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Goodbye, Twilio

blog.miguelgrinberg.com

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Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#211

Post by quickthrower2 »

afavour wrote: post #106
paxys wrote: post #97

"The company was great when it was just engineers, but then they hired account managers and sales reps and business people and marketers who ruined everything." Common refrain from developers at SaaS companies who don't realize that the party they were enjoying all these years was directly funded by VC dollars, and these other people who they hate so much in fact do critical jobs and are necessary for converting all…

> viable business A developer run and developer focused business could absolutely be a viable business. But it wouldn’t be the 10x hockey stick growth company venture capitalists demand and ultimately they hold the power here. So we get the inevitable.

You can sort of get it in the post-unicorns: see AWS, Microsoft. Smaller examples, Digital Ocean, Hashicorp. They are certainly dev focused, and probably dev run to a high enough level (but not the top). They wont always do things you like/agree with as a dev, but that is different to not being dev focused.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#212

Post by Plasmoid »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #153
el_nahual wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do stock buybacks enrich investors at the cost of employees ? They are (almost identical) to a dividend, which yes, enriches shareholders but a) that's kind of the point of a business b) especially in startups employees are often shareholders as well, and meaningfully so c) even if they weren't, how do they hurt employees?

[flagged]

> does not materially benefit labor in the long run.

If you ignore the wages (direct and indirect) paid, then sure. Otherwise, I'm not sure how you can argue that in good faith when the largest expense almost any corporation has is labour.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#213

Post by greiskul »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #201
brigadier132 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world is trivially not zero sum. If it were zero sum we would all be living worse off than medieval peasants

We’ve strip mined the earth, decimated humanity, are globally hopeless (look at birth rates) and individual alienation has never been wider spread Suicide is quickly becoming the leading cause of death I’m not sure we’re any better off now holistically

> strip mined the earth

So... If you are complaining about destruction of habits for animals, and global warming, then yeah. If you are complaining about us extracting minerals... Rocks don't have feelings, they don't get a vote. If we could mine them without polluting and destroying ecosystems, not only we probably should, but we should start thinking on how to also mine asteroids and stuff.

> decimated humanity

How did we do that? There are more people now than in any previous point in history. There are a lot of people suffering, but quality of life by numbers is probably a lot better now than it has ever been.

> globally hopeless (look at birth rates)

So is population growth a good thing cause it shows people are happy, or a bad thing cause it means we won't have enough resources? I prefer us to have a stable population for the long run, at least until we can get to space.

> individual alienation has never been wider spread

How informed do you think illiterate peasants used to be?

What is happening, is that the American empire is in a state of decay right now. But the world is bigger than just the Western cultural world. Yeah, it might suck to not get getting all the fruits of imperialism that the US and European countries used to get. It makes the imperialist countries poorer not to have that. But for the formerly colonized people, their life gets better.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#214

Post by rajanaccros »

louwrentius wrote: post #141
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #103

There’s nothing surprising here. This is a typical cycle for a venture backed technology business. There’s just nothing else to say here other than this is 100% expected outcome if you decide to build a product on venture capital money, which requires an exit and an increasingly large exit to the point where you IPO. Unless you avoid this structural pathway, you will be 100% guaranteed to do this. I am unaware of a v…

It’s funny to me that I’m reading this while listening to “Abolish Silicon Valley” by Wendy Liu. I don’t think any CEO can be moral if your primary obligation is “shareholder value”. Or in plain language: making other people more rich at the cost of others. I’m just happy the guy got out when the company didn’t align with his values anymore and he has the means to afford himself a conscience.

> I don’t think any CEO can be moral if your primary obligation is “shareholder value”.

I am really glad I am starting to see a lot more posts here on HN with regard to this fact. Capitalism is literally destroying everything and has proven itself not to be a viable system for long term sustainability and a healthy society and ecosystem.

Some of the smartest people on the internet aggregate on HN and some have still not figured this out. Either because 1) They haven't taken the time to look into the n-order knock on effects that are produced by capitalism in it's current form, or 2) they are too interested in self-enrichment to make any changes to behavior for their own comfort and convenience.

We should get of publicly traded corporations and Wall Street should disappear in my opinion. It is that publicly traded shareholder value that drives all the crimes against society/environment in this late stage. However, we are up against a severely selfish and entrenched minority with a ton of power who won't let that happen ... at the cost of everything.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#215

Post by cyberax »

namtab00 wrote: post #137
cyberax wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> selling glyphosate for residential use What's wrong with glyphosate?

Italian here. I HOPE this a sarcasm filled question.

Nope. Glyphosate is the most maligned compound. "Everyone knows" that it's "bad", but nobody actually knows why.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#216

Post by l33t233372 »

louwrentius wrote: post #205
sethammons wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> making other people more rich at the cost of others Not everything is zero sum. There is a reason that when you purchase something both sides say thank you.

Some have more money than they can spend in a lifetime while others are homeless. This is the society we live in, created by capitalism that demands unsustainable growth.

Homeless people also exist in non-capitalist economies so I’m not certain that is evidence of anything.

Scarcity is the problem, not capitalism.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#217

Post by cyberax »

29athrowaway wrote: post #177
cyberax wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The precautions for glyphosate are basically "don't drink that". My dishwasher detergent has sterner warnings. Heck, Tide pods are just as dangerous. That's because the principal "danger" of glyphosate formulations comes from surfactants. Pure glyphosate by itself is pretty benign.

Then you didn't read the SDS.

Here's an MSDS for glyphosate: https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/agrian-cg-fs1-production/...

* No more than slightly toxic and no significant adverse health effects are expected to develop if a small amount (less than a mouthful) is swallowed.

* May be slightly irritating to the skin.

Here's an MSDS for dishwashing liquid: https://hesco.ca/pdf/msds/J429%20MSDS_E-5%20%20DISH%20MACHIN... When working with it, you're supposed to:

* Wear appropriate protective equipment.

* Wear protective clothing as necessary to prevent skin contact.

* Chemical goggles. Wear a face shield if splashing hazards exists.

* Repeat or prolonged exposure may cause damage to lungs.

* Harmful if swallowed. Causes burns to mouth, throat and stomach.

* Corrosive to skin. Causes severe burns.

* Corrosive to eyes. Causes severe burns.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#218

Post by wpietri »

mbesto wrote: post #208
gamesbrainiac wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you read a different article. Miguel is aggrieved by the fact that it is no longer a developer focused company, which was the reason for its success. Sure, you need sales, marketing and the rest of it; it does not mean that you need to forget what made you great in the first place.

Rubbish. Money doesn't magically show up at your doorstep even if your product is focused on developers. How do you think SaaS companies are able to hire developers? Do those $350k bay area salaries magically come from nothing? Yes, they often initially fueled by VC dollars, but eventually customer revenues pay for them. The "anti sales" drivel from engineers on HN who are largely some of the highest paid positions i…

You are arguing with something that was not said.

Neither the original article nor the person you are replying to said that sales wasn't needed. Indeed, the person you're replying to explicitly said the opposite.

The actual complaint is that they shifted their target audience from engineers to something much broader and fuzzier. The complaint is not that they have salespeople, which they needed in either case. It's that the lack of clarity in who they're selling to and why is making it worse for everybody.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#219

Post by namtab00 »

cyberax wrote: post #215
namtab00 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Italian here. I HOPE this a sarcasm filled question.

Nope. Glyphosate is the most maligned compound. "Everyone knows" that it's "bad", but nobody actually knows why.

I know the "proof" is scarce (as seen here https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5515989/), but frankly I'm in the "overzealously cautious" camp when it comes to food safety.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#220

Post by rsync »

1270018080 wrote: post #53
rsync wrote: post #47

I built an entire personal telco for myself using twilio apis and twiml bins, etc. This was encouraged by helpful “hacker” blog posts and official howtos detailing integrations with alert systems and home automation, etc. Twilio sold itself as useful infrastructure . All of this falls apart next month when A2P (or whatever it is) begins. Twilio polluted its own environment so completely that nobody can exist there an…

Why is A2P bad and why does it make your personal telco fall apart? https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/223133807-What-...

"Why is A2P bad and why does it make your personal telco fall apart?"

A2P 10DLC requires all senders to provide company/corporate information and register their "campaigns".

Which is to say, when I send a grocery list to my wife, that must be under the auspices of a business case that I have registered with twilio and the carriers and within the confines of a campaign that I have defined with example messages and an opt-out and unsubscribe mechanism.

There is a sole proprietor option which is hazily defined and it is unclear if twilio even understands the implementation of.

All of this to say:

Because of the horrible behavior of both twilio and their customers there is no longer any such thing as programmable, personal messaging.

Personal messaging is something you do with your thumbs, on your physical device and programmable messaging is spam. There is no third classification.

Twilio could have been a boring and useful telco infrastructure company providing plumbing for interesting use-cases - but there's no route to billions there so they had to somehow become a unicorn. That's where the "customer engagement" comes in.

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