I will attempt to be as objective as possible base on my experiences with the company. Flexport does a great job of luring people in by putting on a show of achievements and past growth numbers throughout the interview process. The harsh reality is that this place is complete circus on the inside. Moreover, in my mind Flexport has an identity crisis - freight forwarder or a tech company. Yes, freight forwarding is a huge international industry with many many players but the margins are low - this is not a typical software play where gross margins are sky high. Flexport is offering all of the typical startup perks (Macs, food, swag, dogs in the office, RSUs, etc) but doesn’t have sound internal cost visibility and financial controls to drive business insight and decision making.
Leadership:
- The leadership team in the NE region is fragile and inexperienced. Most are in their positions because of tenure alone not because they know or understand how to operate an international freight forwarding business. Just because you joined the company when there were ~50 employees globally does not mean that you have the experience, skill set and knowledge to lead and manage an office of over 100+ people.
- Great on talk but hardly ever pull through on execution.
Work Life:
- In the office M-F is the standard for Ops. Can work remotely when needed but its not the norm.
- Most come in around 9:15 AM, play around all day long and leave at 6:30 - 7 PM EST. Many OAs work weekends.
- Holiday coverage planning - will need to find people on the team to work on paid holidays.
Automation:
- For Ops, automation is nonexistent- its all manual on the platform.
- At the end of the day the finger that you click your mouse with will hurt.
Advise to job seekers:
- If you are thinking about accepting a position in Operations, think long and hard about dreadful office politics, repetition of manual tasks, poor leadership.
- Because of how Ops teams are structured you cant really work remotely for an extended period of time, being in Ops is essentially 100% in the office M-F. Also, during the holidays it is expected that teams still do the work i.e. you or designated people on your team will be doing work on paid company holidays.
- If you have a family and or children, I would highly encourage you not to take a role in Operations. The job is so manual for team members that working 8-5 is not accepted or practiced for the most part.
- US Offices: Wouldn't recommend joining an office that opened in 2019 and or has less than 50 full time employees in the office. The smaller offices have little support and virtually no leadership presence.
Ops Associate and Sr Ops Associate:
- Job is extensively manual and repetitive. It’s not really discussed in the interview process but you will be assigned a book of accounts and essentially execute the same Workflow each day. The platform that we sell clients on and work in daily has little to no automation or advanced logic. You will be clicking through shipments all day long clearing action items and performing administrative tasks.
- Manually create client quotes all day long using internal database. Each leg of the shipment is manually added. You also get to price the shipment at your discretion and choose margin for the shipment. Although this might seem neat to decide what the margin will be on an individual shipment level, it becomes a giant can of worms and inconsistent.
- Weekend work is normal.
- Once an OA is performing well and demonstrates next level ability, they typically are promoted to Sr within 14-18 months. The Sr is the glue that keeps teams in sync and knows the accounts very well.
- Must be in the office M-F, must do holiday coverage (working on paid holidays).
- Typically are in the office until 6:30-7 PM each night.
Ops Manager:
- Glorified Sr OA but with mgmt responsibilities.
- You will be in charge of your team and the face of your book of business.
- Your Sr OA will know accounts better than you, You will lean on them for information and context operationally.
- Maintain SOPs and account planning, margin management.
- Deal with upper mgmt and sales.
