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Weaveworks is shutting down

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Re: Weaveworks is shutting down

#131

Post by otteromkram »

ssharp wrote: post #119
KaiserPro wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> According to the CEO's linkedin post, they were basically trying to keep up appearances of being a 200 person company until some greater fool bought them out, which appears to have failed. Because that is what startups do. 80% of startups that are "successful" follow this pattern You shoot for the moon, if you don't take massive risks, then you won't be rewarded. It sounded like they were about to be bought out or…

"Shoot for the moon" seems like a reasonable strategy when you're making the investment. However, certainly at some point while they were burning through that $36 million it became evident that "moon" was no longer a viable destination. Why wouldn't everyone be aligned with making the adjustments needed to get back to default alive? Something is clearly better than nothing. Now if it got to the stage where the CEO no…

I'm surprised they didn't hire you as an advisor. Maybe they would still be solvent if they did.

Re: Weaveworks is shutting down

#132

Post by eh_why_not »

slgeorge wrote: post #80

The shutdown means great people with Cloud Native skills are available now. People across all teams: marketing, product, engineering, dev-rel, consulting / CRE, customer success and business operations Across the States, UK/Europe and Egypt. If you can help these fantastic people find new roles - please get in touch!

> The shutdown means great people with Cloud Native skills are available now.

Question from someone with mostly back-end/services non-cloud dev skills: what exactly are Cloud Native skills?

Re: Weaveworks is shutting down

#133

Post by rdedev »

KaiserPro wrote: post #103
propter_hoc wrote: post #83

I know this isn't the craziest startup shutdown story, but wow. At $10MM of revenue they can afford to keep a staff of 50 at a fully loaded cost per employee of $200,000. Yet, according to Linkedin they peaked at nearly 200 employees. On top of this, they appear to have raised $36 million three years ago - https://www.weave.works/press/releases/weaveworks-raises-36-... In other words they somehow were running at a lo…

> According to the CEO's linkedin post, they were basically trying to keep up appearances of being a 200 person company until some greater fool bought them out, which appears to have failed. Because that is what startups do. 80% of startups that are "successful" follow this pattern You shoot for the moon, if you don't take massive risks, then you won't be rewarded. It sounded like they were about to be bought out or…

>80% of startups that are "successful" follow this pattern

Doesn't this sound like selection bias? If every other startup follows this shoot fornthe moon plan then yeah it just becomes a self fulfilling prophecy

Re: Weaveworks is shutting down

#134

Post by dharmab »

eh_why_not wrote: post #132
slgeorge wrote: post #80

The shutdown means great people with Cloud Native skills are available now. People across all teams: marketing, product, engineering, dev-rel, consulting / CRE, customer success and business operations Across the States, UK/Europe and Egypt. If you can help these fantastic people find new roles - please get in touch!

> The shutdown means great people with Cloud Native skills are available now. Question from someone with mostly back-end/services non-cloud dev skills: what exactly are Cloud Native skills?

Experience building and operating large systems using public cloud services and design patterns without falling into the traps such as ludicrously overpriced SKUs, API limits, low quota, data transfer fees, and all the boring stuff in the fine print that will rack up a 7 digit bill.

Re: Weaveworks is shutting down

#135

Post by zx8080 »

propter_hoc wrote: post #83

I know this isn't the craziest startup shutdown story, but wow. At $10MM of revenue they can afford to keep a staff of 50 at a fully loaded cost per employee of $200,000. Yet, according to Linkedin they peaked at nearly 200 employees. On top of this, they appear to have raised $36 million three years ago - https://www.weave.works/press/releases/weaveworks-raises-36-... In other words they somehow were running at a lo…

> How do you find yourself as Board member or CEO of a company like this and not think to cut expenses a little sooner?

It's like playing Super Mario: one life left? Die sooner to restart again.

There will be a next startup soon, and saving this one does not worth effort. Besides that, the CEO has probably got his cut already as salary. This cow is done, bring in the next one.

Re: Weaveworks is shutting down

#136

Post by Spivak »

mfer wrote: post #92
aftbit wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just in time for cloud native to lose the spotlight in favor of on-prem and AI.

Cloud native does not mean public cloud. Google uses many of these patterns to run their own datacenters.

And you should too since k8s, while an 800lb gorilla on the side of the implementer, gives your dev teams the cloud experience without having to build the APIs yourself. Which is pretty nice honestly, making infra self-service isn't on offer most places hosting on-prem.

Re: Weaveworks is shutting down

#137

Post by yebyen »

catherinecodes wrote: post #59
stackskipton wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably most popular thing they built was FluxCD if you are confused where you have heard their name before. Their company provided a ton of extra tooling and consulting around the product. Hopefully as FluxCD user, this doesn't impact the development of Flux.

Right. Flux was a handy little tool[1] that sync'd yaml manifests in git repos to live clusters. The concept was fascinating, and the tool was well done--small and efficient. Easy to learn. In 2019, they announced they'd be "merging" with argocd[2]. It seems the merge never really took place, and after that they deprecated flux and announced flux2[3]. The sudden changes of course were a little confusing and perhaps n…

Sudden? We finally archived the repo at the end of 2022.

https://fluxcd.io/flux/migration/timetable/

I was hired to support Flux v1 two years after the events you described, in the beginning of 2021 to go on supporting Flux v1 until we could get everyone off the boat.

(I worked at Weaveworks until last month, and I'm still a Flux maintainer! Keep the Flux talk in Present tense please! ;-)

Re: Weaveworks is shutting down

#139

Post by GeorgeRichard »

This is a world that I have no knowledge of so I expect my comment is commensurately naive, but it does remind me of the days when I was an avid race-goer. If I bet on a horse to win that's all I wanted it to do; if the horse and jockey expended all their effort and won, fantastic, if they lost, better luck next time. Slow and steady may win the race in some circumstances but it's not the tactic most punters are hoping for. The analogy would be more complete if the loosing horses were sent to the knacker's yard and their stable hands all dismissed with only the trainers living to try, try, try again.

Re: Weaveworks is shutting down

#140

Post by blagie »

propter_hoc wrote: post #83

I know this isn't the craziest startup shutdown story, but wow. At $10MM of revenue they can afford to keep a staff of 50 at a fully loaded cost per employee of $200,000. Yet, according to Linkedin they peaked at nearly 200 employees. On top of this, they appear to have raised $36 million three years ago - https://www.weave.works/press/releases/weaveworks-raises-36-... In other words they somehow were running at a lo…

There are many reasons this happens:

1) As a CEO, I want headcount. Being the CEO of a 200-person operation sets me up for better jobs than a 50-person one. Being in high-profile organizations if good too (and when they fail, I can switch jobs). Same for VPs and managers.

2) As a CEO, I want bonuses. Those come from growth. Zero bonus is the same whether the company lives or stagnates.

3) Rationally, in winner-takes-all markets, a lot of this depends on early losses and overspending. If you and I are building eBay, and I get there for $10M and you for $100M in 10% less time running massive losses, you win. A lot of tech is winner-takes-all or winner-takes-most.

.... and so on.

Except for retirement account holders whose money is being spent, it's almost certainly better to be a cash-burning Potemkin unicorn than a growing, profitable 50 person company.

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