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DigitalOcean is laying off staff

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Re: DigitalOcean is laying off staff

#351
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS has their own competitive service against DigitalOcean called Lightsail. Their cheapest plan is $3.50 month (512MB/20GB SSD), the bigger plans are roughly similar in pricing and features to DigitalOcean.

The irony of this article is that current customers like myself who read this news are now looking at alternatives. I spend roughly $120/m with DO and have done for the last 2 years. I have a majority 5 usd droplets and 1 20 usd droplet. LightSail may be the way to go for now. Here comes all the migration work.. Fun :)

Do yourself a favour and compare the performance of DO and Lightsail before you migrate. It may be the same or similar in pricing, but every benchmark I've seen shows worse performance on Lightsail. On a value for money basis, Lightsail is most likely more expensive.

Re: DigitalOcean is laying off staff

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moisey, big fan of yours, always have been. DO's board has been atrocious (not you and Ben). The way they handled bonuses even the years that we were growing 40+% because we missed #'s due to factors outside any employees control, was a joke. The hiring of Mark Templeton was one of the absolute worst things that could have happened, he damn near put DO on the brink of destruction. That said, it seems like Yancey is d…

I feel like a message like this is better sent by throw away email or something else that's private, than put in a public forum for all to see. What's the point exactly in putting all this ostensibly proprietary information out there, on HN? Is it benefiting anything to the conversation, aside from satisfying some people's curiosity? What's the intent here, why do you feel that this sort of post needs to be done publ…

> ostensibly proprietary information out there

One mans opinion, whether he be a wage slave or not, is not the property of his employer.

Re: DigitalOcean is laying off staff

#354
post #181

Hey folks, Cofounder of DigitalOcean here. Letting people go is always a complicated matter at any scale. Whether you are a ten person company and firing one employee or you are 500 people and firing a larger number. Wanted to address a few statements from the hackernews community here. We are not prepping the company for sale. As unfortunate as the layoffs are they were really due to two CEO changes in the past 18 m…

Been a while since I logged in and commented on hacker news, but I had to login in order to give testimony on how digitalocean has been helpful to me this past year (2019).

2019 was one of the worst years for me financially, jobless, in debt and with a one year old child and girlfriend to look after. I was always late on payments for my 5$ digitalocean droplet and would always have my account suspended. I would always ask for an extension period and the wonderful guys at digitalocean would gladly grant me an extension and lift the suspension off my account.

And when I read the story my heart skipped a beat wondering what was going to befall my entrepreneurship dreams this year. Thanks a lot for the comment and am forever grateful to you and the team at digitalocean

Re: DigitalOcean is laying off staff

#355
post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like a message like this is better sent by throw away email or something else that's private, than put in a public forum for all to see. What's the point exactly in putting all this ostensibly proprietary information out there, on HN? Is it benefiting anything to the conversation, aside from satisfying some people's curiosity? What's the intent here, why do you feel that this sort of post needs to be done publ…

On-Topic: [anything that] gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Satisfying people's curiosity improves the conversation, and calling someone out in the public square is a good way to create accountability that doesn't exist in private communication.

That's a pretty blank check to write. All kind of awful, distasteful things are satisfying to some people's curiosity. Not all curiosities should be satisfied. IMO the comment I was responding to was going beyond measured, actionable feedback. It was TMI, public dirty laundry based on speculations, from an insider who goes on a limb stating guesses as truths, claiming knowledge of proprietary information.

Is HN an appropriate way to tell the DO board that XYZ people should be fired? In the end I just don't get it. This sort of comment isn't doing the commenter any good.

Re: DigitalOcean is laying off staff

#356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like a message like this is better sent by throw away email or something else that's private, than put in a public forum for all to see. What's the point exactly in putting all this ostensibly proprietary information out there, on HN? Is it benefiting anything to the conversation, aside from satisfying some people's curiosity? What's the intent here, why do you feel that this sort of post needs to be done publ…

> ostensibly proprietary information out there One mans opinion, whether he be a wage slave or not, is not the property of his employer.

I'm not saying otherwise.

Re: DigitalOcean is laying off staff

#357
post #181

Hey folks, Cofounder of DigitalOcean here. Letting people go is always a complicated matter at any scale. Whether you are a ten person company and firing one employee or you are 500 people and firing a larger number. Wanted to address a few statements from the hackernews community here. We are not prepping the company for sale. As unfortunate as the layoffs are they were really due to two CEO changes in the past 18 m…

There's no reason to be apologetic. The fact of the matter is that there are two types of employees, those who work and those who have a job. Employees who work are creating value, whereas employees who have a job are trading time for money.

When a company becomes a certain size, it's inevitable that you will hire people looking for a job.

Firing people sucks. Yes, it affects their livelihood, but having warm bodies on your roster affects your business.

The problem with people who have a job is that they affect company culture as they set the tone for acceptable and unacceptable behaviors in the workplace. It spreads like a disease and the effect can cripple those who show up to work.

Sometimes, this can lead to confusion as people who have a job might think, "I was doing what I was told. I don't understand why." Creating value is much more than simply following orders.

Re: DigitalOcean is laying off staff

#358
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind teaching StackExchange a thing or two about PR while you're doing a good job here?

I think it's a learned behavior. The more time you spend in the corporate world, the more comfortable you are with corporate speak. I haven't spent any time in the corporate world and I personally value honesty very highly, so I always try to be as forthright as possible, while still respecting the privacy and feelings of other individuals.

Do you have any recommendations for learning to communicate better- like the way you do? Did you follow any courses or books to develop your tone, writing style or the graceful way you respond?

Re: DigitalOcean is laying off staff

#359
post #181

Hey folks, Cofounder of DigitalOcean here. Letting people go is always a complicated matter at any scale. Whether you are a ten person company and firing one employee or you are 500 people and firing a larger number. Wanted to address a few statements from the hackernews community here. We are not prepping the company for sale. As unfortunate as the layoffs are they were really due to two CEO changes in the past 18 m…

There's no reason to be apologetic. The fact of the matter is that there are two types of employees, those who work and those who have a job. Employees who work are creating value, whereas employees who have a job are trading time for money. When a company becomes a certain size, it's inevitable that you will hire people looking for a job. Firing people sucks. Yes, it affects their livelihood, but having warm bodies…

I have seen nothing to suggest that the people who have lost their jobs weren't working hard enough or creating enough value. The comment above merely says the jobs they were doing are no longer considered strategically valuable, and that's no fault of their own.

Re: DigitalOcean is laying off staff

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was in a similar position not too long ago. I had nothing but a liberal arts degree, a miserable first career and a yawning resume gap. I just stumbled into coding and I was completely addicted. ... its a life changing opportunity in a field where you get to make things for a living and there's always something new to learn. Thank you thank you thank you cloud providers Programming in the 2010s and 2020s is kind…

>> Unfortunately, this won't last forever. Other countries are catching up to the U.S. quickly. Eventually, development will move to cheaper labor countries like so many other industries. What is frustrating though is that if the U.S. actually focused on developing its talent, we could maintain the lead for another decade or two longer than if we just sit on our hands. With that extra lead time, we could come up with…

I've seen programming outsourced before (and I moved out of the US to Europe to get my start in software). However, what people without software experience are likely to miss is that programming is not really the problem in commercial software. Communicating the thing-to-be-made in a way that both management and the programmers are on the same page and keeping that communication open through development so that the right thing gets made is the real challenge (heck, doing this among managers is challenging enough).

Outsourcing can, in some cases, raise additional obstacles to this goal through differences in language and/or culture, and every mistake here adds additional cost to the project. This isn't insurmountable, but usually I don't see this even considered when the question of outsourcing comes up.

That, and the group we outsourced to happened to be in a part of the world that was in the middle of a literal civil war, so staff sometimes couldn't work because staying alive was more important. Being aware of the near-future geopolitical situation of your people is important anywhere, and just kind of happens by osmosis when you're working domestically.

I very much look forward to Neuralink, but as you point out on the following line, this will also not turn non-programmers into programmers because the main hurdle is not knowing the syntax, but formulating thought into a structure that's useful for computers, and it seems most non-programmers do not have the mindset for it. Programmers are people who turn ideas into formal logic. Although some things can be automated there, I personally think the future's still bright for developers with people skills, wherever they may be.

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