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Travis CI Is Laying Off Senior Engineer Staff

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Re: Travis CI Is Laying Off Senior Engineer Staff

#11

Post by mbrumlow »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #8
mbrumlow wrote: post #5

I called it. The money men have praises Idera for their new and innovative approach to software development. Also know has fixed cost devlopement to the lowest bider. If you want stop this type of practice please don't sign multi year contracts. That is stage two. This is where they get their value. Without the contracts they can't use it as leverage to take out huge debts -- where they get their value from. If the f…

There's a lot of problems to go around. If you're a founder, you're usually going to cash out for the right price. Everyone has their price. No one wants to grind forever. This isn't a problem if you're profitable enough that you can hold forever (Basecamp). If you're an investor, you're struggling for returns right now (to your point about interest rates and the Fed). You're going to squeeze whatever you can get you…

This is not a investment. It is a tool for leverage. The goal is not to grow the company it's to get as many contracts as they can and lower the ebita. Once they do this they will take out huge loans for the next company to destroy.

I don't blame the founders. But at the same time I think if enough of these deals for bad these types of investors will stop their bad practices.

This sort of move not only hurts employees. It hurts those who use the product too. It's a net bad for everybody but a few.

I am still digging into how these things work and how the money gets out. But I would not be surprised if sometime in the future this sort of business engineering would be made illegal.

Look what PE did to solar winds and general dollar. Both had huge piles of cash and were drained and put back on the market for the general public to pay the debt.

Re: Travis CI Is Laying Off Senior Engineer Staff

#12

Post by coldcode »

michaelt wrote: post #4
fortytw2 wrote: post #2

Also relevant - https://old.reddit.com/r/devops/comments/at3oyq/it_looks_lik... "Yep. We were terminated by Idera without even our managers knowing." in wake of travis being acquired last month. https://blog.travis-ci.com/2019-01-23-travis-ci-joins-idera-...

In the blog about the private equity acquisition, the CTO says "With the support from our new partners, we will be able to invest in expanding and improving our core product" I wonder if he believed that, even as he wrote it?

It's complete BS, but for some reason C* people often don't understand how dumb this is, but for them it might mean a big payday so they don't care. The inherent knowledge walks out the door with the engineers, and all that is left is code and no knowledge. Hire cheap devs and before you realize it it becomes a write-off for the acquirer. Everyone wins except the people who worked hard to build it in the first place.

Re: Travis CI Is Laying Off Senior Engineer Staff

#13

Post by toomuchtodo »

mbrumlow wrote: post #11
toomuchtodo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of problems to go around. If you're a founder, you're usually going to cash out for the right price. Everyone has their price. No one wants to grind forever. This isn't a problem if you're profitable enough that you can hold forever (Basecamp). If you're an investor, you're struggling for returns right now (to your point about interest rates and the Fed). You're going to squeeze whatever you can get you…

This is not a investment. It is a tool for leverage. The goal is not to grow the company it's to get as many contracts as they can and lower the ebita. Once they do this they will take out huge loans for the next company to destroy. I don't blame the founders. But at the same time I think if enough of these deals for bad these types of investors will stop their bad practices. This sort of move not only hurts employee…

> This is not a investment. It is a tool for leverage. The goal is not to grow the company it's to get as many contracts as they can and lower the ebita. Once they don't his they will take out huge loans for the next company to destroy.

All investments are buying cashflow or value appreciation, that is the end goal, regardless of the method. As long as the PE firm involved gets more cash out then they put in, it was a successful investment.

I address how both companies and customers can protect themselves in my comment you replied to. If someone buys a private company, the majority shareholders were willing participants. Better ownership and stakeholder models protect against these outcomes.

No one is going to buy Let's Encrypt. Consider if that model would work for CICD as a service. Start a non-profit, round up the talent, fire up the infrastructure, provision a Stripe account, and build something better. Let's Encrypt secures the web for $3 million/year. Crunchbase and Glassdoor mention Travis CI had ~$1-1.5 million/year in revenue.

Re: Travis CI Is Laying Off Senior Engineer Staff

#14

Post by samtho »

maccio92 wrote: post #10

maybe they wouldn't have been laid off if they took themselves and their work more seriously? I mean honestly, looking at the team page at https://about.travis-ci.com/team/ , we have titles such as Mermaid on board, Tyranjasaurus Specs, Tortilla Builder, Sausage Dog Wrangler, Customer Avocado, Head Catwoman, and Conjurer of Avocado Patronuses

Really? Bullshit titles (which are already not taken seriously in tech circles) are the reason? This seems to be a bit of an asinine assumption given their success and track-record.

Re: Travis CI Is Laying Off Senior Engineer Staff

#15

Post by guitarbill »

maccio92 wrote: post #10

maybe they wouldn't have been laid off if they took themselves and their work more seriously? I mean honestly, looking at the team page at https://about.travis-ci.com/team/ , we have titles such as Mermaid on board, Tyranjasaurus Specs, Tortilla Builder, Sausage Dog Wrangler, Customer Avocado, Head Catwoman, and Conjurer of Avocado Patronuses

Because everything business has to have a super serious appearance, and we should judge people on image, and not actions or the output of their work?

Or because a bit of whimsy is too much for miserable people?

Re: Travis CI Is Laying Off Senior Engineer Staff

#16

Post by lostapathy »

xtreak29 wrote: post #9

From the tweet [0] it seems there is going to be a huge tech debt. I don't know how Idera is planning to expand upon the acquisition after letting go people like this. > Some know the skinny on dozens of different open source projects and ecosystems, others understand run time and dep mgmt for like 17 languages and even more tooling, and automated image mastering to handle it all. > Others are rewriting what it means…

To (sadly) be fair, Travis has already been struggling mightily with tech debt the last few years. There have been a lot of issues surface and re-surface that sure seem like they shouldn't be a big deal.

For example, setting a build to use ruby 2.4 is supposed to run the latest ruby 2.4.x, but would frequently build against ancient, unsupported rubies for a while, before being silently fixed.

Re: Travis CI Is Laying Off Senior Engineer Staff

#17

Post by westoque »

There was a time when I wanted to use Travis CI but the pricing was too much. Then, CircleCI came along with a free plan, and when the time came to upgrade, we did it so easily since we’re already invested in the platform.

I wish Travis CI they did this from the start since I like their platform and had some open source projects there and again could have easily upgraded. This is where the fremium model would have worked.

Re: Travis CI Is Laying Off Senior Engineer Staff

#18

Post by goobynight »

dominotw wrote: post #3
fortytw2 wrote: post #2

Also relevant - https://old.reddit.com/r/devops/comments/at3oyq/it_looks_lik... "Yep. We were terminated by Idera without even our managers knowing." in wake of travis being acquired last month. https://blog.travis-ci.com/2019-01-23-travis-ci-joins-idera-...

> "Yep. We were terminated by Idera without even our managers knowing." Not sure if thats douchebaggy. I've seen several layoffs like this, where everyone finds out at the same time not by levels.

You having seen it doesn't mean it isn't awful. Never mistake "common", or even "not rare", with "good"

It also doesn't sound like everyone found out at the same time.

Re: Travis CI Is Laying Off Senior Engineer Staff

#19

Post by dtech »

xtreak29 wrote: post #9

From the tweet [0] it seems there is going to be a huge tech debt. I don't know how Idera is planning to expand upon the acquisition after letting go people like this. > Some know the skinny on dozens of different open source projects and ecosystems, others understand run time and dep mgmt for like 17 languages and even more tooling, and automated image mastering to handle it all. > Others are rewriting what it means…

From the previous discussion, it seems like Idera's mode of operation is stopping active development on the product, and maintaining it more or less as-is as long as there are people using it. Then it's not necessary to reduce tech debt.
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