Don’t understand why anyone would need their cloud products. Who needs Terraform or Nomad or Vault as a service?
Same reason companies also buy cloud infrastructure and platforms as a service; to offload the deployment and operations.
HashiCorp IPO today
51–60 of 206 posts
Re: HashiCorp IPO today
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Better for your wallet, but worse for the job. The company changes. The type of people it attracts to leadership roles are not the kind of people you’d start a company with. They bring their “processes and methods” that they promise will scale the company and then they insulate themselves by hiring their friends to report to them. The culture is corrupt at this point and the technologists that built the company begin…
That seems… cynical. The sorts of processes and. Management needed for a larger company are different than those at a small one. You need more process. There’s no way around it.
> The sorts of processes and. Management needed for a larger company are different than those at a small one. You need more process. There’s no way around it.
There is: don't go public or issue stocks. In Germany, we are famous for non-public companies: the "Mittelstand" is largely owned by the founders or their descendants, which frees them from a lot of external influences - for better (companies can focus on long term goals instead of phony quarterly/activist investor-driven "KPI/OKR" goals, companies save on a lot of the bureaucracy that the law mandates for public/share-issuing companies) or worse (we're notorious for a lack of digitalization and progress as well as inheritance squabbles).
An example are the retail chains ALDI and LIDL or manufacturers Bosch and Heraeus - all tens to hundreds of thousands of employees and many billions of net worth, but it's rare to even find somewhat reliable numbers on them.
Re: HashiCorp IPO today
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Better for your wallet, but worse for the job. The company changes. The type of people it attracts to leadership roles are not the kind of people you’d start a company with. They bring their “processes and methods” that they promise will scale the company and then they insulate themselves by hiring their friends to report to them. The culture is corrupt at this point and the technologists that built the company begin…
That seems… cynical. The sorts of processes and. Management needed for a larger company are different than those at a small one. You need more process. There’s no way around it.
It may be cynical but it's also totally true.. I've personally gone through this whole cycle two separate times from smallish company -> private sale -> IPO shortly after. (~30th engineer in one and 11yrs, then day-one for the other and 7yrs).
Say you joined a company relatively early. If you're still around years later by an IPO, you probably liked that early environment where you had low-to-no management overhead, large direct impact, and everybody was personally invested in getting shit done. For most employees that environment was already slipping away pre-IPO, but you know you're close to the finish line and can't get off now. What remains is quickly going to be gone post-IPO.
The early employees get major cash-outs; some probably don't need to work at all anymore, so those that treat their job as a means-to-an-end and not their identity leave immediately. Maybe there's big incentives to stay for a few years, paid out annually, hung over your head so you don't quit immediately. But after a year of more managers and TPS reports and public company corporate governance you get your payout... That annual bonus structure practically forces you to decide if you want to leave now, or signup for a whole 'nother year of this, so a wave of people leave. After a 2nd year of this they're mostly gone to greener pastures.
Less-early employees still get significant cash-outs in a large event like this. Maybe they use it to take some time off, it's been a long few years. Once you're out for a while, why not look at what else is out there on the market. Some of them find out they liked this new big-company stuff and want more of it, so they'll probably stay for years. Others are like the early employees and want the good-old days back, they have to go find it somewhere else.
Re: HashiCorp IPO today
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Better for your wallet, but worse for the job. The company changes. The type of people it attracts to leadership roles are not the kind of people you’d start a company with. They bring their “processes and methods” that they promise will scale the company and then they insulate themselves by hiring their friends to report to them. The culture is corrupt at this point and the technologists that built the company begin…
That seems… cynical. The sorts of processes and. Management needed for a larger company are different than those at a small one. You need more process. There’s no way around it.
I mean, Jeff Bezos's company became somewhat large while being managed like a startup on its first day.
Re: HashiCorp IPO today
#55Thank you Mitchell and Armon. I essentially built my DevOps consulting company off the back of Packer and Terraform. I’ll be a long term $HCP shareholder.
You and a bunch of other founders!
Re: HashiCorp IPO today
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
That seems… cynical. The sorts of processes and. Management needed for a larger company are different than those at a small one. You need more process. There’s no way around it.
It may be cynical but it's also totally true.. I've personally gone through this whole cycle two separate times from smallish company -> private sale -> IPO shortly after. (~30th engineer in one and 11yrs, then day-one for the other and 7yrs). Say you joined a company relatively early. If you're still around years later by an IPO, you probably liked that early environment where you had low-to-no management overhead,…
I’m not sure we’re disagreeing. Yes larger public companies are different from startups both because of the larger part and the public part. I haven’t gone through an IPO but I have gone through significant growth as a public companies. A lot of things change. Not necessarily for the worse. But it’s different.
Re: HashiCorp IPO today
#57Can someone explain the revenue declines in 2019? https://www.google.com/finance/quote/HCP:NASDAQ Or is this a Google Fiance Bug?
99% sure those metrics are wrong
Re: HashiCorp IPO today
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding is that an IPO bump is good for optics, and good for underwriters, but bad for company itself (money left on table). Is that right?
Only if the company is looking to really raise a lot of money in the IPO. The bump and later positive price movements benefits employees and founders a lot, therefore helps in retention and lower compensation costs for new employees etc and also investors who sell .
How does a bump help employees/founders? Don't they have some fixed number of shares?
Re: HashiCorp IPO today
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
It may be cynical but it's also totally true.. I've personally gone through this whole cycle two separate times from smallish company -> private sale -> IPO shortly after. (~30th engineer in one and 11yrs, then day-one for the other and 7yrs). Say you joined a company relatively early. If you're still around years later by an IPO, you probably liked that early environment where you had low-to-no management overhead,…
I’m not sure we’re disagreeing. Yes larger public companies are different from startups both because of the larger part and the public part. I haven’t gone through an IPO but I have gone through significant growth as a public companies. A lot of things change. Not necessarily for the worse. But it’s different.
That is totally true and those may be great for the growth of the company. But as the parent was saying they are generally worse for the day-to-day job of the old-guard employees, and that's why most of them leave soon after.
Re: HashiCorp IPO today
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
That seems… cynical. The sorts of processes and. Management needed for a larger company are different than those at a small one. You need more process. There’s no way around it.
> The sorts of processes and. Management needed for a larger company are different than those at a small one. You need more process. There’s no way around it. There is: don't go public or issue stocks . In Germany, we are famous for non-public companies: the "Mittelstand" is largely owned by the founders or their descendants, which frees them from a lot of external influences - for better (companies can focus on long…
You don’t have some of the compliance requirements then but you absolutely still need a lot of process if you have 10s to 100s of thousands of employees.