understand something,
| when his salary depends on his not understanding it," is
| a systemic, not isolated individual, problem with
| capitalism.
| BrenBarn wrote:
| That's true to an extent but I think that problem
| increases as that salary (or, more likely, capital gain)
| increases. So just limiting total wealth increases would
| likely reduce the temptation to sell out.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It's not like there are good options out there
|
| Yes, there are.
|
| > USSR showed what state-controlled socialism looks like,
| and the picture is not pretty. A
|
| The USSR and other Leninist-derived regimes showed what
| one narrow set of models of authoritarian state
| "socialism" looks like, sure, and its not pretty just
| like the pure private capitalism that was generally
| abandoned netween the early and mid 20th century for the
| modern mixed economy was not.
|
| OTOH, Leninism and its authoritarian state capitalism
| (that is, featuring a narrow elite that control society
| via control of the non-financial means of production,
| just as the private capitalist class does in private
| capitalism) is not the only option to to the presently
| dominant mixed economy that reduces or eliminates the
| private capitalist elements.
|
| Democratic market-oriented socialisms where the private
| firms still exist but the non-financial means of
| production are controlled (either entirely in pure forms,
| or simply more than in the status quo systems in forms
| which are still mixed economies but with a _different_
| mix) by those working in the firms employing them are
| possible. In fact, variations along this dimension
| _already exist_ among modern mixed economies, and the
| ones further along it are not the limit of how far that
| can go.
| nine_k wrote:
| I'd love to hear about examples.
|
| Sweden tried to become more socialist in 1970s-80s, and
| it did not look pretty. (Then Mr. Palme was shot and
| killed.)
|
| Venezuela... well, does not look like an enticing example
| either.
|
| I would say that socialism as a _state-imposed_ regime
| does not work, same as communism. BTW communism _does_
| work in communes of like-minded individuals, be it a
| bunch of hippies or a bunch of monks. The key is self-
| selecting people who subscribe to that way of living
| voluntarily. This can 't work for a whole country.
|
| OTOH what the TFA suggests does work, exactly because
| mission-driven open-source projects / foundations and
| non-profits attract the right kind of motivated people,
| while providing little to no incentive for entities
| seeking pure profit to take over. Debian is one example:
| it exists for decades in the normal capitalist economy,
| is going strong, and shows no signs (and no ways) of
| selling out.
|
| This, to my mind, is the future. Maybe 50 years from now
| our grandchildren will be appalled by the fact that we
| kept giving our free labor and free time to for-profit
| entities which did not have our best interests aligned
| with theirs.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Yeah, it's always "wrong socialism" when it's built. But
| the next one (after the next one, after the next one,
| after the next one) will be the right one and will not
| murder millions of people, despite the previous attempts
| doing exactly that. Please go away already, we had enough
| of suffering caused by ivory-tower theoreticians unable
| to perceive the reality.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| It depends. Is your theory of change to push a welfare
| state, gradually increase the welfare, raise taxes to
| redistribute wealth, achieve UBI, fully fund public
| healthcare, housing, food, water?
|
| Or is it that any day now workers are going to reach
| unanimous consensus and go on a national strike, siezing
| power from the owners of capital? Or maybe a violent
| revolution in which the bourgeoisie and class traitors
| get guillotineed alongside the capitalist oppressors?
| pjc50 wrote:
| I'm reminded of the Vshojo collapse just recently, where a
| whole load of people were convinced that not getting paid on
| time was a temporary necessity for growing the business.
|
| Which promptly imploded, taking stolen charity donations with
| it.
| valicord wrote:
| 4. Golden handcuffs
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| > That's why, and call me unethical, I never do more than
| necessary at work. Never help outside of business hours, never
| engage with rich bosses. Switch every 2-3 years to new places.
| Maximise my income (in real money, not imaginary stocks) while
| trying to work the minimum.
|
| That's not unethical at all, in fact I think that's a highly
| intelligent strategy to look out for the little guy (namely
| you) in the bear pit of tech capitalism. Anyone buying into the
| "we're more than a company, we're family" schtick is just
| another sucker to be worked remorselessly to line the pockets
| of the VPs and C-suite.
|
| My previous employers included me in their Director/VP
| meetings, and the family schtick evaporates pretty quickly when
| they start talking cuts. One VP in a meeting, quite literally,
| proposed laying off an entire team of veteran engineers (most
| with young kids) and the very next thing that came out of this
| doucebag's mouth was "are we ordering in some lunch?". They do
| not care a whit about you and once you realise that then you
| should just look to yourself first and foremost and forget
| accepting below-average salaries just for some "mission".
|
| They will happily kick you to the curb for any of the following
| reasons, which I have personally witnessed in the past few
| years,
|
| - Their pal is looking for a job that's currently occupied by
| someone else. So they fire and hire.
|
| - They want to deflect blame for their own failures, so they
| fire a bunch of folks who had nothing to do with the failures.
|
| - They want to appear 'ruthless' to the CEO, so fire people to
| enhance their own image.
|
| - They do a clear out of their previous incumbents staff once
| they replace someone and bring in their own crew.
| tdiff wrote:
| > For dreams and craft, I have my side projects.
|
| In very infrequent cases can you achieve any noticeable (for
| society) results without being part of a large org.
| Xylakant wrote:
| That depends on what you consider noticeable. A lot of things
| are noticeable (and noticed) on the local level. The folks
| that organise reading sessions with the kids a my sons
| school. The people managing the local hockey club. People
| doing local education in IT. Organizing the neighborhood
| meetup. The people that do hack and tell. Blog about what
| they're doing by as fun projects.
|
| They may not be known beyond their local communities, but
| they have impact on society. Most of them are contend with
| that. If you're looking to change the world, then that's
| likely not good enough, but then again, if you're looking to
| do that it's unlikely that you will achieve that as a rank
| and file employee in a corporation.
| tdiff wrote:
| I agree, but I also see how even a regular employee in,
| say, space travel corp (or in pharma and so on) can
| consider their work to be more impactful than running a
| local community (even in reallity their impact is minimal).
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| There's some maturity in being happy doing things that are
| not significant for society.
| bremon wrote:
| As a warning: every time I've pushed hard, then had to rein it
| in and do less, I've gotten fired.
|
| There's nothing you can do that makes you irreplaceable, even
| if you're the only one in the world that can do it.
|
| It's fine if you want to stay in your happy place as the only
| one that can do X and then keep selling them on the value you
| provide and how you're doing big things. But, nothing lasts.
|
| Don't burn out, but sitting on your ass is a bad strategy.
| ponector wrote:
| The goal is to not push hard from start, to set up moderate
| expectations.
|
| The recipe of success is also to do a little bit more (15%)
| than your colleagues, be reliable and punctual.
| baq wrote:
| Don't do that then. Work on 90% with bursts of 130%. Don't
| work on 120% all the time because it'll be assumed you've
| gotten lazy when you just need to slow down.
| Sammi wrote:
| Those percentages are all too high for a normal salery.
| hdjdi wrote:
| The definition of "100%" varies.
|
| In U.S. even though a full-time job is "40 hours", many
| in non-government jobs put in more. The "120%" spoken of
| would be 48, so let's say roughly 2 extra hours a day, so
| 7:30-18:30 with an hour lunch. Tech startups in my
| experience are usually 44-46 hours for low-mid IC dev or
| more if higher or any lead/manager responsibilities. Some
| dev/IT managers may be on-call most of the week. But some
| people literally are working 40 hours/week.
|
| Other countries "100%" hours/week are roughly: Europe
| 35-40, Eastern Europe ~40, India 45-55, China 45-50,
| Africa 40-50.
|
| And similar applies for dev/IT startups and management.
|
| Some work > 100 hours week on average, but I think that's
| difficult to do in dev/IT for more than a month at a time
| without burnout, even if you just keep hitting a button
| over and over.
| zzzeek wrote:
| Yup, when headhunters reach out with all these idiotic startups
| that I know full well are just playing the game of "see if you
| can bullshit long enough for someone to buy your useless
| company" I don't even laugh anymore, just shake my head. If you
| have real life obligations and can't afford to hop jobs every
| year, never work for a startup.
| mellosouls wrote:
| This approach doesn't work ethically if you are working for
| (say) public service organisations.
|
| There's also the argument an abundance of cynicism - as well as
| being occasionally aimed at a misjudged target (eg you work for
| bosses who do try to do the right thing) - is corrupting to the
| self and wider society.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Of course the argument works for everybody who works in
| public service. You do the duties you are paid for. If you
| think that's not enough you are welcome to volunteer for
| free.
| gus_massa wrote:
| I agree. Or if the task is so important they should get a
| bigger salary.
| astrobe_ wrote:
| > This approach doesn't work ethically if you are working for
| (say) public service organisations.
|
| This remark is specially apt with regard to the leitmotiv of
| TFA; one sees, indeed, an entirely different picture when the
| goal of an organization is something else than growing and
| making profits.
| 010101010101 wrote:
| I like to remind those I mentor that The Company's sole goal
| for their employment is to extract more value from them than
| they are paid - not because The Company is evil, but because
| that's just what's required in a capitalist endeavor. But, what
| it does mean, is that you shouldn't feel like you owe any
| company anything - the goal of any for-profit corporation is to
| extract more value from you than they give back to you, period.
| javcasas wrote:
| > it was a mission and purpose
|
| Is this "we are a family here" for the people that don't fall
| anymore for the "family" con?
| atoav wrote:
| Bosses always want workers who treat their job and the company
| like family, but when it comes to them treating their workers
| like family somehow it is all about the numbers and they barely
| even treat them like people (if the law permits it).
|
| It may seem over the top, but my feeling is we as a society
| need to stop accepting, excusing or even applauding behavior
| like this for our own good. This should be a stain on their
| names for the rest of their lives and the rest of society might
| consider treating them as outcasts.
|
| I know this is an extremely unpopular position to take on a
| platform where half of the people dream of creating a company,
| pretending it is the mission of their lives, just to sell it to
| the highest bidder and live a life in luxury after. Everybody
| has to watch out for themselves they would say. If your goal is
| to leave the planet worse off than before that is the sure way
| to do it. This is a model for a society of sociopaths who kill
| everything good and it is time we start putting up some
| resistance.
| izacus wrote:
| This is the approach that most workers took in our eastern
| European countries during socialist era.
|
| It was shitty. Pretty much all services were terrible since
| people just did the minumum.
|
| I've noticed US going down this path for a few years now and I
| can't figure out why in the frigging world would you cheer on
| towards such horrible society.
|
| All the best places I've lived at were great because people
| cared about the jobs and other work they did.
| twixfel wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with caring about your job and what you
| do. Just don't buy into any of the horse shit about missions
| and so on. The bosses are ruthlessly capitalist so it's
| immoral to expect the workers to be any less self interested.
| vachina wrote:
| Well that sucks for the users too. If i knew this would be the
| outcome i wouldn't have contributed anything to the platform.
| prmoustache wrote:
| But you should have known given it is such a common pattern.
| thomasahle wrote:
| Other than entirely community-driven projects (like
| https://wanderer.to/ mentioned in the article), are there company
| "forms" that legally protect against this kind of sell-out? Like
| non-profit or public-benefit-corporation?
|
| If users are contributing the content of the app, it seems they
| should have a way to hold the owners accountable.
| Guvante wrote:
| Honestly it can be quite difficult, generally speaking the best
| you can do is release the data in raw machine readable format
| with a permissive license.
|
| Unless you already have large interested parties "bribing" (not
| technically of course) the group of controlling members tends
| to be a weakness of anything crowd sourced.
|
| Especially since it is rarely cut and dry. If the finances
| aren't working out is it better to sell and keep the site
| online or not? Are intrusive pop ups begging for donations a
| better option? There isn't a singular true best option.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| There are non-profit corporations which seem on their face to
| address the issue, but not knowing much about how they work, it
| seems to me that it is often too easy to convert them to for-
| profit corporations, as happened with Raspberry Pi. I think in
| Europe a lot of open source organisations are "foundations"
| which seem to operate on similar principles.
|
| IMO non-profit or charitable status is a must for sustainable,
| open, community-driven projects. One of the dumbest takes I
| often hear is "this for-profit corporation was good and kind
| before financial capitalism came along". Financial capitalism
| was always there, the for-profit corporation is pretty much a
| pure product of financial capitalism. Don't believe any for-
| profit startup that tells you it is all about the social
| mission, it is not. Even if the company is European.
| greenpenguin wrote:
| In the UK a CIC (Community Interest Company) is an option,
| which can legally oblige the company to act in the interest of
| "the community they serve". I think in the USA a benefit
| corporation might be similar.
|
| Alternatively if Komoot was a worker co-op a sell-out would
| only be possible with consent from the employees. Consumer co-
| ops (where users can vote too) are also an option but with more
| caveats.
| jtbaker wrote:
| Wow, this is awesome! I had seen the little Strava plug-in, but
| didn't realize it was something that was self host able!
| zoobab wrote:
| First you would need a Data license of the GPX files (like
| Creative Commons) that prevent corporate sell out.
| blitzar wrote:
| Feature not a bug, ticket closed.
| rglullis wrote:
| > Unsustainable growth is not just ideology but an imperative,
| and it's blatantly unsustainable. In a 2023 interview, Hallerman
| revealed that Komoot's revenue was roughly split between
| recurring subscriptions and new users making one-time payments
| for map regions, with ad revenue making up a small remainder.
| That means they had to keep signing new users and expanding into
| new markets to stay in business. Komoot relied on continual
| growth in a finite world--an impossibility. What cannot continue
| forever is, by definition, unsustainable.
|
| Relying solely on "community" to build _and maintain_ these
| spaces is equally unsustainable. I worry that people will look at
| this and think that the alternative is to reject _all_ forms of
| businesses, when the problem is simply of scale.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| They had 250 employees, plus paid influencers, for a
| (predominantly) cycle routing app used in Europe. That's why it
| was unsustainable. A realistic sized business would have been
| sustainable.
| rglullis wrote:
| Which is why I mentioned the issue of _scale_. Seems like you
| are agreeing with me?
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| Absolutely yes. Just expanding on the point that the
| "scale" in question was how Komoot chose to run their
| operations, not the size of customer base addressed.
| Bending Spoons have, quite adroitly, figured that they can
| serve 90% of the customer base with 10% of the operations
| costs.
| cloudbonsai wrote:
| I think that the stylized picture here is:
|
| 1. Bending Spoons (BS) is an itallian conglomerate, who is
| specialized in acquiring marginally-profitable software
| companies.
|
| 2. After an acquisition, BS attempts to cut the cost structure
| agressively. This normally involves massive axing of employees.
|
| 3. BS also raise the pricing agressively, which would shock long-
| term users.
|
| 4. Now the acquired compnay is cashflow-positive.
|
| 5. Using that cash flow, BS proceeds to acquire another company.
|
| Based on this playbook, Bending Spoons has acquired Evernote,
| Remini, Meetup, WeTransfer, Brightcove ... and now Komoot.
|
| So in short, Bending Spoons is a roll-up vehicle for software
| business, pretty similar to what Brad Jacobs (who founded United
| Rentals and XPO) has been doing for decades.
| padjo wrote:
| > Komoot, to them, was more than a job; it was a mission and
| purpose.
|
| > Unusually, none of the employees held stock in the startup
|
| Sigh. Even with equity I'd question tying your purpose to the
| company like that. Without equity it's just very silly.
| klabb3 wrote:
| Yes. Equity is _ownership_. Basically:
|
| A for-profit company, owned by a few founders, takes your data
| and provides no data licensing terms or contractual guarantees.
| It's legally speaking their data. Everyone else has basically
| no legal rights to anything on the "platform".
|
| Then they attract both employees and users due to their good
| mission, "we will never sell". Surprise! They sell and leave
| everyone hanging.
|
| From a EU perspective I get it. This is upsetting and
| surprising even. But from a US perspective this is just
| business as usual.
|
| That privately owned data is a pile of gold that grew by the
| day, eventually big enough to buy out even the most passionate
| and stubborn founders. The company was never what the author
| expected it was, even before the sale - it was a projection of
| what they wanted it to be.
|
| I applaud the efforts to fix the business model and lack of
| data sovereignty. The more people that "wake up" and understand
| the flaws of current system, the better chances we can fix it.
| dostick wrote:
| Until capitalism is fixed or replaced with a better system (not
| communism) it will happen. This is a very popular area of
| interest for general public, with millions using it. Such service
| should be run by government. And everyone laughs. But that's the
| idea behind government and society. Not just collect taxes and
| provide basic services. the ineffective and outdated democratic
| system that needs update for modern times.
| dzink wrote:
| Any accumulation of power, especially government, becomes a
| target of corruption. Every single country and post has
| eventually proven that. The real innovation would be to prevent
| abuse of power systematically, and thus restore trust
| systematically. Anything else is just promises waiting to be
| broken.
| uludag wrote:
| Reading this, I was getting vibes from another book I read
| recently: "Less Is More" by Jason Hickel, which I can recommend.
| A lot of the topics in this article like enclosure are covered in
| the book, with complementary conclusions drawn.
| proactivesvcs wrote:
| I was also Komooted - by Komoot. They brought out ViewRanger, who
| I had paid money to provide a service. Month by month they
| removed the features and access that I had paid for, and made the
| app less useful. I am not sure I can feel any pity for Komoot, an
| organisation that met a fate down a path it seemed to choose.
| subpixel wrote:
| I think that's Outdooractive which is a Komoot competitor
| raffael_de wrote:
| I've been using Komoot a lot for bike tours in Germany and never
| have been particularly happy with it. It served the core purpose
| of telling me where to go but there were so many obvious flaws
| about it that I sometimes wondered if the people at Komoot
| actually even use it themselves.
|
| Then there is the obvious Geschmackle of taking advantage of OSM
| (a free open source project) while not providing a way to give
| back to it. For example marking a bridge or path as no longer
| functional or existent.
|
| The main feature of importance for me was a convenient way of
| visual representation of the trip on a map + being able to easily
| take pictures and have them added into the tour route
| visualization. This is provides for a really neat trip summary.
| Maybe someone has an app or service suggestion for such a
| feature?
|
| > Couchsurfing, Reddit, Twitter, and many more were similarly
| komooted.
|
| I'd like to add another company to the list: carpooling.com aka
| mitfahrgelegenheit.de
|
| > Capital does not invent interesting new ideas like gravel and
| bikepacking. It swoops in from the outside to appropriate.
|
| That seems a little warped. Bikepacking (isn't new) is as old as
| the bike and gravel biking is pretty much a capitalist rebranding
| of bikepacking. Selling the idea that you need a "gravel bike" to
| for bike packing. Pretending that the tried and tested way of
| laterally attached baggage is not good enough anymore and now has
| to be attached medially and you need those special tires yada
| yada
| klabb3 wrote:
| > Then there is the obvious Geschmackle of taking advantage of
| OSM (a free open source project) while not providing a way to
| give back to it. For example marking a bridge or path as no
| longer functional or existent.
|
| Something something paradox of tolerance. I don't know exactly
| what type type of conditions should apply to open source data,
| but this shouldn't be permitted by the license. I'm leaning
| more and more towards that permissive licensing (and their
| popularity) is basically destroying open source "public goods".
|
| I'm not anti market by any means. You could provide a service
| and get paid for well... good service. The problem is the
| "digital enclosure" where they own the data, and the social
| graphs. If the value of the service goes down, the value of
| their accumulated data remains, and can be sold as private
| property.
|
| Now that copyright is near dead, due to the fair use loophole
| for AI, it's getting much more adversarial, fast. Data will
| become much more fragmented again.
| sorenjan wrote:
| > The main feature of importance for me was a convenient way of
| visual representation of the trip on a map + being able to
| easily take pictures and have them added into the tour route
| visualization. This is provides for a really neat trip summary.
| Maybe someone has an app or service suggestion for such a
| feature?
|
| Strava has this.
|
| https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/216917387-Addin...
| subpixel wrote:
| Poor one out for local Mitfahrzentrale!
| raffael_de wrote:
| And ze Mitesszentrale [1]
|
| 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBKu6r-fn7k
| navane wrote:
| The users were always the real service provider. All the value is
| in what they tell each other through their data. All Komoot does
| is aggregate it, supply the infra structure.
|
| The only way to stop owners pulling the rug underneath all this
| community given content is by keeping the content open source.
| Promise the users you will do best with their data by keeping it
| out in the open so that if you don't, someone else will. Keep the
| door ajar.
|
| Unfortunately this is another "if we all just" solution that
| humanity seems unable to do.
| renox wrote:
| > Unfortunately this is another "if we all just" solution that
| humanity seems unable to do
|
| Not all the time, see the success of GPL software. But yes,
| each community has to relearn the lesson: promises don't matter
| what matter is whether the data are 'open' or not.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| Thanks to the GPL and open source software movement, we have
| these hype-capitalist FAANG corporations that reduce
| everything down to making a profit as fast as possible - or
| just dump it.
|
| No long term goals, no guarantees for users, no job security,
| no ownership in a renters economy. Just take the data and
| make as much money with it as possible.
|
| But that's just one interpretation, perhaps it will have a
| happy end. If not, I'm sure there will be an app to fix it.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| What a bizarre article.
|
| Even as someone who thinks big private equity acquisitions tend
| to go badly, I'm not sure this article makes very good points. In
| particular, lots of blame is levied against bending spoons but
| not much against the founders, yet the founders arranged to not
| give employees equity, the founders reneged on their 'never sell'
| promise, the founders did not try to negotiate better severance
| for the employees that would be let go after the sale, and the
| founders set the business direction before the sale.
|
| I do feel like there is something to the idea that one should be
| suspicious of some 'social good' messaging from companies as it
| can often be a way to allow or hide existing inequities, eg
| paying everyone the same (in cash but not equity) or claiming
| they don't need equity as you won't sell the company (except you
| do). Amusing that it is the relatively left-wing prosocial German
| startup scene where the workers get fucked over rather than the
| SF one though maybe this is outliers or startups choosing
| employees in Germany with things the other way around in the US.
|
| I think the article also seems to misunderstand the emphasis on
| growth. The expectation is not for profits to continue growing
| forever. The expectation is that the growth will happen roughly
| logistically (until some outside force causes a loss/increase of
| market share), so under this model a slight slowdown in growth
| implies that the maximum is nearer, and this maximum has a big
| impact on the value of the business. If one is hoping to sell the
| business then maintaining growth is important because it implies
| something about the size of the market and therefore the
| valuation. It was the founder's desire to sell for a high price
| (alternatively to try to gain network-effects advantage over
| competition) that drove the growth, not the existence of private
| equity firms.
|
| Some other thoughts:
|
| As a user, I don't particularly care about the particularities of
| how employees in developed countries are treated. The company
| gets some choice in how it divides its equity and how much
| revenue goes to paying staff and in what proportions. These
| things tend to be negotiable for engineers working for software
| startups (maybe not in Germany??) and these employees negotiating
| themselves relatively poor contracts isn't really something I
| blame on private equity.
|
| I feel like the article implies that capitalism necessarily leads
| to the way that private equity seems to destroy the communities
| run by the companies it acquires but I'm not sure that should be
| true. It seems to me like it ought to be more profitable in the
| long run to be less destructive (though some of this can look bad
| to users if they see layoffs as a focus on growth is decreased or
| the removal of loss-leading products that users like for obvious
| reasons).
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| A similar thing happened with the mountain bike-centric mapping
| app TrailForks. It was created by pinkbike.com and, while a
| decent app, gets msot of its value from the huge set of largely
| community sourced GPS data. They then went subscription for most
| functionality as PinkBike sold to the Outside media company. This
| happened quite a while ago but a large part of the community is
| still very upset - including me.
| jq-r wrote:
| I'll never forget this. Tons of riders uploaded their rides,
| charted trails, routes, uploaded pictures... Without any of
| that data the app would have zero value. And if any of those
| riders knew that they'll do a rug pull later nobody would've
| upload anything. So they had to do it with a secret plan to
| introduce subscription abruptly, locking pretty much everyone
| out with a subscription and trying to justify this with "data
| costs money". Then they've packaged this data, along with
| pinkbike.com and and sold this out to outside.com. I would
| understand if they've say contributed the user trails to eg
| openstreetmaps or allowed it to be downloaded, but no, they've
| just taken what was yours and sold it.
|
| This stuff should be illegal. And f them for doing it.
| jraph wrote:
| Caveat: I'm not very familiar with Komoot. I only see it as
| something that locks seemingly valuable data behind a login and a
| proprietary application.
|
| > I spoke with a few longtime employees in the aftermath, who
| described it as a rough and cruel betrayal. > > Komoot, to them,
| was more than a job; it was a mission and purpose.
|
| If the data and the code is not open (and thus does not truly
| benefit everyone), and can vanish at a company's whim, it doesn't
| seem worth it.
|
| > Many had accepted below-average salaries
|
| I reluctantly accept to be paid less if it allows me to have a
| job that does not go against my values (but will leave as soon I
| as I find something paid better). What made Komoot so special
| that you'd accept below average salary?
|
| I hope that, again, some initiative that values open stuff will
| save the day and make up for the void this event creates.
| Fade_Dance wrote:
| The generative AI argument seems flawed.
|
| Much of the article is waxing poetic about the commons and the
| corrupting influence of monetization and capital, yet the main
| thrust against genAI is training on data from walled gardens and
| expanding access. As far as I can read it, it's a fairly pro-
| capital angle as well, in that a nonprofit AI outfit who was
| training on copyrighted data would also be vilified. Seems
| incompatible with the rest of their article. But I suppose one
| _has_ to have a strong stance against AI these days.
|
| You can't have your cake and eat it too. Copyright walled
| gardens/publishers are some of the most flagrant examples of
| walling off the cultural commons. It's also necessary in order to
| support livelihoods of individuals, but it can incentivize "bad"
| behavior like changing the mission in order to pursue mass appeal
| and profit. Likewise, completely disregarding the fact that 150
| employees is something that is funded by growth isn't a fair
| representation of the whole story here. A group of hikers doesn't
| magically create a service like that from thin air.
|
| Maybe what the author is trying to advocate for something like a
| corporate structure with capped profit? Regardless, their
| arguments need work.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| This is half right IMO. I'd agree with the first part of the
| article: when you have a growth-at-all-costs company, which is
| then sold to someone who wants to control costs to crank out the
| maximum profit, then users are inevitably going to lose out. It
| was always entirely predictable that this was the way Komoot
| would go - lots of us commented way before the Bending Spoons
| acquisition that 250 salaries (never mind the influencers) was a
| lot to pay from a routing app.
|
| But even as someone pretty left/liberal fully signed up to the
| open source gospel, I think the conclusion is unconvicing and
| rather handwavy:
|
| > Promising projects such as the Mastodon social network, Matrix
| chat, and Pixelfed social photo sharing are reviving the
| diversity and abundance of the early, independent internet before
| it was enclosed by tech giants in the 2010s. More than singular
| platforms, the Fediverse represents a growing ecosystem of open
| protocols and distributed services that guarantee freedom of
| movement for users and data and push back against capitalist
| enclosure--a diverse and resilient digital commons.
|
| No. You don't get performant consumer-level routing without lots
| of fast servers, and the Fediverse doesn't really have a way to
| pay for lots of fast servers. Ok, you can run hobbyist projects
| like Brouter on low-spec hardware - and don't get me wrong,
| Brouter is absolutely awesome in its own way, and for a certain
| type of cyclist it's all they'll ever need. But if you want
| something that appeals beyond the hardcore cyclist - in the way
| that Komoot does, and in the way that Google and Apple Maps do
| for motoring (and, increasingly, city cycling) - there has to be
| some sort of way of paying for the servers. "Open protocols and
| distributed services" don't fix that.
|
| Entirely personally (and you would expect me to say this), my
| view is instead: support your local artisan. Your local artisan
| framebuilder will build you a fantastic bike. Your local artisan
| bike shop will repair it much better than a chain like Halfords
| will (or whatever your country's equivalent is). These guys
| aren't practising "enshittification". They're doing what they
| love, and being paid for it so that they can feed the family and
| pay the mortgage. Sure, maybe it's still "capital", but not in
| the same way that Bending Spoons does it.
|
| So if you're happy going to an artisan bike shop, consider going
| to an artisan routing/mapping site, rather than a growth-then-
| sellout project. There are plenty of these - I'm obviously going
| to plug my own site/app, cycle.travel, but there are many others.
|
| (Incidentally, I hold no brief to support Komoot - quite the
| opposite, because they've ripped off a bunch of my content - but
| the bit about "leeching off the open-source commons" is not
| entirely fair. Komoot developed one of the most popular
| OpenStreetMap geocoders, Photon, and released it as open source.
| They're paid-up members of the OSM Foundation. Sure, there's more
| they could do and some other companies do more, but it's
| important to recognise what they have done.)
| m0llusk wrote:
| This piece ignores some potentially critical points. Having large
| amounts of capital to carelessly throw at organizations that do
| not have sustaining cash flow is a recent thing. Zero interest
| rates are casting their shadow here. Also, with modern analytical
| tools it is relatively easy to see, for potential investors if
| not the general public, roughly how profitable or not any given
| entity is. This makes growth dependent plays hard to hide.
|
| On a more robustly positive note, ongoing progress with solid
| legal frameworks for benefit corporations may address much of
| this. Such companies serve stakeholders instead of shareholders
| and have employee ownership as foundational.
|
| Leaning back and declaring Capitalism as flawed isn't good
| enough. If you have property rights and ability to sell labor
| then you have Capitalism. Corporations are a new innovation that
| we can hone. Large, shared allocations of capital will continue
| to be needed for essential endeavors so we need to figure this
| out.
| awjlogan wrote:
| Do users share some "responsibility" (for want of a better word)
| as well? If people were happy to share their experiences to
| personal, or at least smaller, groups rather than with some
| implicit desire to be widely acknowledged then a portion are of
| the use of these platforms would not exist. Keep a blog of your
| routes, shared with your friends - others can stumble upon it
| (obviously less easily these days) - or even go with your friends
| and don't bother sharing it to the rest of the world. Your
| activity might not be the best by some metric, but who _really_
| cares? Some of my favourite trips have been those that have gone
| completely wrong, as compared to the original plan, and enjoying
| that with the people who care about you is far better in the long
| run.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| Users are humans, you might as well say do humans share some
| responsibility.
|
| As a user, nothing much will probably change. You will still be
| able to share your personal data with the world.
|
| It's a little overreaching to say because users did this , they
| are responsible for making the company popular and then getting
| sold off to a make money for the founders and then these users
| are responsible for the blight of the employees (who were also
| "users" probably).
| the_wolo wrote:
| I seriously didn't expect to find one of the best critiques of
| capitalism I've ever read on a site about Bikepacking. It's got
| almost everything one needs to know about the enclosure process
| and the relationship between platform companies and their users,
| all nicely described through an example that the Bikepacking
| community can really feel by just having been owned.
| kensai wrote:
| The manifesto reads very leftish with many radical weasel words,
| as if the alternative is fantastic. Without a capitalistic
| structure they would have been long ago been headless chicken.
|
| Now, don't get me wrong, it sucks majorly for the employees and
| it is painful; but particularly for the long-running ones, where
| is your equity? Komoot was once a startup, why did you accept to
| work there without equity.
|
| Last but not least, indeed, never believe the bosses, unless you
| have (almost) the same end-game privileges.
| johnecheck wrote:
| I am not a lawyer, but don't employees (and maybe even users)
| have a breach of contract claim here?
|
| At least in the US, if you tell me 'We'll never sell out' and I
| take a job with no equity because of it, that's a verbal legal
| contract and I have grounds to sue if you then sell out.
|
| In theory, at least, our legal systems discourage/prevent this
| sort of lying and backstabbing. In practice, perhaps not.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| You'll have to hire a lawyer, and then hope yours is at least
| as tenacious as their expensive team of lawyers. It becomes
| quite a gamble, and one that can drag on for years costing you
| more and more until you're broke.
| smallpipe wrote:
| I see a lot of love for Komoot but for me that died when their
| "top 10 ride in <region>" had a bunch of auto-generated routes
| linking points of interests, that tried to take me through
| horrible paths or 4 lane roads.
| bglazer wrote:
| The author directly addresses this in the article. This was
| engagement farming driven by growth metrics.
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| Founder here of a 300 person startup. It's appalling and
| infuriating to read stories like these.
|
| I started my biz because I wanted to make products that people
| love, that create value and timesave for others (specifically
| restaurants). I've always thought that if I do that and have a
| good time doing it the money will take care of itself.
|
| I would be horrified if some PE firm rug-pulled our users and
| screwed our employees. Any such takeover would have to happen
| over my dead body.
| hiq wrote:
| How many offers have you rejected so far? What were the
| amounts?
|
| When founders sell, it's rarely to end up making the same
| amount of money they would make if they kept ownership. And
| once you've sold you have no control.
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| I've been doing this for 13 years. You can use your
| imagination :)
| baxuz wrote:
| I interviewed at Komoot some 4-5 years ago and the people there
| were probably some of the worst I've ever interviewed with.
|
| The task was to create a React app with no other dependencies
| other than vanilla Leaflet, which would allow you to draw routes
| on the map, and it should allow you to export the route as a GPX.
| I had 8 hours to do it.
|
| They kept shitting over my solution for a good hour on the call
| for god knows what reason. Snarky remarks the whole time. If
| you're so dissatisfied, there's no point unless you take joy in
| doing so.
|
| Knowing better today, I should've just thanked them and left the
| meeting.
| baxuz wrote:
| The more I see how businesses work, the more I think that every
| employee should be guaranteed a certain amount of shares on
| selling out, without an end date, and not requiring the employee
| to be working in the company at the time.
|
| Not monopoly money options, categories, valuations etc, but a
| guaranteed percentage of the entire price. The same privileges
| that the founders & C-suite has.
| ndkap wrote:
| >In getting komooted, we feel the pain of not being represented
| in the companies we work for and the platforms we use. Komoot was
| supposed to be special, the darling of the German startup scene.
| A unicorn not only in terms of prospective valuation but also in
| its good working conditions and a progressive mission of enabling
| access to the outdoors.3 The owners' assured their long-term
| commitment with the mantra "we won't sell."
|
| Is there a legal way to ensure that a company adheres to claims
| like "we won't sell"? It seems that trusting companies with their
| word without any underwriting is foolish
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| A practical observations independent from the komoot future.
|
| In the past I switched to komoot from osmand because it produced
| better trail running routes. In both apps you set some anchor
| points to get a gpx, but osmand often sticks to the shortest path
| between them (often boring roadways) while komoot chose scenic
| trails where available. Also osmand heats up my phone
| significantly both then when doing pathfinding and when just
| drawing a complicated piece of terrain.
|
| I recently discovered a new feature in the Strava subscription:
| you just "draw" a route how you like it and the app glues it to
| the nearest available track. Even though komoot may have resolved
| ambiguities better, the strava ui is just faster to get what you
| want, so I switched to it.
|
| IMO the Strava UX overall is not pleasant, I don't like their
| business model, and this is the second useful feature in the
| subscription ever since heatmaps. But it's genuinely good and
| I'll stick to it until a better alternative comes around. I still
| pay for osmand though and I hope it survives. Strava doesn't work
| offline for one thing so the first thing I do is exporting the
| gpx to osmand.
| epynonymous wrote:
| tried komoot and strava, there's a flood of subscription pop
| upswhen you use the app, i want to use it first to see if there's
| any value in purchasing it. evernote is another example of this
| desperation to get revenue.
| donmb wrote:
| In my opinion, all the criticism surrounding Komoot is just envy.
| The founders worked hard for over 15 years and have now made a
| well-deserved exit. People are just jealous. Period.
| smsm42 wrote:
| That's why I am so reluctant to participate in "community-driven"
| projects anymore. I don't even mind people making money from my
| free contributions. But if they eventually sell it to a bunch of
| private equity piranhas, which would just cannibalize it for
| spare parts, suck out all the brand value and leave the carcass
| rotting - why should I be a part of it? I am glad to contribute
| my work to the society, with no compensation but feeling good
| about it. But enriching some random private equity dude and then
| letting it all burn - why bother?
| farfromrefuge wrote:
| If anyone is interested i develop a free and open source
| alternative to komoot. I am currently using it for a 6 months
| trip in Europe : https://github.com/Akylas/alpimaps The idea of
| it is to be able to do everything offline, from map browsing to
| route computing, elevation profile... I am 99% sure i use the
| same library for route computing which is the amazing Valhalla
| computing framework. It propose multiple routes likes komoot, can
| show route stats, compute elevation profiles. But it can also do
| much more like compute different ascents or show slopes
| percentages without online data.
|
| To use the full potential of AlpiMaps you need to generate your
| maps. I can generate them but i dont have the fundings to host
| the maps on a server (would need a lot of space and computing
| power to regularly generate maps per country, per regions ...).
| Instead i explain how to generate the maps for any region you see
| fit.
|
| Also AlpiMaps has a very small user panel right now so it had
| many bugs i am sure (especially on iOS which i dont use daily). I
| am though 100% willing to fix/improve/add any feature. Just
| share/explain on github.
|
| I am not often on HN so if you have any question please use
| github
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