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Elastic lays off 7% of employees

elastic.co

211–220 of 251 posts

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#211
post #2

Makes me sad to read it as an ex-Elastic employee. AI is used to justify the redundancies, and the company still expects to grow in this fiscal year. In the SEC filling the specifically mention more “head count” in “go-to-market” roles [1]. > a reduction of approximately 7% of our workforce > Advances in AI, automation, and technology are reshaping how work gets done, and we're changing with them. (…) That's what thi…

What’s also sad is looking at the quotes you posted GAI was obviously used to churn it out - it’s a simulacrum of thought, signifying nothing. This is what the CEO is trying to claim will save the company, and unfortunately this is the sort of mediocrity relying on LLMs gives you.

> This is what the CEO is trying to claim will save the company

Maybe I'm misreading it, but I didn't get the "we're forced to do this" vibe, which "saving" would imply.

To be this reads more like a strategic reduction in workforce as the product has stabilized.

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might've been better if AWS and GCP didn't steal your goodies and take so much meat off the bones. Fair source > Open source. Trillion dollar companies need to pay to play. Open source removes your jobs, your exit equity, and transfers it to the hyperscalers. Sucks that it happened to you guys.

Elastic isn't Open Source though, they abandoned Open Source. It seems to me like this is an example of non-Open Source whatever licensing causing job loss. Or just plain bad leadership.

It was.

The idea behind free software was the software was free, but you'd sell the support -- installation help (floppies even)

Elastic were on board with that, and it worked

Until a larger incumbent decided to do their own support (fine), but then sell their service.

Not even a price thing. Far easier for me to spend $50k a year with aws than $5k a year with elastic because we already have a relationship and framework with aws.

They've switched to AGPL, which is a great license, they were just too late, they're the poster child of why AGPL is so important (whether it's another or not is another question)

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#213
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the longest time, elastic didn't even have a cloud offering. And by the time they did it was far far too late. In the early days AWS elastic offering was very weak. It had lots of foot guns and operational problems. We tried hard to use an more native elastic offering and would have preferred it, but it didn't exist.

The anti AWS rhetoric is exhausting. The fact AWS crappy hosted ES gained any market share is more a testament to how bad ES sales practices were than anything else. ES really missed the mark by not having a simple, self-serve sales model and instead going all in convoluted "contact a sales rep" enterprise model no one wanted to deal with.

ES Enterprise Sales for an on-prem license might have been the worst sales experience I ever was part of as a customer. We were already a very technically self-sufficient org just wanting to get under a support contract. They made it so impossible to give them money we simply gave up and went with the open source fork during all the Amazon kerfuffle.

Dozen of hours of useless phone calls, and just nonsensical numbers coming out weeks or months later. Only to go back to the well and try again with a new team of reps after the first team inevitably churned out before any real progress was made.

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#214

Before the 1980s layoffs were seen as a massive failure of the company and almost never happened to tenured employees unless the company was collapsing. Before we are all made to think this is normal and unavoidable behavior.

In the 80s you didn't have the majority of your employees being white collar and making six figures. The U.S. is suffering from office worker bloat. They have an increasing growing population of people who know very little about physical labor and most likely won't be able to adapt to upcoming AI induced mass unemployment. I only see the pain getting worse for them. Not sure what the solution is for them here.

Also so many people with so many guns.

Mass Unemployment with no healthcare or supporting social services , very few opportunities and lots of guns.

It will not be ok.

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you rather they never hire those people? Because that is one option.

It’s not like countries that decided against kleptocracy are drowning in unemployment. On the contrary, they often enjoy a happier population, a better standard of living, or both.

Well, millions of people risk their lives to come to the USA. There is a reason for that. While many come to be takers and abuse the system, many come because of the freedom to take care of your own destiny without expecting someone else to take care of their lives.

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you rather they never hire those people? Because that is one option.

>Would you rather they never hire those people? Because that is one option. Yup, and that way those people should be hired by companies who are in it for the long term and not looking just at the next quarter (and using hiring as a way to deny employees to competitors).

[flagged]

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#217
post #213
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anti AWS rhetoric is exhausting. The fact AWS crappy hosted ES gained any market share is more a testament to how bad ES sales practices were than anything else. ES really missed the mark by not having a simple, self-serve sales model and instead going all in convoluted "contact a sales rep" enterprise model no one wanted to deal with.

ES Enterprise Sales for an on-prem license might have been the worst sales experience I ever was part of as a customer. We were already a very technically self-sufficient org just wanting to get under a support contract. They made it so impossible to give them money we simply gave up and went with the open source fork during all the Amazon kerfuffle. Dozen of hours of useless phone calls, and just nonsensical numbers…

Yup. And I bet all that got reported internally within Elastic was how AWS was "undercutting them on deals".

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And people wonder why there are zero companies in europe competing with american ones in the tech sector...

Tell that to ASML.

ASML licenses their IPs from the american government. But yeah, they are in europe and work with european suppliers.

Re: Elastic lays off 7% of employees

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to ASML.

ASML is over 30 years old. It also has a massive IP and financial moat that's impossible to replicate by start-ups competitors seeking to disrupt it. Labor laws don't matter at this point as that's not the limiting factor, it's IP and capital. But SW can be much more easily disrupted, and if you can move faster and stay leaner than your EU competitors due to laxer laws, then you will win. SW success is often about ti…

booking.com is in NL, and Spotify in SE. Both outcompeted quite some US competitors.

I would add Hetzner as an example that EU labor laws are no obstacle to being competitive with US companies.

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