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Our $100M Series B

oxide.computer

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Re: Our $100M Series B

#131

Post by capital_guy »

vonneumannstan wrote: post #82
jvanderbot wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oxide's blogs talk about cooling _a lot_, apparently their stack runs very cool b/c they've reorganized the whole thing around efficiency, and written all the firmware to support that goal.

Skeptical of that. There's only so much you can do against the physics of moving electrons around at high speeds... "Bigger Fans" and "compute density" doesn't change that

I believe the fans are actually smaller. The rack is definitely quieter than other racks, but he says in the rear rack tour that it's quite hot. Check out these videos of it

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHbgjB0RQ1s [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJmw9OICH-4

Re: Our $100M Series B

#132

Post by chubot »

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…

I would say it's very clear and logical ... but is it really "from first principles"?

I thought that Oxide was based on OpenCompute, which is basically the rack designs that Facebook open sourced, after hiring some Google employees to build their custom data centers. This project started in 2011:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Compute_Project

https://github.com/opencomputeproject

Google definitely rebuilt the stack from first principles -- the data center was basically a huge embedded system, from power to racks to CPUs/memory/disk/network to kernel to user space to cluster software. (And no, they did not use Kubernetes.)

I have no idea how active the OpenCompute project is -- is Facebook still the main contributor, and are they still releasing their new rack designs?

And I also wonder how much Oxide has diverged from it? At least on the hardware side. On the software side, I guess the Illumos-derived parts and Rust parts are completely different.

Well, when they say they did their own:

    - board designs
    - microcontroller OS
    - platform enablement software
    - host hypervisor
    - switch 
    - integrated storage service
    - control plane
Then yeah it seems like maybe only board designs and the switch COULD have either come from or been influenced by OpenCompute, but maybe those didn't either. (I have no idea tbh)

Maybe they only got the mechanical and power stuff from OpenCompute? i.e. the parts that change more slowly

Re: Our $100M Series B

#133

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

diggan wrote: post #120
darren0 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty fundamental to the personality of people in sales to be driven by getting the sale and getting compensated based on the deal size. If you remove that carrot, it just doesn't work. Some sales people will make millions, some will make nothing.

> If you remove that carrot, it just doesn't work How come it works for basically every other job on this planet? Developers aren't paid per feature implemented/bug fixed, and we still do those things, how come sales people are unable to do things for a fixed monthly salary?

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.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#134

Post by steveklabnik »

ethbr1 wrote: post #102
Aurornis wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does everyone at Oxide have the same equity grant? I thought I saw this question answered in a previous thread and the answer was basically “no”, but the question has been avoided a lot. Aspects of equity compensation would inherently need to be different over time due to valuation, fundraising stage, and so on. However I always thought it was strange that they made a big deal about paying everyone the same base sa…

Anyone who doesn’t ask about compensation (at least at a later point in the interview process) would be a red flag to me. Most valuable people know they’re valuable, and do (and should!) negotiate compensation.

I am not sure I fully agree with the characterization above (that asking about salary is a 'red flag' in our process), but if I had to try and steelman it: we prominently put

> Everyone at Oxide makes $207,264 USD, regardless of location. (Some sales positions have a lower base salary and contain a commission component.)

On our applications page (see it here: https://oxide.computer/careers/sw-control-plane)

It's also a pretty well known aspect of the company. Combine this with the fact that our hiring process is different, where interviews are the very last thing before possibly being hired, and someone who has missed this fact could come across as having not done some very basic research about the company that they're applying to.

To be clear, I still think calling it "a red flag" is a stretch. I fully agree with you in a general sense, for places that are willing to negotiate compensation in the first place, but we make it very clear up front that we do not.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#135

Post by bpt3 »

diggan wrote: post #120
darren0 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty fundamental to the personality of people in sales to be driven by getting the sale and getting compensated based on the deal size. If you remove that carrot, it just doesn't work. Some sales people will make millions, some will make nothing.

> If you remove that carrot, it just doesn't work How come it works for basically every other job on this planet? Developers aren't paid per feature implemented/bug fixed, and we still do those things, how come sales people are unable to do things for a fixed monthly salary?

It's not that they're unable to; it's that the field attracts people who are financially motivated and other companies have compensation structures that reward personal performance.

Top salespeople generally won't work for a fixed salary because they want to make as much as they can, and the way they do that is by having as much of their compensation tied to personal performance as possible.

I personally think more engineers/developers should think the same way, but it's also much harder to directly tie job performance to compensation when contributing to a product.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#136

Post by mlyle »

mystraline wrote: post #113
Aurornis wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does everyone at Oxide have the same equity grant? I thought I saw this question answered in a previous thread and the answer was basically “no”, but the question has been avoided a lot. Aspects of equity compensation would inherently need to be different over time due to valuation, fundraising stage, and so on. However I always thought it was strange that they made a big deal about paying everyone the same base sa…

> There was discussion about how they thought candidates asking about compensation to be something of a negative signal because they wanted people who weren’t in it for the money, basically. I've heard this from multiple hiring managers and C levels. The cognitive dissonance is amazing. Do you know why I show up and work? Because I am paid for it, and in this country, medical is also gatekept by employment. If I wasn…

I think we live in a better world when the primary motivator for how we spend half of most of our working day isn't doing what's necessary to get strips of paper for survival.

That is, the work itself should be interesting and fulfilling.

Yes, we need money, but when the work relationship approaches being purely transactional the whole thing is demeaning for everyone and less effective.

Boy, it takes a lot of luck and skill and privilege to be able to shop for (or offer) work like this, and money is still important.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#137

Post by ghaff »

tock wrote: post #89
abxyz wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I argued this in the previous discussion about oxide’s compensation structure: I disagree that sales must be commission based. Yes, finding sales staff that are willing to work for a salary and equity shrinks the pool but the same is true of engineers willing to work for a flat rate across the company. Sales might seem mystical and magical to engineers but it isn’t. A small company with a small sales team can absolut…

> Just because we can measure a sales person’s contributions in dollar amounts does not mean we must measure it in dollar amounts. This is the fairest form of compensation. It's unfortunate that engineering contribution cannot be measured the same way. If we could engineers would all be getting a nice pay hike.

And many would be getting let go because they weren't meeting some number.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#138

Post by mkeeter »

whalesalad wrote: post #116

I would really love to run their control plane in my homelab.

I'm not aware of folks outside the company running the whole control plane, but people have definitely gotten parts of the system running at home:

https://artemis.sh/2022/03/14/propolis-oxide-at-home-pt1.htm...

(The author of this blog post now works for Oxide!)

Re: Our $100M Series B

#139

Post by cdaringe »

dijit wrote: post #24
nahimn wrote: post #4

Rooting for this team -- just wish i could afford one of these racks... =)

Same. I think it brings an interesting point actually. "Who will buy these", the obvious answer is anyone with a need, but the "standard pizzabox" server is ubiquitous for the same reason that x86 and miniPC's outcompeted mainframes. ((controversial take warning)) Mainframes are objectively better at high uptime and high throughput than rube-golderging a bunch of semi-reliable x86 boxes together, yet, the ubiquity of…

Not very controversial, tbh. Your observation is essentially that there is momentum on a current platform, which yields availability, pricing, and general convenience benefit. It’s borderline indisputable!

The market is complex. Those who will buy will be those who find that the existing ying doesn’t snap perfectly into their own business’ yang. They’ll be at the margins first (the post references a lab for instance, not a booming tech company), then over time less so.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#140

Post by diggan »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #133
diggan wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you remove that carrot, it just doesn't work How come it works for basically every other job on this planet? Developers aren't paid per feature implemented/bug fixed, and we still do those things, how come sales people are unable to do things for a fixed monthly salary?

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 true in some places, but here (Spain) that wouldn't even be legal. When I worked in sales we had minimum wage + commission, but I'm sure the salary would be 0 if they were allowed to set it up like that.

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