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DigitalOcean S-1

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Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#371

Post by kasey_junk »

jeffparsons wrote: post #321
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…

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 opportun…

Nearly every worker in the US is covered by an employment agreement that says they have to get pre-approval for moonlighting. It may or may not be legal in their jurisdiction but by paying people to do your interview process you potentially open them up to bad liabilities.

That said it is completely unethical to make people do real work as part of an interview process. We collectively should name and shame any firm that does that.

Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#372

Post by aerosmile »

kevinoconnor7 wrote: post #334
cobaltoxide wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That interview process sounds completely standard.

Overall I don't think the total amount was excessive, or maybe just slightly. My experience has always been been technical phone screen or homework problem before onsite, but not both. The real issue was how chaotic the process was. I had started out talking to an engineer that had picked up my application, but was handed off to recruiter only after the homework portion was done (said recruiter even mentioned that th…

As a sysadmin, you probably have a number of areas of responsibility. Imagine a time in your career when you had the least amount of sleep, and still tried your hardest to keep everything together. Then you meet someone who gives you the feedback that they enjoyed talking to you, but they noticed that one of those areas is not quite as buttoned up as it should be. Presumably you take that feedback to heart and fix it as quickly as the circumstances allow. 6+ years later, that person goes on HN and takes you through the dirt. Would that seem reasonable to you?

Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#373

Post by timdev2 »

jtdev wrote: post #370
timdev2 wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered that your problem is not with Section 230, but with the First Amendment?

Yes, I have considered that. But, no, that’s not my “problem”; I understand that this is not covered by the constitution. I believe that Section 230 should be updated and the clearly vague “otherwise objectionable” language should be removed in favor of specific language regarding where, when, and why content can be taken down, i.e., only when that content is unlawful. I understand that some are still basking in elec…

Imagine a world where Section 230 doesn't exist. A mean corporation takes down your post, or bans you.

What cause of action do you imagine you'd have that wouldn't be barred by 1A?

By and large, 230 acts merely as a procedural fast-last to dismiss suits earlier than they'd otherwise be. But they'd ultimately be decided the same way on first amendment grounds.

Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#374

Post by sabalaba »

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…

> the only two logical outcomes are to either go bust, or to be acquired by a major cloud provider

Or just continue to build a profitable, cash flow positive business that continues to grow for years and years to come. Business outcomes are often not binary.

Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#375

Post by pacman2 »

kasey_junk wrote: post #371
jeffparsons wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 opportun…

Nearly every worker in the US is covered by an employment agreement that says they have to get pre-approval for moonlighting. It may or may not be legal in their jurisdiction but by paying people to do your interview process you potentially open them up to bad liabilities. That said it is completely unethical to make people do real work as part of an interview process. We collectively should name and shame any firm t…

I did do analytical "sample" work for a company that took me two weeks. They were thankful for the work but did not hire me. I published it on my website and they were not very amused.

Agilent is not great either. They interviewed me for 6 month and implemented some of my ideas. (In fact, I got the job, out of 500 applicants, but then they axed the job and hired nobody)

Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#376

Post by closeparen »

bithavoc wrote: post #36
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #10

I love DigitalOcean. The simplicity of their UI, friendly CLI tooling and (as a hosted k8s customer) the frequency of updates to their offerings. BUT: 1. Their web UI stability is terrible (constantly hangs and errors out) 2. Their hosted DB IOPS aren't competitive with other PaaS providers. There's also no way to scale DB size dynamically without upgrading to a new price tier which is overkill. 3. Their Kubernetes C…

5. You can’t upload a custom image and assign a Floating IP to the Droplet, one of the most basic of the functionality of any cloud.

It seems like Amazon et al have full-fledged SDNs while DigitalOcean is a little more primitive. Even customer-level VLANs are new. Prior to that, "private networking" was just a way to save on transit quota; you shared a LAN with everyone else in the datacenter.

Speculating and recalling old memories here, but: floating IP is implemented as an additional IP on an existing interface. DHCP can't assign multiple IPs for the same MAC. So there's got to be some DigitalOcean magic in the base images to figure out that a floating IP is assigned and configure the interface for it. You might be able to replicate this yourself, they just don't want to be responsible for support.

Perhaps over time they will grow a more complex network fabric that will enable floating IPs to be their own DHCP-enabled interfaces straight on VMs, instead of the "dumb" forwarding rules they appear to be today. But also perhaps the lack of such things is why DigitalOcean is cheaper than Amazon.

Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#377

Post by sneak »

voltagex_ wrote: post #338
sneak wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not tough to solve. The whole scrub thing was a red herring: you don't need to scrub anything to not leak data, you just thin provision. It's (mostly) fine if customer data stays on your disks after they delete. It's not fine to give it to the next customer because you don't know how disk abstraction works. My issue is mainly how they coped with it, which has nothing to do with their (at the time) technical inco…

What do you mean by "thin provision" here?

Use an abstraction layer between the virtualized block device and the underlying storage system, and only write used blocks to disk, and return zeroes for all unused blocks.

You don't need to wipe, zero, or TRIM anything to not leak customer A data to customer B.

Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#378

Post by dilyevsky »

aerosmile wrote: post #372
kevinoconnor7 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overall I don't think the total amount was excessive, or maybe just slightly. My experience has always been been technical phone screen or homework problem before onsite, but not both. The real issue was how chaotic the process was. I had started out talking to an engineer that had picked up my application, but was handed off to recruiter only after the homework portion was done (said recruiter even mentioned that th…

As a sysadmin, you probably have a number of areas of responsibility. Imagine a time in your career when you had the least amount of sleep, and still tried your hardest to keep everything together. Then you meet someone who gives you the feedback that they enjoyed talking to you, but they noticed that one of those areas is not quite as buttoned up as it should be. Presumably you take that feedback to heart and fix it…

The feedback is completely reasonable. No chance you’re going to hire someone decent today if your interview process for IC roles takes 3 months!

Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#379

Post by unethical_ban »

oliverjudge wrote: post #129
ivraatiems wrote: post #128

I might have mentioned this before, but DigitalOcean's support is (or was, before I stopped being their customer) absolutely abysmal. I had a default card set up for auto billing. That card expired. I went to remove the default card -- you cannot remove a default card. Okay. I added a new card and tried to set it as default. It didn't take. (Refreshing the browser reverted the change.) So I tried another browser, ano…

Out of curiosity where did you move to?

I use Vultr FWIW, I got $50 in credit way back when, and they're stable, and their support was responsive, if a bit unhelpful, regarding a firewall issue.

Re: DigitalOcean S-1

#380

Post by unethical_ban »

jmull wrote: post #206
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…

I think there's a lot of doubt whether, in the long run, doing your own hardware makes sense for a cloud provider. If you work yourself into a performance dead-end, you can spend billions and end up with a chip that isn't particularly competitive. Whereas if your supplier does that, you can switch suppliers. You could spend $X billion, end up with a chip that isn't particularly competitive and just have to eat those…

It might be the megacorporate equivalent of "strategic assets" for nation-states. Keep a chip division going and spun up, if only to have a core competency as a backstop.
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