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Our $100M Series B

oxide.computer

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Re: Our $100M Series B

#201

Post by benreesman »

steveklabnik wrote: post #192
benreesman wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not what I said, you know that's not what I said. I said people who talk like that on HN are doing so from an unrelated personal experience.

This sub-thread is about the habits of speech that make a certain breed of armchair public policy economist jump out like a lump on plate glass. Get Patek in here and we could start a convention.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#202

Post by ang_cire »

Good for them! I used to walk my dog past their (office? warehouse?) in Emeryville, and when the weather was warm they'd have the doors open and the giant server stacks just sitting there, looking awesome. I guess it's not really a concern that someone will steal something that looks like it'd take a forklift to move.

The ultimate aspirational homelab setup, ngl.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#203

Post by steveklabnik »

benreesman wrote: post #201
steveklabnik wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That's not what I said, you know that's not what I said. I said people who talk like that on HN are doing so from an unrelated personal experience. This sub-thread is about the habits of speech that make a certain breed of armchair public policy economist jump out like a lump on plate glass. Get Patek in here and we could start a convention.

> you know that's not what I said.

Okay, just so you know, I did not understand that you were speaking in generalities whatsoever.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#204

Post by throwanem »

steveklabnik wrote: post #187
throwanem wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's bullshit to talk about salary equality as though that mattered when equity is the real upside, and you know it. The claim to strive for a "generational company" is just "we're a family here" in other terms. Congrats on the raise.

I think there are tremendous benefits to having a flat salary structure, regardless of upside. My other friends in tech are envious of the lack of having to waste time doing perf, for example. > Congrats on the raise. Thank you.

From your perspective of course it has benefits. From mine? Getting stack ranked wasn't even in my top 10 as concerns went, but I'm really good at my job, and I keep quality notes that make it easy to recap a quarter or half. (But like I said, I'm good at my job.) I don't really see what that has to do with focusing your rhetoric on 10% of startup comp as though it were 100% - especially now that your tax discount on cash comp has been restored! - but you're welcome, of course.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#205

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Our $100M Series B

#206

Post by sunshowers »

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

Commodity hardware doesn't quite tend to operate at a compute vs efficiency Pareto frontier — there's a lot of wasted energy that we've been able to optimize with our vertical integration. (I work at Oxide.)

Re: Our $100M Series B

#207

Post by pmichaud »

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 don't have any particular knowledge about oxide's cooling, but think about how bloated and inefficient literally every part of the compute stack is from metal to seeing these words on a screen. If you imagine fixing every part of it to be efficient top to bottom, I think you'll agree that we're not even in the same galaxy as the physical limitations of moving electrons around at high speeds.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#208

Post by sunshowers »

guywithahat wrote: post #101

The company leadership of oxide concerns me. My biggest mistakes in my (not successful) startup were when I got distracted and chased politics or some corporate goal instead of solving my customers real problems. Giving all employees the same pay or advertising social media links to small, political sites makes me worried they've taken the 100 million and are about to crowd the market with a product that's not focuse…

A consequence of us all making the same amount of money is that we don't waste time on performance reviews!

Re: Our $100M Series B

#209

Post by cestith »

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?

Freelancers and consultants do absolutely have the option to get paid by the feature. It’s exceedingly rare for internal employees or contract employees though. That means there’s no market competition based on it yet. Some places do have bonuses or even profit sharing. Some senior ICs and many managers across the industry can get equity through either grants or options.

Sales professionals have a lot of different places they can sell things. The market-rate compensation for sales includes commissions. So to get the best sales people, you want something easy and exciting to sell with a good commission structure tied to the sales.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#210

Post by baq »

duped wrote: post #155
mystraline wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's reasonable, but signalling this to a startup during hiring is going to be a negative. There are three kinds of capital they get to play with, cash, equity, and culture. Cash is the least pliable of the three to them, equity the least liquid, but culture is actually something they can control. If you have a team full of people who are just there for the paycheck, the only thing that will keep them there is incr…

Culture is smoke and mirrors. When investors say frog, founders jump and guess who gets the cultural shaft then.

Better to be thinking in transactional terms from the get go especially in early startups, where majority of total comp is an illiquid call option.

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