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(Throwaway, obviously) I'm a DO employee on the tech side of the house. According to the CTO, the primary reason for this was actually reorg, not financial tho

(Throwaway, obviously) I'm a DO employee on the tech side of the house. According to the CTO, the primary reason for this was actually reorg, not financial though that obviously played a part. Mostly managers got cut, with the goal of flattening the org. I'm keeping my ear to the ground but it doesn't seem like there's going to be more cuts any time soon at least. Apparently we're still hiring a ton this year, so that jives.

irjustin 7y ago
Thanks for the info and best of luck. Re-orgs are hard as the company is trying to find its new identity in the new structure. I love DO and what it stands for. Sadly, I don't use it outside of personal pet projects.
tempsy 7y ago
no offense but I wouldn't take your CTO's word at face value. you need to watch out for your own interest, including looking at other opportunities, even if it's just to keep yourself top of mind to others if something happens
- dothrowaway 7y ago
  Agreed fully. I always have an escape strategy in mind if things go south, but I'm pretty bullish on DO right now. That could always change, certainly.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - tempsy 7y ago
    curious what makes you bullish? i'm a total outsider but it does feel like the walls are closing around smaller players as the big get bigger.
    - op00to 7y ago
      Digital Ocean gives me peace of mind. Unlike Amazon or Google, I am confident I'm not going to get a $300k bill from DO overnight.
      - samsepi0l 7y ago
        This is actually huge. Especially in a startup or other small business. Misconfiguring something in AWS (or just simply not understanding their contrived billing models) can get unpredictably expensive.
        tempsy 7y ago
        what about Linode?
        samsepi0l 7y ago
        They are great too, I see them on par with DO
        isop 7y ago
        What about AWS Lightsail? https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/ https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/
      - arcticfox 7y ago
        I'm still amazed that there's no billing cap in Amzn/Goog. Google tried to charge me $1000 for a service normally costing $1 / mo because of a runaway restart issue. I had a $2 / mo "max budget" on it and we responded within minutes of receiving a budget alert. I only got them to reverse the charge after doing a ton of work to prove that my team reacted in <15 minutes, and it was their budget alert that was more than 6 hours late. They still seemed to think that was fine (?!) but because I had some great graphs and a HN-oriented blogpost ready to go, they reversed it anyways. That sounds kind of like blackmail, now that I think about it, but no more than what they're doing sounds like fraud.
- nsxwolf 7y ago
  Yup, I was laid off from my company a week ago, and they just chopped another 25 heads this morning.
ogre_codes 7y ago
It could easily be both a re-org and dressing the profitability numbers prepping for a sale. The fact that its mostly management is encouraging though.
- peteradio 7y ago
  I really hope they don't get acquired by one of the big cloud providers.
  - enos_feedler 7y ago
    I dont think an existing cloud provider makes sense since they’ve all ramped their efforts pretty hard to compete with each other. I would suspect AAPL would be the buyer. It is a big risk for all iOS apps to be backed by infrastructure belonging to other companies they compete with in consumer devices. I think AAPL would want to make another option available.
    - jandrese 7y ago
      I guess iCloud is hosted on AWS? I never actually looked. It doesn't seem to be that big of an issue for Apple though. And if it did happen I guess that wouldn't be so bad, I mean it could be worse. Oracle could decide to get into the cloud business by buying out DO.
      - vira28 7y ago
        thats a good point. For Oracle they should be appealing.
      - kickopotomus 7y ago
        If I remember correctly, iCloud is actually hosted by Google.
        ogre_codes 7y ago
        This was never the case. They are self hosted and for a while they hosted a fair bit of data on Azure & AWS. Not sure if they still use Azure and AWS, but iCloud has never been on Google's infra. (Other Apple content has been served by Google at various times, maps being the big/ obvious one)
cabaalis 7y ago
Curious.. does your employment agreement not put you at very, very significant personal risk for putting information out like this? Throwaway account or not? I'm inclined to trust HN and it's community to a pretty strong degree. But forgive me for simply not seeing this as anything but controlled information release.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- lbotos 7y ago
  You think that DO sent out a shill to pretend to be a throwaway to give hackernews confidence in the DO platform? My read of this is very different than yours: Naive IC who doesn't have optics into the actual mechanization of the business trusting the CTO fully. I think this message from the CTO is a partial truth as they often are in orgs that aren't extremely internally transparent. AKA I don't think the "shilling" is working if that's what they were doing.
  - cabaalis 7y ago
    Your read is probably more practical than mine, and fits in better with a "don't assume malice" standpoint. I just know that social media (of which HN is begrudgingly a member) can very effectively be swayed.
adamc 7y ago
Offered because I love words: jibes ("fits"). https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/ct-tribu-words-work-spellcheck-11101020101110-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/ct-tribu-words-wor...
- sethammons 7y ago
  TIL. I have used "jive" instead of "jibe" for a couple of decades. At some point, words change due to usage. I wonder how many people fall into my same boat. And I used it knowing it means "music" - the way it sounded to me was to "jive" was to fit in harmony.
  - tomjakubowski 7y ago
    I've mixed jive/jibe up too. I wonder if it's related to betacism. We could be starting a new English dialect! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betacism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betacism
- arantius 7y ago
  Amazing, TIL. I'm usually picky about words, but I've gotten this one wrong. Turns out the verb "jive" like was used here actually means to speak falsely -- a sort of literally/figuratively meaning inversion.

irjustin 7y ago

Thanks for the info and best of luck. Re-orgs are hard as the company is trying to find its new identity in the new structure. I love DO and what it stands for. Sadly, I don't use it outside of personal pet projects.

tempsy 7y ago

no offense but I wouldn't take your CTO's word at face value. you need to watch out for your own interest, including looking at other opportunities, even if it's just to keep yourself top of mind to others if something happens

dothrowaway 7y ago
Agreed fully. I always have an escape strategy in mind if things go south, but I'm pretty bullish on DO right now. That could always change, certainly.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- tempsy 7y ago
  curious what makes you bullish? i'm a total outsider but it does feel like the walls are closing around smaller players as the big get bigger.
  - op00to 7y ago
    Digital Ocean gives me peace of mind. Unlike Amazon or Google, I am confident I'm not going to get a $300k bill from DO overnight.
    - samsepi0l 7y ago
      This is actually huge. Especially in a startup or other small business. Misconfiguring something in AWS (or just simply not understanding their contrived billing models) can get unpredictably expensive.
      - tempsy 7y ago
        what about Linode?
        samsepi0l 7y ago
        They are great too, I see them on par with DO
      - isop 7y ago
        What about AWS Lightsail? https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/ https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/
    - arcticfox 7y ago
      I'm still amazed that there's no billing cap in Amzn/Goog. Google tried to charge me $1000 for a service normally costing $1 / mo because of a runaway restart issue. I had a $2 / mo "max budget" on it and we responded within minutes of receiving a budget alert. I only got them to reverse the charge after doing a ton of work to prove that my team reacted in <15 minutes, and it was their budget alert that was more than 6 hours late. They still seemed to think that was fine (?!) but because I had some great graphs and a HN-oriented blogpost ready to go, they reversed it anyways. That sounds kind of like blackmail, now that I think about it, but no more than what they're doing sounds like fraud.
nsxwolf 7y ago
Yup, I was laid off from my company a week ago, and they just chopped another 25 heads this morning.

ogre_codes 7y ago

It could easily be both a re-org and dressing the profitability numbers prepping for a sale. The fact that its mostly management is encouraging though.

peteradio 7y ago
I really hope they don't get acquired by one of the big cloud providers.
- enos_feedler 7y ago
  I dont think an existing cloud provider makes sense since they’ve all ramped their efforts pretty hard to compete with each other. I would suspect AAPL would be the buyer. It is a big risk for all iOS apps to be backed by infrastructure belonging to other companies they compete with in consumer devices. I think AAPL would want to make another option available.
  - jandrese 7y ago
    I guess iCloud is hosted on AWS? I never actually looked. It doesn't seem to be that big of an issue for Apple though. And if it did happen I guess that wouldn't be so bad, I mean it could be worse. Oracle could decide to get into the cloud business by buying out DO.
    - vira28 7y ago
      thats a good point. For Oracle they should be appealing.
    - kickopotomus 7y ago
      If I remember correctly, iCloud is actually hosted by Google.
      - ogre_codes 7y ago
        This was never the case. They are self hosted and for a while they hosted a fair bit of data on Azure & AWS. Not sure if they still use Azure and AWS, but iCloud has never been on Google's infra. (Other Apple content has been served by Google at various times, maps being the big/ obvious one)

cabaalis 7y ago

Curious.. does your employment agreement not put you at very, very significant personal risk for putting information out like this? Throwaway account or not? I'm inclined to trust HN and it's community to a pretty strong degree. But forgive me for simply not seeing this as anything but controlled information release.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
lbotos 7y ago
You think that DO sent out a shill to pretend to be a throwaway to give hackernews confidence in the DO platform? My read of this is very different than yours: Naive IC who doesn't have optics into the actual mechanization of the business trusting the CTO fully. I think this message from the CTO is a partial truth as they often are in orgs that aren't extremely internally transparent. AKA I don't think the "shilling" is working if that's what they were doing.
- cabaalis 7y ago
  Your read is probably more practical than mine, and fits in better with a "don't assume malice" standpoint. I just know that social media (of which HN is begrudgingly a member) can very effectively be swayed.

adamc 7y ago

Offered because I love words: jibes ("fits"). https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/ct-tribu-words-work-spellcheck-11101020101110-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/ct-tribu-words-wor...

sethammons 7y ago
TIL. I have used "jive" instead of "jibe" for a couple of decades. At some point, words change due to usage. I wonder how many people fall into my same boat. And I used it knowing it means "music" - the way it sounded to me was to "jive" was to fit in harmony.
- tomjakubowski 7y ago
  I've mixed jive/jibe up too. I wonder if it's related to betacism. We could be starting a new English dialect! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betacism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betacism
arantius 7y ago
Amazing, TIL. I'm usually picky about words, but I've gotten this one wrong. Turns out the verb "jive" like was used here actually means to speak falsely -- a sort of literally/figuratively meaning inversion.