Steve Singh will become Docker’s new CEO • Hacker News Board

Re: Steve Singh will become Docker’s new CEO

#31

Post by onwardly » Tue, May 02, 2017, 2:42 PM UTC

My company has been a partner of Concur for several years, starting back in 2012 when the original founders (Steve, Raj and Mike) were all still there.

Steve was easily the most-respected leader in the travel industry- even people that disliked Concur admired Steve. He was articulate, created a clear vision for Concur that they maintained even as they grew like wildfire, and he inspired trust and goodwill with Concur partners.

I get the "oh no, SAP executive" instinctual reaction, but Steve is clearly an entrepreneur at heart and considers himself an entrepreneur (it took them 20 years of grinding and ups and downs to build Concur what it is today).

There was also a comment about him leading the company to exit in 2-3 years. I seriously doubt it. Concur's stock symbol is CNQR which isn't a coincidence. They didn't build Concur to sell it, they built it to conquer, which they had basically done when SAP bought them. Plus after 20 years I imagine $8B sounded pretty good, but I don't think their approach was ever to try to "flip" the company and I doubt he would join Docker if that was the intention in any way.

Re: Steve Singh will become Docker’s new CEO

#32

Post by ben_jones » Tue, May 02, 2017, 2:43 PM UTC

meddlepal wrote: post #18

vowelless wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. But I want to give them a fair opportunity to justify this statement. Can someone give me examples of diseases being cured via docker, or planes being kept in the air (etc)

Marketing Spin! Somewhere there is probably a system that touches some aspect of those things that use Docker.

Our employee bought a plane ticket! Literally keeping airlines in business.

Re: Steve Singh will become Docker’s new CEO

#33

Post by bmelton » Tue, May 02, 2017, 2:45 PM UTC

Not that I'm anybody to say so, but I think it's worth posting a friendly reminder that Solomon is a beneficial HN contributor here in good standing (shykes), and will likely read the remarks we post here at some point.

I see some of the posts trending towards vitriolic here, but it's worth remembering that CEO or not, he's one of us, and deserves to be treated as well as any other member of the community.

Personally, I would like to extend my thanks to him for creating dotCloud (which I still miss, and preferred to Heroku for a variety of reasons), extending that into Docker, and for having been a hell of a nice guy all along the way.

Re: Steve Singh will become Docker’s new CEO

#34

Post by tyingq » Tue, May 02, 2017, 2:47 PM UTC

monkey2005 wrote: post #27

tyingq wrote: post #3

My kneejerk reaction is that a senior leader from Concur, then SAP, is going to buzzword bingo and "enterprisify" docker into something very different. That's probably not fair though. Concur is a pretty big success story, sold for $8B, and it appears some good decisions drove that.

Docker already tried to go the enterprise route but they're getting killed in the market. The small number of enterprises that are doing containers are going to Kubernetes for technical credibility or Redhat OpenShift for enterprise credibility. Instead of trying to be a platform company for the enterprise, Docker should have just licensed and supported the Docker engine to the mass market (their one moat) and absolu…

>Docker should have just licensed and supported the Docker engine to the mass market (their one moat)

I give them a lot of credit for noticing that nobody else was capitalizing on the existing container tech. But it did exist already. They didn't invent something new. They just put a nice cli, daemon, and image repository around it. I think they know the "license the engine" bit is a non-starter, as the higher level container orchestration platforms are already abstracting away from it.[1]

[1]http://blog.kubernetes.io/2016/12/container-runtime-interfac...

Re: Steve Singh will become Docker’s new CEO

#35

Post by shykes » Tue, May 02, 2017, 2:49 PM UTC

bmelton wrote: post #33

Not that I'm anybody to say so, but I think it's worth posting a friendly reminder that Solomon is a beneficial HN contributor here in good standing (shykes), and will likely read the remarks we post here at some point. I see some of the posts trending towards vitriolic here, but it's worth remembering that CEO or not, he's one of us, and deserves to be treated as well as any other member of the community. Personally…

Thank you Barry, I appreciate this message more than you know.

Steve is an incredible human being, and a founder who took his company from zero to market dominance - Billion+ revenue and still growing fast. He persisted through 20 years of ups and downs to get there, and created a culture where people look out for each other and stay for the long run (average tenure is almost 15 years).

For a founder like me he's the ultimate role model, it's a privilege to be able to work with him and scale Docker together.

Re: Steve Singh will become Docker’s new CEO

#36

Post by amirmc » Tue, May 02, 2017, 2:51 PM UTC

goseeastarwar wrote: post #2

Surprised there wasn't also the typical "want to spend time with family" part to cover the fact that the CEO was fired and a board seat was his consolation prize. If you want to raise $180M without a business model to become a fabled unicorn, you had better know what you're doing. Docker just got a lot less interesting with an ex-Concur exec in charge, but it'll probably exit within 2-3 years and make the investors h…

You think that a board seat (the group that the CEO reports to) is a consolation prize? That makes no sense at all.

Re: Steve Singh will become Docker’s new CEO

#37

Post by kordless » Tue, May 02, 2017, 2:52 PM UTC

bmelton wrote: post #33

Not that I'm anybody to say so, but I think it's worth posting a friendly reminder that Solomon is a beneficial HN contributor here in good standing (shykes), and will likely read the remarks we post here at some point. I see some of the posts trending towards vitriolic here, but it's worth remembering that CEO or not, he's one of us, and deserves to be treated as well as any other member of the community. Personally…

This is a company we're talking about here, not an individual. That is true even if an individual of our group envisioned an important technology. Pulling punches, as it appears that you are asking us to do, is irrational, especially given this latest move is likely to take the company public. I think it's important to note that maybe investments like this in infrastructure are not so great for users or the Internet as a whole, given company's objectives (especially public ones) has always been to dictate how technology makes revenue and how people must conduct themselves when using that technology.

I think it's important we see all sides of it and if Docker happens to be controversial, well, that's their problem to solve, not ours. That's why they get the big bucks and we get to sit here and say what we want about it, at least for the present moment.

I would note that you have just as much right to say what you think here as anyone else, and saying otherwise is "speaking" for us as a group. I appreciate your comment and your presence here in this group.

Re: Steve Singh will become Docker’s new CEO

#38

Post by sytse » Tue, May 02, 2017, 2:53 PM UTC

I'm sorry to see Solomon go. I think Docker has a challenge on their hands with Kubernetes and that a founder would be the one with the authority to make a drastic change.

It is inspirational to see that nowadays you can build a huge company when you make a product developers want.

Re: Steve Singh will become Docker’s new CEO

#39

Post by monkey2005 » Tue, May 02, 2017, 2:54 PM UTC

sytse wrote: post #38

I'm sorry to see Solomon go. I think Docker has a challenge on their hands with Kubernetes and that a founder would be the one with the authority to make a drastic change. It is inspirational to see that nowadays you can build a huge company when you make a product developers want.

Solomon isn't going anywhere :-)

Re: Steve Singh will become Docker’s new CEO

#40

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 02, 2017, 2:57 PM UTC

monkey2005 wrote: post #29

aub3bhat wrote: post #25

Docker was probably a victim of its own success, with so many containers & orchestration systems popping up (CoreOS, Kubernetes, etc.), it became harder for them to capture enterprise market that they had taken for granted. Worse the impression that I got was somehow Docker with its great usability was for amateurs and not for enterprise users (where most of the revenue is expected to come from). Anyway I think Docke…

Docker just needed to license and support the engine rather than trying to build a crappy enterprise platform a'la Cloud Foundry. The Docker engine is the one thing which nobody else can easily replicate. They would have smashed it in the mass market at something like $100/yr/node.

[deleted]