DigitalOcean is laying off staff
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DigitalOcean is laying off staff
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Re: DigitalOcean is laying off staff
#2This sucks. I really want DO to succeed because I love their offerings - whereas I occasionally feel like I really do need to RTFM in depth for many AWS offerings (even EC2), DO seemed to just work.
That being said, and I can’t put my finger on why necessarily, it sometimes feels a bit like Heroku - the thing you use before you “graduate” to just using one of the major cloud providers.
Re: DigitalOcean is laying off staff
#3> DigitalOcean continues to be a high-growth business with $275M in [annual recurring revenues] and more than 500,000 customers globally. Under this new organizational structure, we are positioned to accelerate profitable growth by continuing to serve developers and entrepreneurs around the world.”
If not obvious this can be translated as positioning the company so it can be acquired by a larger entity for it's customer base and remaining employees.
> It says it works with more than 1 million developers across 195 countries.
I always love marketing statements like this. For sure 1 million is a large number. But what makes someone a 'developer'? It's not something defined like 'Physician' or 'Pilot' or 'Attorney' which require some type of certification to use the title. To DO (in terms of the marketing) a 'developer' is almost certainly only someone who signed up for an account and perhaps (as with other web properties) multiple accounts.
(I have used DO and was happy although I don't have a need for what they offer anymore).
Re: DigitalOcean is laying off staff
#4This sucks. I really want DO to succeed because I love their offerings - whereas I occasionally feel like I really do need to RTFM in depth for many AWS offerings (even EC2), DO seemed to just work. That being said, and I can’t put my finger on why necessarily, it sometimes feels a bit like Heroku - the thing you use before you “graduate” to just using one of the major cloud providers.
> I really do need to RTFM in depth for many AWS offerings
Agree. But I think part of the plan with Amazon et al is that those who RTFM are locked in to the platform and therefore will be less likely to switch.
Re: DigitalOcean is laying off staff
#5This sucks. I really want DO to succeed because I love their offerings - whereas I occasionally feel like I really do need to RTFM in depth for many AWS offerings (even EC2), DO seemed to just work. That being said, and I can’t put my finger on why necessarily, it sometimes feels a bit like Heroku - the thing you use before you “graduate” to just using one of the major cloud providers.
past a certain point you want your provider to do more and more for you (more features). like you mentioned, AWS is complex but they do pretty much everything for you. I've built systems that are just glued together AWS services.
Re: DigitalOcean is laying off staff
#6This sucks. I really want DO to succeed because I love their offerings - whereas I occasionally feel like I really do need to RTFM in depth for many AWS offerings (even EC2), DO seemed to just work. That being said, and I can’t put my finger on why necessarily, it sometimes feels a bit like Heroku - the thing you use before you “graduate” to just using one of the major cloud providers.
Its funny you mention that, I had the same thought comparing it to Heroku, can't quite put my finger on it why that is.
Re: DigitalOcean is laying off staff
#7This sucks. I really want DO to succeed because I love their offerings - whereas I occasionally feel like I really do need to RTFM in depth for many AWS offerings (even EC2), DO seemed to just work. That being said, and I can’t put my finger on why necessarily, it sometimes feels a bit like Heroku - the thing you use before you “graduate” to just using one of the major cloud providers.
Perhaps because they don't heavily advertise large anchor customers? Sure, there are a bunch of brands on the front page, but that doesn't tell you whether they run 100% on DO or if they maybe used DO once for a side project. Digital Ocean needs a "Netflix", or at least more publicity around how their existing whales use their offerings.
Re: DigitalOcean is laying off staff
#8This sucks. I really want DO to succeed because I love their offerings - whereas I occasionally feel like I really do need to RTFM in depth for many AWS offerings (even EC2), DO seemed to just work. That being said, and I can’t put my finger on why necessarily, it sometimes feels a bit like Heroku - the thing you use before you “graduate” to just using one of the major cloud providers.
past a certain point you want your provider to do more and more for you (more features). like you mentioned, AWS is complex but they do pretty much everything for you. I've built systems that are just glued together AWS services.
totally, and people who know the ecosystem well are extremely productive at getting things up and running.
Definitely a skill floor/ceiling thing going on.
Re: DigitalOcean is laying off staff
#9> DigitalOcean continues to be a high-growth business with $275M in [annual recurring revenues] and more than 500,000 customers globally. Under this new organizational structure, we are positioned to accelerate profitable growth by continuing to serve developers and entrepreneurs around the world.” If not obvious this can be translated as positioning the company so it can be acquired by a larger entity for it's custo…
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Re: DigitalOcean is laying off staff
#10(Throwaway, obviously)
I'm a DO employee on the tech side of the house. According to the CTO, the primary reason for this was actually reorg, not financial though that obviously played a part. Mostly managers got cut, with the goal of flattening the org. I'm keeping my ear to the ground but it doesn't seem like there's going to be more cuts any time soon at least. Apparently we're still hiring a ton this year, so that jives.