Our $100M Series B • Hacker News Board

Re: Our $100M Series B

#141

Post by mystraline » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 3:14 PM UTC

diggan wrote: post #118

mystraline wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> If I wasn't paid, I wouldn't work for them. That's great, but useful to know not everyone thinks the same. When I transitioned to software development (from basically random "whatever pays my rent" jobs), besides my first software job, they were all because I liked the particular product in some way or another, and what the compensation was is basically the least interesting thing for me. Of course, some level of b…

The hypothetical situation you set up is interesting, in that past a base amount of money to survive and thrive, that you would choose the more intellectually stimulating position. And I do get that.

For me, if the hours were equal, I would choose the higher paying one. And then, I would create and make outside of work. And since I have that much higher wage, it could be a jump start on my own business.

And, enough money can buy independenance in that you can get this flexibility of doing as you choose.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#142

Post by conjectures » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 3:15 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #56

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?

> 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

It's not an unusual way of thinking, but every time I see it, it seems bizarre to me. If the candidate was to propose any project once hired, I'm sure these folks would want them to think about costs and benefits.

This policy selects either for people unable to reflect on their life with the same wit they apply to work; or people who will front about their motivations. Both seem like poor outcomes.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#143

Post by ghaff » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 3:15 PM UTC

steveklabnik wrote: post #134

ethbr1 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 als…

FWIW, my last job I didn't negotiate. Company I really wanted to work for. Wanted to close the deal. So I didn't gum up the works with salary negotiation and it ended up being very good for me in a lot of ways.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#144

Post by diggan » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 3:15 PM UTC

bpt3 wrote: post #135

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?

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 e…

> because they want to make as much as they can

But that's the same no matter if you work in sales, customer support or many other roles, a lot of people just care about the money with little regards to anything else, yet the sales department are the only ones who must have commission?

Re: Our $100M Series B

#145

Post by Aurornis » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 3:16 PM UTC

steveklabnik wrote: post #130

dpritchett wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a bit of a class thing, isn’t it? Independently wealthy folks can stay in the game longer without needing to extract a lot of cash compensation in the company’s early years.

This is true in the abstract, but we're talking about a salary of $207,264 in this case. You don't need to be independently wealthy to make it on our salary.

Exactly. It’s also important to know that they support remote work, so these salaries really are not bad at all. For someone in a non-tech city who doesn’t want to move this would be a great startup job.

My only reservation is that I’ve interviewed with or worked for multiple companies that made some claim about paying everyone the same and there was always some loophole: The company might have a fixed base pay but then use very different equity grants. One company claimed to give everyone the same base comp and equity but then it was discovered that some people were getting huge annual “guaranteed bonuses” that were effectively base compensation. It has left me tired of seeing companies push the idea of everyone being paid the same while not being open about the entire compensation structure.

EDIT: To be 100% clear, I don’t know what Oxide’s entire comp structure looks like. The examples above were for past companies I worked for.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#146

Post by steveklabnik » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 3:17 PM UTC

turnsout wrote: post #75

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.

I've run my own servers for over 20 years now, but I guess I don't understand the pain point. Can you elaborate? They write: > Our system delivers all the hardware and software you need to run cloud… To "run cloud?" Does this mean treating your own servers like "serverless?" Does it mean running Kubernetes? Is this primarily for people who want to self-host LLMs? I'm literally so old that I write programs that run on…

> To "run cloud?"

I agree that's a bit awkwardly phrased, let me send in a patch for that.

> Does this mean treating your own servers like "serverless?" Does it mean running Kubernetes? Is this primarily for people who want to self-host LLMs?

Not exactly any of that. We let you treat an entire rack as a single pool of resources, spinning up virtual machines that our control plane manages for you. Think "VPS provider but you own it." There's an API, but if you want to see what our console looks like, you can poke around with a demo here: https://console-preview.oxide.computer/

Re: Our $100M Series B

#147

Post by diggan » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 3:18 PM UTC

mystraline wrote: post #141

diggan wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I wasn't paid, I wouldn't work for them. That's great, but useful to know not everyone thinks the same. When I transitioned to software development (from basically random "whatever pays my rent" jobs), besides my first software job, they were all because I liked the particular product in some way or another, and what the compensation was is basically the least interesting thing for me. Of course, some level of b…

The hypothetical situation you set up is interesting, in that past a base amount of money to survive and thrive, that you would choose the more intellectually stimulating position. And I do get that. For me, if the hours were equal, I would choose the higher paying one. And then, I would create and make outside of work. And since I have that much higher wage, it could be a jump start on my own business. And, enough m…

> For me, if the hours were equal, I would choose the higher paying one. And then, I would create and make outside of work. And since I have that much higher wage, it could be a jump start on my own business.

Yeah, I guess I've been lucky to be able to chose daily jobs in the past that basically gives me what you would create outside of work, except I got a fixed payment each month for doing something I really enjoyed. So I never had the need to do that stuff outside of work to derive enjoyment of most of my time, which I guess is my top priority and been most of my life.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#148

Post by steveklabnik » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 3:18 PM UTC

capital_guy wrote: post #131

vonneumannstan wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The fans are 80mm, traditionally 1U is roughly half that size.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#149

Post by ChrisMarshallNY » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 3:18 PM UTC

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…

I have a few [wealthy] salespeople friends. Most have “commission-only” (0 base) jobs.

Many jobs will start you with a base for a few months, while you build commissions, but they stop it, after a while.

They can also get fired at the drop of a hat. Not much job security.

Sales are easy to convert to incentives. Just take a cut of the sale. It’s not so easy to calculate value from other jobs.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#150

Post by benreesman » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 3:18 PM UTC

steveklabnik wrote: post #130

dpritchett wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a bit of a class thing, isn’t it? Independently wealthy folks can stay in the game longer without needing to extract a lot of cash compensation in the company’s early years.

This is true in the abstract, but we're talking about a salary of $207,264 in this case. You don't need to be independently wealthy to make it on our salary.

It's still a class thing. With the CoL in most SWE-heavy metros and the outright war on engineer pricing power over the last few years?

Just about any engineer who isnt independently wealthy is:

- recovering from layoffs and a period of unemployment at a high-COL cost structure

- facing layoffs with the above salients

- facing an imperative to insulate their fucking house with cash for their turn in the above crosshairs

Competence and a willingness to work hard stopped equalling access to basic necessities in November of 2022 - February of 2023, depending on how you count, and inflation has savaged a notional 200k.

"200k is plenty to live on" is rich, well-connected guy talk in 2025.