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> "Is the company profitably growing at > 50% YoY" <- is it winning? > "What will it take for the next 100X in growth?" <- will it keep winning? How do these e

> "Is the company profitably growing at > 50% YoY" <- is it winning? > "What will it take for the next 100X in growth?" <- will it keep winning? How do these exactly affect a software developer? Even if the company is going to grow 100x, you can still be laid off and it's highly unlikely you're ever going to have any part of the money.

lmeyerov 4y ago
if the company keeps growing revenue ahead of hiring, they'll care more about retaining good people than losing them so they can keep growing. in this scenario, hiring a build engineer to fix CI becomes a reasonable thing to do: there's money, it's not a hard problem, and makes everyone else happier & more productive. if the company is setting more and more money on fire, it's a dead company walking. you're hoping for an acquisition or exit before the house of cards collapses. in this scenario, instead of repurposing current hires to getting to profitability, a company that keeps hiring is compounding its risk. each new hire eats the runway that much faster and makes everyone's job that much more precarious. folks are totally free to ignore whether their company is economically viable, and prioritize something like free drinks & CI b/c that makes their week better. but then they shouldn't be surprised when multiple rounds of layoffs happen every few months. Note: it's totally fine if a company is losing money. but then the question is "how many more years of runway are there with the hiring plan?", and if the answer is 6-12mo... well. A scramble will start where stuff like build times won't matter.
- oriolid 4y ago
  > in this scenario, hiring a build engineer to fix CI becomes a reasonable thing to do: there's money, it's not a hard problem, and makes everyone else happier & more productive. In my experience, not necessarily. After all, the company is already making money without CI engineer so the management doesn't have any incentive to recruit one. It's a stable situation but not really enjoyable one.

lmeyerov 4y ago

if the company keeps growing revenue ahead of hiring, they'll care more about retaining good people than losing them so they can keep growing. in this scenario, hiring a build engineer to fix CI becomes a reasonable thing to do: there's money, it's not a hard problem, and makes everyone else happier & more productive. if the company is setting more and more money on fire, it's a dead company walking. you're hoping for an acquisition or exit before the house of cards collapses. in this scenario, instead of repurposing current hires to getting to profitability, a company that keeps hiring is compounding its risk. each new hire eats the runway that much faster and makes everyone's job that much more precarious. folks are totally free to ignore whether their company is economically viable, and prioritize something like free drinks & CI b/c that makes their week better. but then they shouldn't be surprised when multiple rounds of layoffs happen every few months. Note: it's totally fine if a company is losing money. but then the question is "how many more years of runway are there with the hiring plan?", and if the answer is 6-12mo... well. A scramble will start where stuff like build times won't matter.

oriolid 4y ago
> in this scenario, hiring a build engineer to fix CI becomes a reasonable thing to do: there's money, it's not a hard problem, and makes everyone else happier & more productive. In my experience, not necessarily. After all, the company is already making money without CI engineer so the management doesn't have any incentive to recruit one. It's a stable situation but not really enjoyable one.