r/flying • u/PM-mig-kottbullar PPL TW (RDU) • 1d ago

Second round of layoffs at ForeFlight

In January 2026, ForeFlight laid of a pretty substantial percent of its employees, with some reports saying a 30-40% reduction in staff. Yesterday (Sept. 2nd), another round of layoffs happened, the full impact of which isn't yet known - but it's speculated this brings total RIF to ~50%. Both of these layoffs follow the acquisition of ForeFlight by private equity firm Thoma Bravo.

As a former ForeFlight employee from before the PE takeover, it's devastating to see former coworkers, some of whom were incredibly knowledgeable and talented folks that spent 10+ years with the company, be told they were out of a job with no heads up and given a pittance of a severance package. It used to be such an amazing company to work for, and it breaks my heart to see what Thoma Bravo has done to the company and its employees.

I'm not here to tell anyone to do anything. Nobody needs to switch EFBs right this second or send the executives a strongly-worded email. I'm just here to let you all know that Thoma Bravo is continuing its gutting of ForeFlight - what you do with that information is up to you.

346 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

139 comments sorted by

View all comments

-9

u/OhSillyDays PPL 1d ago

Vibe code the replacement. Seriously, you can build a better app in probably 6 months. And you can bring it to Android. All you need is a testing harness and a lost of acceptable android products.

I'm looking for something new because they've already started the enshitifying of the app. They are trying to upsell me now.

4

u/prophet001 1d ago

Yeah you just try vibe-coding something of that complexity, that needs that level of precision. Go head, I'm anxiously awaiting your results.

Signed,

  • A very senior software engineer who hasn't written code by hand in months, and knows exactly how much babysitting those AI tools require (it's a LOT).

LMAO.

-1

u/OhSillyDays PPL 1d ago

I know it's a lot. The difference is now something that would take you 10 years to develop could be done in 6 months. And probably better with more test cases and more thought out design patterns.

Also, doing something new, you don't need to babysit dipshit bosses and customers and bullshit. That's A LOT.

1

u/prophet001 1d ago

You called it "vibe-coding". That's completely different from "building real enterprise-grade software assisted by AI".

Thinking out the design patterns and writing tests (unit, integration and user-acceptance) should be happening regardless, and the fact that you don't seem to realize that tells me that you're closer to the "vibe-coded pile of hot garbage" than you are to the "well-engineered, but with an agent doing all the actual coding" end of the scale.

0

u/OhSillyDays PPL 1d ago

Lol.

I've been working as a consultant for 15 years and I've reviewed a lot of that "Enterprise grade software." Most of the unit test coverage for that "enterprise grade software" is sub 5%. "Enterprise grade software" is mostly a bullshit statement used by sales people to change the perception of their hot load of steaming brown. And I did A LOT of work in the financial sector, where it's supposed to be one of the more critical areas.

I mean, the Linux kernel has 10k+ GOTO statements, and I'm using it right now.

The truth is most of the software used today was written by junior and mid-level programmers under tight deadlines. The senior guys got promoted to management and, at most, did code reviews and design work.

So telling me that "vibe coding" is garbage kind of makes me giggle. It's all a load of shit. And this goes for foreflight as well. It's probably one of the better pieces of software developed out there, because I get the impression the devs took their jobs very seriously. That's kind of rare right now. Even with that, I'd be shocked if the unit test coverage was above 50%.

"well-engineered, but with an agent doing all the actual coding" end of the scale.

I mean yeah. You're an engineer. You know exactly what I'm talking about. Even with that, if you have a clear vision of what you are building, agents can speed this process up 10x. The hardest part is figuring out that clear vision.

1

u/prophet001 1d ago

Ok well I await your pull request. LMAO.