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Our $100M Series B

oxide.computer

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Re: Our $100M Series B

#211

Post by evantbyrne »

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…

> but if I was choosing between two jobs where one was utterly boring but paid 3 times more than a fascinating job, I'd take the latter in a heartbeat.

I chose my current job against competing offers because it was a good thing for the world, but I would not have taken significantly reduced pay for it. Let me tell you why: nobody that insists on paying you below market rates is going to treat you right. Some of the worst professional interactions I've ever dealt with involved high ranking individuals at nonprofits. These were orgs may have had genuinely good missions, but also paid rank and file employees quite poorly. On the other side, the 3x above market rate job is just a fantasy. I could believe it if you were talking about a 20% bonus.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#212

Post by bcantrill »

chubot wrote: post #132
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 sta…

We didn't use anything from OCP. When we first started the company, we thought we might use the enclosure (and considered ourselves "OCP inspired"), but there ended up being little value in doing so (and there was a clear cost). And on the stuff that we really cared about (e.g., getting rid of the traditional BMC), we were completely at odds with OCP (where ASPEED BMCs abound!).

So in the end, even the mechanical and power didn't come from OCP. We clearly build on other components (we didn't build own rectifiers!), but we absolutely built the machine from first principles.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#213

Post by criddell »

Quarrel wrote: post #112
dcminter wrote: post #49

Oxide, at least for an outsider, looks like a company that channels some of the spirit of early Sun Microsystems (I'm aware of the connections of course). I'm quite envious of those who work there - I hope the demands of big money don't crush any of that spirit. Sadly when I look at their jobs posted I don't see much that would line up with my skillset, but I keep an eye on them just on the offchance.

Right? And such a clear value statement. If I could, I'd invest. Sure, they might fail, but they're shooting their shot, and to me it has a clear differentiator that would improve the market for most of their users (if not the incumbents).

I wish there was a way for small investors ($25-50k) to get in. AFAIK, the only thing we can do is wait for an IPO and hope we can get in at a reasonable price.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#214

Post by bcantrill »

krelian wrote: post #189
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…

>public company Why does it have to be a public company though?

Because VCs need to have a way to sell their shares within the (limited) lifetime of their fund.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#215

Post by cestith »

speed_spread wrote: post #165
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?

Because sales are quantifiable and directly mapped to performance. To get that kind of proportional payback in engineering you'd need very clear financial objectives for a project. I could see that happening in optimization scenarios where consultants are brought in and get paid for whatever they can trim from operational costs.

In fact I’ve seen both tech and manufacturing efficiency consultants whose quotes include $x up front plus monitoring and reporting that shows the efficiency gains. Then rather than taking a closing fixed payment, they get a percentage of the savings to the client over the first six or twelve months.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#216

Post by aapoalas »

cpach wrote: post #106
AngryData wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah they aren't unheard of at all, co-ops have had slow but steady growth in the market for some decades now.

I’m not sure I follow. In what market(s)?

One famous example is Igalia, doing Open Source consulting for various companies, including Google, Apple, and others.

They're a worker owned co-op and have grown very nicely over the years.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#217

Post by 999900000999 »

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…

At this point I've accepted most equity comp in a non public company is worth less than toilet paper.

When it comes time to actually cash out or you notice some animals are more equal than others, the excuses start. The drama happens. No one knows what the equity is worth. If you try and advocate for yourself you'll be told the equity is actually worthless.

From here the 200k salary seems fair. Just don't live in SF. Chicago , Philly, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, quite a few cities are perfectly livable on 200k.

In fact, in any of the above metros you will be living nice.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#218

Post by 7e »

Investors are likely betting there is an AI play buried deeply in here somewhere.

The founders are uber geeks but have never done anything successful on their own. I predict this company will be another zombie.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#219

Post by bix6 »

diggan wrote: post #110
bix6 wrote: post #86

What is the initial cost to setup their smallest system on prem?

Not finding a ton of information about it, was curious about it too. But the "smallest system" seems huge, like 16 sleds and a HN comment from 2023 ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38498840 ) says: > An oxide rack has a minimum cost of something like 600k not including all the infra you need to run a rack, maintenance, and then needing to upgrade So maybe not super useful for people who are looking to do some h…

Wow so really for F500 and such

Re: Our $100M Series B

#220

Post by cestith »

bpt3 wrote: post #166
diggan wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> 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, It's actually not the same for many roles. See the comments from people in this thread alone who scoff at the notion of maximizing compensation. I don't get it personally, but it's not an uncommon thought. > yet the sales department are the only on…

Even if your intent is to maximize income in customer support, you often don’t have the market option to do that. I have seen (and even worked at) places where chat support, phone support, and support administrators have a quota of chats, calls, or ticket responses and make bonuses based on how much they exceed their numbers. Unfortunately sometimes that results in people updating tickets several times an hour saying things like “we’re still looking into this and haven’t forgotten you” without actually looking into anything.

One place I worked I tried to move the quota system more towards being the final response on a resolve issue, but upper management didn’t want to ever judge whether an issue was resolved even when the customer said they were happy. They did incorporate an NPS query for every interaction, though, and a multiplier against the volume-based quota. Unfortunately that favored people who were good BS artists when lying to the customer about looking into things.

The fallout from the above paragraph was that quality, caring staff would get punished for actually solving customer problems.

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