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DigitalOcean is laying off staff

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Re: DigitalOcean is laying off staff

#31

Post by tempsy »

dothrowaway wrote: post #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 tha…

no offense but I wouldn't take your CTO's word at face value. you need to watch out for your own interest, including looking at other opportunities, even if it's just to keep yourself top of mind to others if something happens

Re: DigitalOcean is laying off staff

#32

Post by ogre_codes »

dothrowaway wrote: post #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 tha…

It could easily be both a re-org and dressing the profitability numbers prepping for a sale.

The fact that its mostly management is encouraging though.

Re: DigitalOcean is laying off staff

#33

Post by grive »

The RGPD wall of Techcrunch is a real put-off (Choice partners that cannot be deactivated, IAB partners that must be unsubscribed from the third party website (which of course does not work), seriously?). No reason to accept this cancer, I will read about this subject elsewhere.

Re: DigitalOcean is laying off staff

#34

Post by dothrowaway »

tempsy wrote: post #31
dothrowaway wrote: post #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 tha…

no offense but I wouldn't take your CTO's word at face value. you need to watch out for your own interest, including looking at other opportunities, even if it's just to keep yourself top of mind to others if something happens

Agreed fully. I always have an escape strategy in mind if things go south, but I'm pretty bullish on DO right now. That could always change, certainly.

Re: DigitalOcean is laying off staff

#35

Post by Matheus28 »

ttul wrote: post #18
rgbrenner wrote: post #13

Everyone is seeing this as negative and a warning sign for DO... but they're an 8 year old privately owned company that has raised over $300m. The last time they obtained funding was a 130m credit line in 2016. It's been 4 years since then... and if they're still losing money, they likely need to either make this profitable, or they're going to need to raise more money. If they're close to being profitable (likely gi…

You could also read this as: Digital Ocean raised a $130M credit line and their creditors have noticed that profits aren't what they will need to be in X years time, hence the hair cutting. Their headcount only increased by 4% in the past six months. AWS increased its 10,000+ headcount by 16% in the same time period. I mean, it's all sheer speculation, but I think it is equally likely that Digital Ocean is having a h…

> I don't know how any 600 person cloud company survives in the same world as AWS these days.

They aren’t competing in the same space

Re: DigitalOcean is laying off staff

#37

Post by djsumdog »

timfrietas wrote: post #30
djsumdog wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Digital Ocean is pretty similar to Vultr: they offer a straight easy API for starting up VMs and managing DNS (I've written a tool that uses both of their API[1]; been meaning to do a post on the differences). It's kinda nice because you're just putting up VMs and there's not the type of vendor lockin you get with AWS/Azure/Google. That being said, DO is obviously trying to compete on that scale now. It has managed d…

You mean Vultr is pretty similar to DO :) When I worked at DigitalOcean all we could do was shake our head and laugh at how blatantly hard Vultr tried to copy what we did.

Yes, that's what I meant. :) DO did come first and Vultr pretty much copied everything with lower prices; but DO has matched a lot of those prices since then as well.

Re: DigitalOcean is laying off staff

#38

Post by chrisan »

ttul wrote: post #18
rgbrenner wrote: post #13

Everyone is seeing this as negative and a warning sign for DO... but they're an 8 year old privately owned company that has raised over $300m. The last time they obtained funding was a 130m credit line in 2016. It's been 4 years since then... and if they're still losing money, they likely need to either make this profitable, or they're going to need to raise more money. If they're close to being profitable (likely gi…

You could also read this as: Digital Ocean raised a $130M credit line and their creditors have noticed that profits aren't what they will need to be in X years time, hence the hair cutting. Their headcount only increased by 4% in the past six months. AWS increased its 10,000+ headcount by 16% in the same time period. I mean, it's all sheer speculation, but I think it is equally likely that Digital Ocean is having a h…

> I don't know how any 600 person cloud company survives in the same world as AWS these days.

Having used both daily for years now I can certainly see why DO will have an appeal to some over something as large as AWS.

It is way less confusing and their docs are much easier to get through. I always recommend people starting out with cloud VMs to go DO instead of AWS

Re: DigitalOcean is laying off staff

#39

Post by wastedhours »

ogre_codes wrote: post #27

I love DigitalOcean, my second favorite hosting company so this is concerning. As a recent Layoff survivor, this whole paragraph sets off alarm bells: > In that context, it’s notable that the company not only appointed a new CFO last summer, but also a CEO with prior CFO experience. It’s been a while since DigitalOcean has raised capital. According to PitchBook, DigitalOcean last raised money in 2017, an undisclosed…

Might there be an opening bell in their future... almost entirely likely.

Re: DigitalOcean is laying off staff

#40

Post by [deleted] »

dothrowaway wrote: post #34
tempsy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no offense but I wouldn't take your CTO's word at face value. you need to watch out for your own interest, including looking at other opportunities, even if it's just to keep yourself top of mind to others if something happens

Agreed fully. I always have an escape strategy in mind if things go south, but I'm pretty bullish on DO right now. That could always change, certainly.

[deleted]
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