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Our $100M Series B

oxide.computer

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Re: Our $100M Series B

#191

Post by stego-tech »

Congrats to Oxide on this milestone! I’ve been following their progress since discovering them in COVID, and would love to see them shake up what’s presently a stagnant marketplace with their product line. The idea of deploying a rack of kit on-prem that’s tightly integrated instead of wrangling multiple vendors of discrete components has a strong appeal, and while the proprietary hardware stuff did initially give me pause, their commitment to building atop Open Source quelled any lingering doubts I had.

Would love to see their growth result in more versatile options, like quarter-rack or industrial deployments someday. In the meantime, congrats on the successful fundraising!

Re: Our $100M Series B

#192

Post by steveklabnik »

benreesman wrote: post #178
steveklabnik wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "200k is plenty to live on" is rich, well-connected guy talk in 2025. The median US income in 2023 was $39,982 for an individual, and $78,538 for a household.

My issue isn't with Oxide's comp steucture which I neither understand nor care about. My issue is with made-for-life, self-appointed elder statesmen on HN saying anything at all about other people's finances and imperatives from the comfort of a study in whatever isyllic community they're pontificating from. Just, be grateful, and say nothing.

> My issue isn't with Oxide's comp steucture which I neither understand nor care about.

This is a sub-thread about it, so that's what we're talking about though.

> Just, be grateful, and say nothing.

That's not how message boards work. If you say that it's ridiculous to live on such a salary, I'm going to point out how out of touch that is.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#193

Post by OkayPhysicist »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #84
illegalmemory wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have since updated it slightly > Since originally writing this blog entry in 2021, we have increased our salary a few times, and it now stands at $207,264. We have also added some sales positions that have variable compensation, consisting of a lower base salary and a commission component.

Why is sales special? Why not just have some performance bar for that, just like all the other positions?

The key difference between everyone else in a company and Sales is that Sales is where the money comes in, directly. It's approximately trivial to point at a sale, see how much money it made, and then who made the sale. So commission is a natural compensation structure for salespeople. For everyone else at a company, their individual contribution to the company making money is a lot more diffuse, and any metric you might be tempted to try and put a commission on is at risk of being gamed. Whereas "how much $$$/worth of stuff did we sell" is pretty much THE metric by which we judge a business as a whole.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#194

Post by geodel »

diggan wrote: post #140
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sales works that way in every industry. A top salesman can make more than the CEO from commission. Many top salespeople have a zero base salary. The pressure is pretty crazy, though. I’m not cut out for that kind of thing.

I do know that (I myself also worked in sales for a short stint, unrelated to software though), what I don't understand how these magical "sales people" apparently can't work for a fixed salary when literally everyone else can. Apparently the rest of us can do high quality work without being paid for each feature/bug fixed, yet these individuals cannot? > Many top salespeople have a zero base salary. Hmm, probably tr…

> the rest of us can do high quality work without being paid for each feature/bug fixed, yet these individuals cannot

Yes they can not. It is not high quality work but high quality results for sales guy. Developer work is complete once service deployed. It wouldn't be developer failure if user volume doesn't reach x thousands per day on their web service. It would definitely be salesman failure sales does not reach x dollars in certain duration.

Developer equivalent of sales would be to say "I have distributed x sales brochures and call x number of clients this month. My job is done."

Re: Our $100M Series B

#195

Post by brianzelip »

Love the blog post with a one-off art direction!

Also love the Oxide and Friends podcast! What strikes me most lately about Oxide since falling into their hefty episode backlog, is their book club culture. I really appreciate the ability to get a fly on the wall experience of it, I learn a lot!

https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/

Re: Our $100M Series B

#196

Post by steveklabnik »

Etheryte wrote: post #168
mrcwinn wrote: post #13

Everyone at Oxide makes the same salary: >We decided to do something outlandishly simple: take the salary that Steve, Jess, and I were going to pay ourselves, and pay that to everyone. [ https://oxide.computer/blog/compensation-as-a-reflection-of-... ] Does everyone at Oxide have the same equity grant?

Out of curiosity, how would you imagine that working out, technically and specifically? You start out with founders having equity, and maybe some early investors. Then you employ some people and... what happens exactly? Are new shares created, is everyone who was already onboard slowly diluted, what happens when someone joins and leaves? Etc, I don't think there is an approach to this where all sides would be happy,…

Not your parent, and not suggesting in any way that Oxide is one, but the key term you want to search to learn more about that kind of arrangement is "worker owned cooperatives." There's a lot of variety in how it's handled.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#197

Post by renewiltord »

They're a cool team and I like the idea so I hope it works. In our case, for the few million, we could get a hell of a lot more hardware (Epyc 9654 based machines to start with - much better operating cost / compute) so the magic must be in the software.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#198

Post by kierangill »

mystraline wrote: post #98

I applied here. Basically anti-llm long form one-sided interview writeup. Took them 3 months before a "we're not interested" email was sent. No reasons, either. I probably should have just used an LLM to generate good sounding garbage. Probably the same chance to get even a stage 1 interview.

I applied in early 2021. Getting rejected from any company carries a sting, but I was grateful to have gone through the process.

I didn’t realize at the time, but Oxide’s application process was the best form of interview prep I’ve done. The process forced me to thoroughly document my values and career accomplishments. In later non-Oxide interviews, I effectively recited what I had written my materials. In that way, it has felt less one-sided than every other company application process I’ve gone through. I was able to take away an artifact from the experience, versus being filtered out via a coding challenge. It’s also been rewarding to reflect on my submission from years ago to see how my mindset and skills have evolved.

If you have any interest in working in the pediatric telemedicine space, I encourage you to email me your application. We accept Oxide materials. I’m happy to provide feedback as a hiring manager. My email and our company website are in my bio.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#199

Post by chrisweekly »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #126
siliconc0w wrote: post #26

Pretty bullish, anyone who has tried to setup and manage their own compute knows the pain they're solving. Plus I predict more companies will exit the cloud once they realize how thick the margins have become or want better guarantees over sovereignty.

Having done web applications for oh…30 years now the key pain is network routing That’s the only thing I can tell is useful about “the cloud” I can build racks and servers easily, but the challenge is availability and getting past everyone’s firewalls So the real win is any service that allows for instant DNS table updates and availability of DNS whitelisting. This is why Google, Msft etc win in email because they ha…

+1 Insightful.

I've also been doing web-related work for a living for over 25y and yours is the most spot-on take I've seen in this discussion.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#200

Post by steveklabnik »

krelian wrote: post #189
jvanderbot wrote: post #64

There is something so calming and pleasant about a well-structured thesis statement: > Our thesis was that cloud computing was the future of all computing; that running on-premises would remain (or become!) strategically important for many; that the entire stack — hardware and software — needed to be rethought from first principles to serve this market; and that a large, durable, public company could be built by whom…

>public company Why does it have to be a public company though?

It is either that or acquisition, and we would prefer an IPO.
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