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Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

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Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#161

Post by colinmorelli »

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…

It's not to make one quarter look better, it's to align the company with new market expectations. Investors now are expecting responsible cash burn, since capital has become significantly more expensive than before. Companies exchanging cash for market share are no longer as attractive. Profitability and sustainable growth are the new objectives (personally I wish this was always the goal and think the last 3-5 years were a bit of a shame, but that's not the point - the market did not agree with me).

Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#162

Post by kmshultz »

der-erlkonig wrote: post #132
driverdan wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The funny thing is, a few of us who have been following the ChatGPT frenzy were supposed to have a meeting TODAY to discuss "So, what we gonna do about AI?"

Too little too late! :laughcry:

Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#163

Post by time_to_smile »

mguerville wrote: post #131
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 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

Exactly. Parent's comment is only meaningful if you completely ignore paying workers which seems pretty relevant if you're going to be talking about layoffs.

I've found a lot of tech workers (including myself) really need to learn how to read an earnings statement. Coursera has an excellent Intro to Financial account course [0] that I've found very helpful in understanding what's really happening at these places.

0. https://www.coursera.org/learn/wharton-accounting

Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#164

Post by ratg13 »

Nadya wrote: post #143
activitypea wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had this happen in 2018 and had no trouble getting my account back. The support agent requested pictures of me with documents -- front of credit card used as payment method + passport -- and then disabled 2FA on my account.

The support ticket email requested I reply back with that information: Details about the payment method on the account, the date and amount of the last transaction by DO, a photo of a government-issued ID, and a photo of you holding the ID next to your face. I provided the payment details, the date and amount of the last transaction as text, a screenshot of my bank statement of the transaction, 2 forms of ID (passpor…

I’ve been burned by companies like this before, but there is no way for anyone to know if you are providing them with correct info, as this is also the easiest way to takeover someone else’s account.

The tough lesson to learn is always to deploy from a source code repository.

It sucks to lose your stuff, but if you follow best practices it will make you a better developer/architect and things like this will only become minor inconveniences.

I had to lose months of hard work for similar reasons to learn this lesson.

Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#165

Post by DwnVoteHoneyPot »

mguerville wrote: post #131
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 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

Last 12 months on Yahoo Finance is showing Digital Ocean's operating income at -$21M. Also, negative in 2019, 2020, 2021.

It's either financially illiterate or completely disengenuous for commenters to cherry pick financials such as gross profit, which doesn't include salary expense, when we are talking about layoffs.

Other commenters calling execs sociopaths when company is losing money, as if they can lose money forever.

Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#166

Post by pm90 »

breatheoften wrote: post #80
MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It’s important to understand that the Fed has limited tools at its disposal. Congress does have the power to enact the required structural changes. However, the Fed Chair has not been very vocal about this so it always seems like the Fed is the only agency that can do anything about the situation.

Honestly Powell should stop pretending he has any control over the situation and say it explicitly that rate hikes aren’t really having the intended effect. He is a bad Fed chair.

Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#167

Post by noirbot »

Nadya wrote: post #68
eigenhombre wrote: post #49

Have been a mostly happy DO customer for some time. Would be interested to know if the layoffs were carried off skillfully/compassionately or messily/carelessly.

Never lose your 2FA backup codes or you're locked out of your account forever if you lose your 2FA device - despite support having a verification process to remove 2FA in the event you lost your codes - the support tickets are ignored or unmonitored. I was also a happy DO customer for the last 5 years or so. But now I'm locked out of my account. My fault for losing my codes (DO are the only backup codes I can't seem…

I'm literally in thee process of trying to do this right now and have gotteen responses from their support within an hour or two, including late at night.

Maybe stuff got better, but 2FA Recovery seems to not be as bad as you're saying.

Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#168

Post by nickjj »

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…

On paper I agree with all of that but in practice folks who are getting laid off already had access to all of those things every day.

Why do you trust them every day but not on the day of being laid off? Unless you're extremely close friends with them at a personal level you don't know what their state of mind is while employed without being laid off. They could do all sorts of destructive things at any point in time (both subtle and obvious).

I guess where I'm going with this one is you're always at risk for short term loss by hiring anyone. If you trust the people you hired then the short term loss outcome won't happen if you fire them. If you don't trust the people you hired then why did you hire them and give them access to do those things? All this does is optimize for bad actors and make the experience horrible for someone being fired who doesn't have intent to take the company down with them, they just want to say goodbye to their co-workers.

Plus, like you said, there could be legal actions taken against them. Who's going to risk getting sued by a corporation in the US by destroying as much as they could before they lose access? This action could potentially ruin the rest of their life from debt.

Re: Tell HN: DigitalOcean is doing layoffs

#169

Post by slowmovintarget »

reisse wrote: post #142
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…

> I can understand it if you have brought on a lot of fat and you want to lean out your team and need an excuse but outside of that rather narrow situation This doesn't really seem to be a rather narrow situation. The tech companies were hiring like crazy for the past two years. Quick googling shows that DigitalOcean increased headcount by 31% last year. And contrary to the popular opinion here, for me this does soun…

One other factor in all of this is how companies used debt to sail through the pandemic. They took out loans, and now the bills are coming due. If you can't grow revenues to match interest payments, you often have to cut OpEx, and that seems to be what some companies are doing.

Still sucks if you're on the receiving end, though.

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