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Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

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Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#131

Post by mguerville »

onion2k wrote: post #79
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 pro…

Gross Profit isn't a helpful number as it doesn't account for any fixed costs like offices, wages, sales and marketing, etc. Operating profits is a better indicator (EBIT or EBITDA) and also much closer to the holy grail of Free Cash Flow that companies need to keep an eye on to make sure they make payroll and fulfill their interest payments obligation, among other things

Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#132

Post by der-erlkonig »

driverdan wrote: post #123
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.

Good content was always a marketing strategy. For a while DO's content ranked high for a lot of tech searches. Rightfully so too, it is high quality. Then another Google algo change pushed high quality content, like DO's tutorials, down in ranking. No need to spend money on something that isn't having the intended effect. I worded this a bit tongue in cheek but seriously, search results have gotten really terrible in…

At least we can thank DO for training ChatGPT on high quality content

Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#133

Post by game_the0ry »

jpgvm wrote: post #121

I don't really get the motivation for this beyond personal greed on behalf of executives that are only seeking to prop up the share price in the short term. The market forces at work will force all technology companies down in valuation pretty much regardless, what is the difference of a few extra million market cap to handicap your ability to grow during the next expansion phase? I can understand it if you have brou…

> what is the difference of a few extra million market cap to handicap your ability to grow during the next expansion phase?

For an executive, it's a big difference in stock based bonus.

The executive level at corporate america tends to filter for status and financial obsessed sociopaths, so they make sociopathic decisions where they are content with making decisions that harm many (layoffs) but benefit themselves. That's how we got the enron, the great financial crisis of 2008, and many others.

Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#134

Post by maerF0x0 »

sct202 wrote: post #99
onion2k wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pro…

Gross profit is before a lot of people related expenses are taken out (R&D, sales and marketing, and other admin). Their net income was only $10m for the time frame you're quoting.

Its so crazy to put into perspective. After a whole year, what was their net productivity, with all that tech, all those people, all those degrees?

about 25 single family homes.

Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#135

Post by edude03 »

apocalyptic0n3 wrote: post #64
steve-atx-7600 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

From the administrative/IT point of view, I understand it entirely. It's a simple risk/value proposition. If an employee gets mad they were laid off (and that does happen) and decides in a fit of rage to start deleting Slack channels, damaging or even just accessing production environments, deleting shared logins in the team password manager, downloading company/employee/customer/client data, stealing company IP, etc…

> Even if what they do is illegal or you can sue them afterward, it's a very significant short term loss and in some cases, they may be able to do damage that cannot be reversed like deleting Slack channels.

I was recently tasked with revoking access to systems during my companies recent round of layoffs. We had it timed so that when the departing employee found out they were leaving they'd already have no access.

Unfortunately for us, they were a brand ambassador and took to their personal social media to tell their followers that we were embezzling client funds (not true).

I don't know what happened from a legal stand point (if they were sued or there was any other consequences) but sometimes new customers find out they said that and are distrustful of us.

Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#136

Post by halfpastten »

der-erlkonig wrote: post #128

Hearing more. Appears some C-Suite and VPs have resigned in protest. Earnings call tomorrow. Maybe Gabe finally brokered the Microsoft acquisition that everyone has been joking about since he joined. Seemed like a joke then, but now.....

From what we've heard internally, any VP/C-suite changes aren't in protest but are happening like the rest of the RIFs.

Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#137

Post by robswc »

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…

It sucks but I'm sure its the most "logical" move.

Just curious, how would you handle it? I would love to say I would trust everyone to be adults about it.. but you never know, sad to say.

Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#138

Post by fragmede »

wwkeyboard wrote: post #55
arroz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech workers are a small portion of workers overall

HN has a lot of main character syndrome. Anyone posting here is closer to 1/330,000,000th of Jay Powell's concern.

Not really. The richest American, aka 1/330,000,000 is is the top 0.0000003030303%, and is non other than Elon Musk, according to Forbes, assume you're referring to rich Americans (which excludes Bernard Arnault and Carlos Slim Helu), followed by Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates. All $100-billionaires. An amount so staggeringly higher than mere mortals that it does everybody a disservice to lump them in with mere millionaires. You may have heard of tech millionaire Linus Torvalds (net worth $50 million) or Urs Hölzle (Google; $10 million). The top 0.000003% have five orders of magnitude more money.

Everyone is closer to being a millionaire than any of the billionaires mentioned.

I found this visualization by MKorostoff very educational on just how staggeringly much money a billion dollars is. https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#139

Post by newaccount2021 »

stonecharioteer wrote: post #85
bad416f1f5a2 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When my company did layoffs recently I got to peek behind the curtain a bit. It started with an all-hands video call from the CEO announcing the layoff. HR had loaded emails to send immediately following the call directly to your company email that either said "you are not fired" or "you are". For those who were fired, infosec ran a script during the CEO call to pull their access packages for production systems, cran…

what happens to your equipment? especially if you're remote?

if your severance package is "good enough" in your opinion, you mail it back in the box they send you

if your severance package isn't "good enough" in your opinion, you keep it and reformat it...eventually they tell you that your severance will go away unless you return the equipment

most returned equipment will just become e-waste, no one is going to breathe life into my four year old laptop

I see a lot of companies just telling people to keep it and use it as they see fit

some security types freak out about former employees being able to access "confidential" information on their own laptops after being terminated...newsflash: if we wanted to mail this stuff to North Korea we could have been doing it five times a day

Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#140

Post by robswc »

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.

I really like DO. I was thinking though, awhile back the seemed like they suddenly got tons of money and starting pouring it into all these "initiatives" around the world as if they were a charity org. I found it odd at the time. Not that its related but seems a bit hypocritical to "splurge" on all of that stuff and then have to layoff lots of people a few months later.
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