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Pivotal Software S-1

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Re: Pivotal Software S-1

#51

Post by subway »

XR0CSWV3h3kZWg wrote: post #48
subway wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a killer process for churning out mediocre cogs.

Could you elaborate?

Much of the process revolves around trying to ensure everyone on the team can tackle any problem in any part of the codebase. This is accomplished by doing all work paired, rotating pairs daily. Similarly the consultants assigned to your team are regularly rotated in and out to different projects during your engagement.

Specialization is highly discouraged, so the result is a mix of people who can kinda accomplish most things eventually, and a rush to find external resources when you need even moderately specialized knowledge about components in your stack.

Re: Pivotal Software S-1

#52

Post by tyingq »

mephitix wrote: post #29

The only two experiences I had with Pivotal were with RabbitMQ (a very well designed product) and with Pivotal Tracker - I tried it about a year ago. I felt like I was fighting the software; they were extremely stubborn about adhering to Scrum 'best practices' that may not work in practice.

Their consulting practice is similar. They won't sign on unless your people adopt their methodology 100% (pairing, etc) Guess it's nice to be able to be that choosy about clients.

Re: Pivotal Software S-1

#53

Post by chris11 »

mywittyname wrote: post #22
exelius wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They basically make a Java-based application abstraction layer that sits on top of AWS, Azure, VMWare, etc. Basically a platform for managing storage and compute across multiple on-prem and cloud providers. It’s real enterprisey stuff — as in, it’s probably not even interesting to you until you’re big enough to run in a half dozen data centers and within all the cloud providers.

I don't foresee companies continuing to pay for the ability to switch cloud providers. Mostly because I doubt the pricing differences between providers will ever be significant enough to justify moving. I also suspect that providers will not keep feature-competitive with one another. It seems like every month, AWS is releasing new tools, and there's no way that other providers are maintaining this pace. My suspicion…

I worked at a place that had recently switched over to microservices in the Cloud from a monolith on premises. Rumors were we were spending a lot of money on our cloud providers. I heard other rumors that pricing got less competitive after awhile because the size of our bills implied that we were locked in. I'd guess that you could get more competitive pricing if you were able to easily switch between cloud providers.

Re: Pivotal Software S-1

#54

Post by XR0CSWV3h3kZWg »

subway wrote: post #51
XR0CSWV3h3kZWg wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate?

Much of the process revolves around trying to ensure everyone on the team can tackle any problem in any part of the codebase. This is accomplished by doing all work paired, rotating pairs daily. Similarly the consultants assigned to your team are regularly rotated in and out to different projects during your engagement. Specialization is highly discouraged, so the result is a mix of people who can kinda accomplish mo…

So specialization is a precondition for non-cogs?

Re: Pivotal Software S-1

#55

Post by odonnellryan »

subway wrote: post #51
XR0CSWV3h3kZWg wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate?

Much of the process revolves around trying to ensure everyone on the team can tackle any problem in any part of the codebase. This is accomplished by doing all work paired, rotating pairs daily. Similarly the consultants assigned to your team are regularly rotated in and out to different projects during your engagement. Specialization is highly discouraged, so the result is a mix of people who can kinda accomplish mo…

Seems to be really successful, though, no?

I'm not defending them, but I know I'd love for my shop -- we do the same things as them -- to grow in this way.

Re: Pivotal Software S-1

#56

Post by dav »

mephitix wrote: post #29

The only two experiences I had with Pivotal were with RabbitMQ (a very well designed product) and with Pivotal Tracker - I tried it about a year ago. I felt like I was fighting the software; they were extremely stubborn about adhering to Scrum 'best practices' that may not work in practice.

The thing is, their flavor of Agile development absolutely does work in practice, and it is hands down the most reliable way to build great software I have ever seen. However it only works if it is pretty much 100% adhered to, hence the stubbornness.

Re: Pivotal Software S-1

#57

Post by exelius »

chris11 wrote: post #53
mywittyname wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't foresee companies continuing to pay for the ability to switch cloud providers. Mostly because I doubt the pricing differences between providers will ever be significant enough to justify moving. I also suspect that providers will not keep feature-competitive with one another. It seems like every month, AWS is releasing new tools, and there's no way that other providers are maintaining this pace. My suspicion…

I worked at a place that had recently switched over to microservices in the Cloud from a monolith on premises. Rumors were we were spending a lot of money on our cloud providers. I heard other rumors that pricing got less competitive after awhile because the size of our bills implied that we were locked in. I'd guess that you could get more competitive pricing if you were able to easily switch between cloud providers…

Platforms like this also allow you to choose between using Amazon RDS or a homerolled Postgres DBaaS in the same way. You can make a strategic/tactical decision to implement certain parts of your infrastructure yourself vs outsource the capability entirely.

But again, this is really only useful if you’re big enough to have many application groups developing for a bunch of different business units. I have yet to see a good use case for PCF outside enterprise IT departments.

Re: Pivotal Software S-1

#58

Post by kertis »

Ok, I was working some time with Cloud Foundry as sysadmin/devops. It's big fucking enterprise piece of software which nobody know exactly how to install it and maintain. Their guide on site is obsolete, it's almost unrealistic to understand in nutshell how it works (compared with Kubernetes/Mesos-Marathon). Only info on Github pages were useful.

CF even can't even survive unplanned reboot of DC, after such incidents you literally will get parted cluster and no one know what to do.

Thank you Pivotal for such experience.

Re: Pivotal Software S-1

#59

Post by what_ever »

jedberg wrote: post #16
goatherders wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? Dell owns 50% of Pivotal with the rest owned by companies like General Electric and Microsoft. The valuation is $3B. They aren't coattailing anything - it's an actual business with actual customers and actual value.

I know it's an actual business. I wasn't suggesting it wasn't. But even actual businesses can get a nice boost by filing along with a successful related IPO.

I don't think the decision could be made that quickly. IPOs are usually in work for months if not years.

Re: Pivotal Software S-1

#60

Post by taurath »

meddlepal wrote: post #49
stickfigure wrote: post #20

I consulted at Pivotal on and off over the last several years and got an up-close look at the process. This a heroic feat. In a short matter of years, they took a consulting services company, adopted some poorly designed abandonware from VMWare, and rebuilt it into a product that now serves some of the biggest companies in the world. Pretty much everything has been rewritten and almost all of it is available in githu…

I know some folks at Pivotal as well. Congrats to them! I'm a bit depressed looking through some of the comments on here. It feels like people don't understand or care what Pivotal has done and is doing and are writing it off because of the tech rather than the idea and implementation.

The optics that they use to get consulting contracts with non-tech big-co's are the exact opposite that you'd want to cultivate to impress HN.
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