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DigitalOcean S-1

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Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#321

Post by jeffparsons »

Ansil849 wrote: post #305
kevinoconnor7 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember interviewing with DO back in late 2014 and it was nuts! The entire interview process took ~3 months and it was clear that they were defining the process as they went. The entire process was basically: 1. initial call with recruiter 2. homework project 3. call with engineer to discuss said homework project 4. two phone screens with engineers 5. onsite interview with 6 engineers Finally I had was at the fina…

Not to hijack this sub-thread, but just a general question: how does one deal with unethical 'homework projects'? I've had a case during an application where I was given a 'homework project' that seemed to me very much not like a theoretical scenario, but more like the company wanting me to do free work for an actual real-world issue they had. Have people had situations where you suspected the same? How do you deal w…

My employer deals with this by compensating candidates for their time. Y'know... with money.

We also don't give them our actual problems as homework tasks. We'll occasionally talk about our real problems with candidates in interviews, but we're very clear about it when we do.

It's not a perfect system. Some candidates will choose to spend longer on the task so that in the follow-up interview they'll have the opportunity to talk about stuff that really shows off their strengths, so their effective hourly compensation for doing it would be quite low. The task is explicitly flexible like this, and we've also hired people who spent _half_ the par time on it (e.g. life circumstances making spare hours hard to come by) and didn't implement much at all, but then were able to confidently answer our questions about the bits they didn't actually implement.

Even if we were to only hire 1 out of every 15 people who get far enough through the pipeline to do the homework task (I don't recall the actual numbers) it costs us _nothing_ to compensate people for their time compared to, e.g., what it would cost us to make a bad hire. So it seems like an obvious thing to do even if only to stop candidates from having to wonder "am I getting screwed here?"

Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#322

Post by jimhi »

temp667 wrote: post #316
Ansil849 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to hijack this sub-thread, but just a general question: how does one deal with unethical 'homework projects'? I've had a case during an application where I was given a 'homework project' that seemed to me very much not like a theoretical scenario, but more like the company wanting me to do free work for an actual real-world issue they had. Have people had situations where you suspected the same? How do you deal w…

We give new hires a homework project that is directly work related. We don't consider it unethical. It's really a fantastic way to sort out who can deliver. We used to have it be part of the onsite interview - they could sit for a few hours and do it. I like these because they are not games. If you want something done, you'd ask an employee to do it. So just ask someone to do something you need done. In our case at l…

You are misunderstanding. They are saying it is unethical to ask an interviewee to code for free and use that in production. In your case you are not doing that, although if I interviewed with you and saw the same feature added after I submitted the code I would definitely assume you did something unethical.

Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#323

Post by cobaltoxide »

kevinoconnor7 wrote: post #228
neom wrote: post #32

Interestingly it was very clear at around $10MM ARR that DO was on a trajectory to IPO. You can thank Moisey Uretsky for a fantastic product idea and his brother Ben for CEOing it for so long. Congratulations to everyone who was involved in building DigitalOcean, it was an INCREDIBLY wild ride in the early days, lots of chaos but through all the chaos and disfunction, I think everyone involved knew this day would com…

I remember interviewing with DO back in late 2014 and it was nuts! The entire interview process took ~3 months and it was clear that they were defining the process as they went. The entire process was basically: 1. initial call with recruiter 2. homework project 3. call with engineer to discuss said homework project 4. two phone screens with engineers 5. onsite interview with 6 engineers Finally I had was at the fina…

That interview process sounds completely standard.

Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#324

Post by ksec »

Congrats to DO.

Really like the direction DO is going. Which is something in between millions of small VPS firm and giant like AWS. It also forced Linode to React. And proved the space in Cloud Hosting exist, which company like Vultr and UpCloud are now joining. And I think their features are finally close to hitting the perfect spot. With all the essential like DBaS, Object Storage and K8s.

They have also ( finally ) introduced AMD EPYC CPU, ( no more explicit mention of Intel CPU on their homepage ). Which is good for their margin since price / core count are cheaper.

So DO today is something I would like as an AWS competitor in 2016. And they are finally here. I am not sure if there are any other low hanging fruit at all. Or what features I would want for a company competing at this space. It will be things that people dont see, like CPU performance, SSD Performance, Services Reliability, Interconnect, Better Network, More Locations, security improvement....

There are only two suggestions I could think on top of my head right now.

First is the pricing structure and list. It is getting very messy and AWS like. SSD Storage variant should be a simple calculable option, not an extra line on pricing table that tries to bombard me with extra information. And I know Basic Droplet are burst-able CPU resources, but not showing they are vCPU ( a Single Thread ) and calling them CPU doesn't really rhymes with me.

Second is Full BareMetal Monthly option. Something like vultr [1] is offering. I am not sure if below $100 is feasible. Basically it should be something that offer much better price / performance at a monthly payment that pushes people with low spending to metal for baseline load with headroom as insurance. Pushing up Average User Spending. It should also be attractive to small business. ( Although arguably Linode and Vultr has yet to expand or launch Metal seems to suggest otherwise )

[1] https://www.vultr.com/products/bare-metal/

Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#325

Post by kgc »

Ansil849 wrote: post #305
kevinoconnor7 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember interviewing with DO back in late 2014 and it was nuts! The entire interview process took ~3 months and it was clear that they were defining the process as they went. The entire process was basically: 1. initial call with recruiter 2. homework project 3. call with engineer to discuss said homework project 4. two phone screens with engineers 5. onsite interview with 6 engineers Finally I had was at the fina…

Not to hijack this sub-thread, but just a general question: how does one deal with unethical 'homework projects'? I've had a case during an application where I was given a 'homework project' that seemed to me very much not like a theoretical scenario, but more like the company wanting me to do free work for an actual real-world issue they had. Have people had situations where you suspected the same? How do you deal w…

When I give homework projects, they are extracted from a previous part of the interview: What is a personal project that you’ve wanted to do but haven’t had time to do? Then I just ask them to do that. Win / win.

Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#326

Post by ksec »

yannoninator wrote: post #35
BasedInfra wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pie is big enough and also don’t think big cloud players and DO are after the same customers. 34% of the web still runs on Wordpress. A lot want somewhere cheap and easy to use with more power than shared hosting.

AWS LightSail is basically DigitalOcean with a huge jetpack with the ability to extend into AWS's ecosystem.

LightSail is really really slow. You will have to pay double to get similar CPU performance to DO.

But I guess that is the price you pay for being AWS ready.

Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#327

Post by xuki »

dusing wrote: post #208
emgo wrote: post #165

The biggest threat to DigitalOcean is that AWS, Google, and Microsoft are all going vertical by designing and manufacturing their own chips. Over times they'll be able to get hardware for cheaper, and also more specialized hardware that uses less power. DigitalOcean will have to buy CPUs from Intel or Nvidia/ARM at a higher cost, and eventually maybe even from AWS or Microsoft, essentially giving money to their compe…

Interesting theory, maybe DO should partner with Apple.

Assuming that Apple want to sell their chip to you. And that’s almost certainly a no.

Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#329

Post by ObsoleteNerd »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #301
yte14 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember Linode being hesitant to dip below $20 because the thinking was that it would diminish the quality of support. That thinking was reinforced when you started with $10 (if I recall, it’s been nearly a decade) and we started getting large numbers of refugees burned by experiences with your support organization. Neighboring comments tell me it’s still a problem. We consciously didn’t want to grow $5 fast becau…

I've been a customer of both for years -- in Linode's case, since 2009. Your comments are coming across like sour grapes, so I think this is a good opportunity to hear about some of Linode's mistakes from a longtime Linode customer. First, you guys had the customer support interface compromise in 2013, and the worst part about that was the way that it was handled by your organization. Linode wouldn't own up to the co…

This just nailed just about everything I was going to say. I’ve used and liked both since both started and this entire thread is pretty embarrassing.

Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#330

Post by LinuxBender »

indigodaddy wrote: post #296
wwarren wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience this is 100% the case with all IaaS providers. AWS's entire IP space is basically on all email block lists for example.

I find this extremely hard to believe. EDIT: Just to clarify, AWS has a lot of IPs, over 100 million [1]. Let’s just speculate that 1/50th might be in an overall pool for customer allocation. Do you really think the majority of 2M IPs would come back blacklisted in some form? I haven’t dug in to this to actually see if this is the case, but it would seem laughable to even begin to think that this might be the case..…

I think the wording should be changed. I would agree that all their EC2's and lightsail instances would be in the RBL/RSL's. AWS have an email service specifically for this use case.
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