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Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

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Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#71

Post by ihatepython »

monero-xmr wrote: post #8

When interest rates are 0%, any amount of growth compounded over years is attractive. When you can get a 5% risk-free return from treasuries, even 7% rate of return is unattractive when compared to the safest asset on earth returning 5%. My point is, layoffs will continue until companies are much more efficient, or interest rates go down.

> When you can get a 5% risk-free return from treasuries, even 7% rate of return is unattractive when compared to the safest asset on earth returning 5%.

I got news for you. The riskiest place to park your money right now is government bonds. Long-dated US treasuries are risky. You will end up losing everything.

But if you insist on US treasuries, be my guest. I need someone to trade against.

Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#72

Post by kmshultz »

der-erlkonig wrote: post #48

Hearing that a lot of Community teams were let go, including the teams responsible for tutorials. Seems obvious DigitalOcean doesn't care about developers anymore. But this has been obvious for a while now. I guess their value "Our Community is bigger than just us" only matters when profits are up. Pour one out for DigitalOcean. It's the end of an era.

Yes, I was a technical writer on the content team. I am hearing that our entire team was laid off. It just isn't a big money-maker in these trying times. More of a cost center, I suspect.

It's too bad, as DO tutorials and content have been respected for so many years by developers and sysadmins. The end of an era.

Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#73

Post by rcstank »

psyhigh wrote: post #58

I was laid off too from DigitalOcean this morning. Just an email that I was terminated effectively immediately. Don't companies give a month's notice in advance though?

My experience has been that companies will either terminate effective immediately with some sort of severance, or they'll give a notice, where you're on the "books" with them as far as employment goes, but you'd surrender all work hardware and your account would be locked out. You're effectively laid off while you find another job. Your severance in that situation is the fact you're still on payroll for however long your severance period would be.

Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#74

Post by that_guy_iain »

phphphphp wrote: post #65
der-erlkonig wrote: post #48

Hearing that a lot of Community teams were let go, including the teams responsible for tutorials. Seems obvious DigitalOcean doesn't care about developers anymore. But this has been obvious for a while now. I guess their value "Our Community is bigger than just us" only matters when profits are up. Pour one out for DigitalOcean. It's the end of an era.

Content should be thought of as an investment, because the value it returns extends over many years: some of the most valuable and popular DigitalOcean tutorials were written over a decade ago. For that reason, losing people responsible for writing new tutorials is not going to have a negative impact on developers relying on their tutorials in the short term, rather, DigitalOcean will suffer years from now when they…

That's the marketing department and I would be shocked if they don't continue down that route unless they decide to pivot to a different target market.

Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#75

Post by vitaflo »

ihatepython wrote: post #71
monero-xmr wrote: post #8

When interest rates are 0%, any amount of growth compounded over years is attractive. When you can get a 5% risk-free return from treasuries, even 7% rate of return is unattractive when compared to the safest asset on earth returning 5%. My point is, layoffs will continue until companies are much more efficient, or interest rates go down.

> When you can get a 5% risk-free return from treasuries, even 7% rate of return is unattractive when compared to the safest asset on earth returning 5%. I got news for you. The riskiest place to park your money right now is government bonds. Long-dated US treasuries are risky. You will end up losing everything. But if you insist on US treasuries, be my guest. I need someone to trade against.

Treasuries return exactly what is printed on the coupon, no more, no less. Short of government default, they are as risk free as you can get.

Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#76

Post by whalesalad »

psyhigh wrote: post #58

I was laid off too from DigitalOcean this morning. Just an email that I was terminated effectively immediately. Don't companies give a month's notice in advance though?

afaik the cold turkey hard stop in large layoffs stems from wanting to avoid retaliation from disgruntled employees. access is terminated immediately to avoid a "going postal" situation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going_postal

Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#78

Post by sokoloff »

steve-atx-7600 wrote: post #45
arcturus17 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very sorry to hear that, though you seem to have a fairly good outlook about it. Excuse me if it's callous to ask this at this time, but as I've been observing layoffs and been hearing that people are immediately shut down from their systems, I'm wondering: how do they communicate it to you if you can't access your email? Do they reach out to your personal email, call you, send you a letter? I might understand revoki…

I don't understand why it's necessary to treat employees with such sudden distrust. It is necessary to immediately cut off all access? These employees aren't being fired because they are suspected of perpetrating a crime, right? I I understand the need for layoffs, but I can't respect an organization/leadership that treats people so coldly. This behavior also affects non-fired employees that may have a need to ask kn…

People under intense stress are prone to act in unpredictable ways. A sudden job loss produces intense stress, therefore increases unpredictable behavior, some of which the company needs to protect itself from, others it tries to help the employee protect themself from.

Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#79

Post by onion2k »

monero-xmr wrote: post #8

When interest rates are 0%, any amount of growth compounded over years is attractive. When you can get a 5% risk-free return from treasuries, even 7% rate of return is unattractive when compared to the safest asset on earth returning 5%. My point is, layoffs will continue until companies are much more efficient, or interest rates go down.

layoffs will continue until companies are much more efficient

DO made a profit of a little over $250m in 2022, on revenue of $428.6m. That's a 60% margin. How much efficiency does a company need?

EDIT: Correction.. those are the 2021 numbers. The latest numbers on the DO website for Q3 2022 state;

"Gross profit of $97.6 million or 64% of revenue, an increase of 300 basis points year-over-year, and adjusted gross profit of $121.5 million or 80% of revenue."

https://investors.digitalocean.com/news/news-details/2022/Di...

Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#80

Post by breatheoften »

MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #35
donavanm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The feds “dual mandate” is "maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates." There’s too much employment at the moment, imperiling price stability and forcing their hand on interest rates. Inflation expectations, particularly”wage spiral”, are tied to unemployment. The historically low unemployment would/should drive further increases in wages due to scarcity/bargaining position of labor. Mo…

Wild to think a country can have both too much employment and millions living below the poverty line.

Yah which is exactly why this response is not going to work.

The issue right now with "full employment" is incentive based -- after covid large numbers of people opted out of the jobs available to them because they finally recognized how much they have been being screwed over by the employer classes. The social contract is bad -- people are unhappy with raw deals.

I think the only thing that could actually work right now will require actually addressing the structural social wealth imbalances.

Too much employment --> introduce mandatory hour caps and increase mandatory vacation allowances and decrease retirement ages.

Too much overhead per employee -- get healthcare the hell out of the employment contract ...

It's insane to me that when we saw relative cross class wage growth for the first time in decades -- the immediate conclusion of all the decision makers had been that the labour market is over-exuberant and needs to be tamped down...

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