I have no idea what Apollo Graph QL is, but it was interesting to search by URL and see the progression of related HN titles and their engagement. 2018 July. Apollo server 2 released woo! (mostly ignored) 2019 Feb. We switched away from Slack woo! . . . (Some PRs everybody ignored) 2019 June. We got a $22M investment woo! . . . (Many PRs everybody ignored) 2022 Dec. Oops, we are laying of lots of people...
Apollo is synonymous with Graphql at this point. If you need you consume a Graphql API you most certainly reach out for Apollo on the clientside to query data.
Apollo Layoffs
131–140 of 219 posts
Re: Apollo Layoffs
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Outside of Facebook, Apollo is _the_ GraphQL company, with innovations in the federation space in particular.
Why use GraphQL? There is tRPC now.
tRPC is for a single team working on Typescript frontend to Typescript backend (that's niche). If you have native mobile clients (different lang) or different teams that need to agree on a contract (GraphQL schema), GraphQL is the recommendation, even from ardent tRPC supporters.
Re: Apollo Layoffs
#133> I am very sad to make this decision. It’s a consequence of the approach that Matt and I took in scaling the company over the last year, and we take full responsibility for the impact that will have on the lives of our departing team members. Why do CEO's always say this empty nonsense. If you accept responsibility, you accept consequences - what consequences is Geoff Schmidt going to be facing? Hurt feelings? Give…
The business they built is failing. The emotional toll is extreme. Founders I know are either in poor health due to stress, or place an outsized emphasis on staying healthy. You and others who post this every time seem to be saying "Ah yes, you're not suffering enough in my eyes". How much suffering is enough? Should your degree of blood thirst be applied to employee actions? Are blameless retrospectives a mistake an…
I think this comes from the broader general fact that we have all lived through recessions (e.g. 2008 housing crisis) very differently with very different outcomes.
I often view these statements with knee jerk cynicism (though I recognize it as such) because too often you read about layoffs while executives get golden parachutes. Why should the CEO get the 30 million payout to leave the failing company while everyone else gets comparative peanuts and loses their job.
I can sympathize a bit with why people feel bitter about these things.
I also know some business owners and people who run start ups, those who do it with integrity do have genuine feelings they have to process around this. I try to also remember that not everyone is Jack Welch.
Re: Apollo Layoffs
#134I have no idea what Apollo Graph QL is, but it was interesting to search by URL and see the progression of related HN titles and their engagement. 2018 July. Apollo server 2 released woo! (mostly ignored) 2019 Feb. We switched away from Slack woo! . . . (Some PRs everybody ignored) 2019 June. We got a $22M investment woo! . . . (Many PRs everybody ignored) 2022 Dec. Oops, we are laying of lots of people...
The folks who made Meteor!
I thought they were different entities?
Also, big aside here, but is Meteor still a thing?
Re: Apollo Layoffs
#135I have no idea what Apollo Graph QL is, but it was interesting to search by URL and see the progression of related HN titles and their engagement. 2018 July. Apollo server 2 released woo! (mostly ignored) 2019 Feb. We switched away from Slack woo! . . . (Some PRs everybody ignored) 2019 June. We got a $22M investment woo! . . . (Many PRs everybody ignored) 2022 Dec. Oops, we are laying of lots of people...
Apollo is synonymous with Graphql at this point. If you need you consume a Graphql API you most certainly reach out for Apollo on the clientside to query data.
Eh, https://github.com/urql-graphql/urql is considered the improved re-architected project that doesn't contain the legacy baggage from the beginning of GraphQL like Apollo does.
Re: Apollo Layoffs
#136Can someone explain how Apollo makes money? GraphQL via Apollo is essentially my default API and yet I've never sent these guys a dime.
One reason why they're laying everyone off. Lots of VC money sloshed around the past 15 years but now it's time to actually turn a profit for most of these companies. This will show whether their business models are actually viable or not.
In a low interest rate environment even if you were profitable, if you could get cheap money it might have been worth it to grow vs. slow down and let other competitors get market share. Many companies that could be profitable choose to invest low cost for capital in growth
Re: Apollo Layoffs
#137> we’ve taken full advantage of outside capital to speed our growth...But economic conditions have changed and we believe that it’s no longer prudent to rely on outside capital to support us
Lots of companies have been hiring for growth or for investment. What the companies should have done, though, is hiring to unblock. A couple of engineers build a product that turns out to be generating amazing growth, and then hire a team to polish the system.
Re: Apollo Layoffs
#138I have pretty limited experience with graphql. Why is apollos offering interesting to people? A hosted graphql proxy? You still need to write your own servers(but theres a ton of good libraries in multiple languages for this?) Architecturally it seems to be adding a massive hop to requests made, but its not clear to me what the benefit is?
What these companies offer (another one I am using is "The Guild") is mostly tooling and DEX. GraphQL is a specification. The implementation will depend on the tools/infra you'll use. That's what these guys offer.
Re: Apollo Layoffs
#139Layoffs are going to suck regardless, but this is one of the best severance packages I've seen in this wave: * 15 weeks base pay + 1 week per year of employment * 6 months COBRA + $300 mental health * no 1-yr cliff, options can be exercised thru next year * you can keep all your equipment
The "$300 mental health" seems odd - for any kind of counseling/therapy/etc sessions this is a drop in the bucket in terms of cost. It will easily cost 10x to work with a mental health professional (and insurance companies sadly pay a very small amount of it). So why add this to an otherwise reasonable package?
Why was this downvoted? You raised an important issue. Does this mean the health plan has terrible mental health coverage? I guess so. (It would be great if someone who works for Apollo care share details about your mental health coverage.)
When I worked in the US, my health plans had pretty good mental health coverage. You could spend 1,000s of USD per year for psychotherapy / counseling with zero-to-minor co-pays. If you required medication (prescribed by a psychiatrist), that was also well-covered with zero-to-minor co-pays. I remember specifically that mental health care had "higher coverage" because therapists were rarely part of the insurance company's network. You paid the health professional directly, then require reimbursement from health plan. (Yes, I know this isn't true for all health plans.)
To hire an experienced mental health professional in SF Bay Area, I guess the rate is 100 to 200 USD/hour. Most will have sliding scales, but that will not apply to well-paid engineers.
Re: Apollo Layoffs
#140I have pretty limited experience with graphql. Why is apollos offering interesting to people? A hosted graphql proxy? You still need to write your own servers(but theres a ton of good libraries in multiple languages for this?) Architecturally it seems to be adding a massive hop to requests made, but its not clear to me what the benefit is?
I don't know about the company or how they make money with it (support?), but Apollo is pretty much the standard GraphQL client for frontends. It has pretty sophisticated cache and state management, type generation for typescript, etc.
It’s arguably the least sophisticated of the major clients (Apollo, Urql, Relay), but they’ve done a great job with marketing and documentation. But I’ve personally never used it in a real project because Relay has always existed and I know how to use it.