8 ms·

I don't want to turn a discussion surrounding layoffs into a lens about the business itself; it sucks to be laid off, and I wish everyone who was impacted great

by 015a 4y ago

I don't want to turn a discussion surrounding layoffs into a lens about the business itself; it sucks to be laid off, and I wish everyone who was impacted great expediency in finding a new role. But I'm going to anyway: I genuinely don't understand how CircleCI is still a business. Every major code repository provider has CI built in. All of the ones I've interacted with (Github Actions & Gitlab) are just as good as CircleCI and in some ways far better (e.g. there's a stellar community of Actions builders on GHA, that can be included with one line; CCI Orbs don't have nearly the same uptake). Pricing is all pretty similar. Some companies want to self-host stuff: JetBrains & Atlassian still own this. Ultimately we left CCI because their stability was unacceptable. While its been quite a few months, their status page history even today showcases this well [1]; they legitimately have partial or full outages once every two or so weeks (and those are just the ones they tell people about; we regularly, weekly, saw build failures that could only be explained by "freakin circleci, just re-run it"). [1] https://status.circleci.com/ https://status.circleci.com/

Syntaf 4y ago
Agreed on their stability. For a period of time earlier this year it felt like CircleCI went down every other day, and since we require checks before deployment it was a pain constantly having to deal with outages.
zamalek 4y ago
We also recently left them for self-hosted GHA runners. The other problem is that their pricing is insane - we're building exactly the same code for ~20% of the cost.
- mousetree 4y ago
  I could never understand their bills. I seemed to get dozens of small invoices throughout the month. Their whole concept of credits was completely puzzling too. Left to GHA.
- LunaSea 4y ago
  I'd love for self-hosted GitHub Actions runners to work in ECS Fargate.
- martinald 4y ago
  Agreed, the pricing is all wrong. That's the #1 reason I know people have actively moved off. Not competitive esp as all source control services have it included now.
meta2023 4y ago
You're being downvoted for telling people exactly why they got laid off. It's time to wake the fuck up engineers. When you complacently don't pay attention to your business and core offering, this is what happens.
- Tao3300 4y ago
  Engineers aren't generally setting the priorities on what gets fixed when or what the business is actually offering. The complacency problem is usually in management. Can't speak for how CCI is run, but that's how it is at most places with more than 10 people.
  - icedchai 4y ago
    Exactly this. I've worked for founders at small companies (<20 people) who just did not want to listen to advice or suggestions. It would be almost impossible to change anything at a larger firm. Let's just keep doing the same old thing that isn't working.
    - pitched 4y ago
      I think the saying is “vote with your feet”. There’s always at least one thing you can change. Your time is worth more than your salary, otherwise they wouldn’t pay it. If you don’t think a business will survive, stop investing into them with your time.
      - icedchai 4y ago
        Definitely. And I did exactly that, eventually. (I waited too long!)
  - prepend 4y ago
    Engineers choose who to work for. We go through these cycles where “I have no idea how they make money but they keep paying me” stops working. There’s only so long you can work for a company that doesn’t have a viable business strategy. I don’t expect engineers to fix the business strategy, but I expect them to consider it when choosing to join a company or to stay.
jsmeaton 4y ago
When GHA has decent instance sizes I imagine they'll eat a lot of CCIs lunches. The automatic test splitting is also a god send for parallelising builds.
- 015a 4y ago
  Github Actions now has up-to 64-core Linux and Windows instances.
  - jsmeaton 4y ago
    Thanks for pointing that out. Are these large runners somewhat new? I feel like I check every few months and I hadn't seen them before. https://docs.github.com/en/actions/using-github-hosted-runners/using-larger-runners#machine-specs-for-larger-runners https://docs.github.com/en/actions/using-github-hosted-runne... 4 core | 16gb RAM | 150gb SSD is the next size up which is just about what I need. Edit: September 1 was the announcement, so I was probably due to check back in: https://github.blog/changelog/2022-09-01-github-actions-larger-runners-are-now-in-public-beta/ https://github.blog/changelog/2022-09-01-github-actions-larg...
tppiotrowski 4y ago
I thought CircleCI offered iOS builds which neither Github or Bitbucket did in the past (maybe they do now?)
- parkerhiggins 4y ago
  GitHub Actions definitely offers iOS builds.
  - jshier 4y ago
    GHA has macOS runners but they're persistently 9 - 12 months behind macOS versions, making it difficult to keep using them when Apple starts requiring the latest OS version for Xcode. Luckily self-hosting is pretty easy, if you have the time, money, and expertise.
willcipriano 4y ago
A lot of places probably set up CircleCI and don't want to invest into switching since the value add between services is so minimal. Why start a new project with CircleCI? That I don't have a clue.
juanbyrge 4y ago
We used to pay CircleCI $200/month to run CI on a widely-used open-source project, which was set up before GHA was available. Around one year ago we switched to GHA, which was significantly better, and cost $0. At around the same time we made the switch, we got an opaque email from CircleCI about their new `performance plan` which would have increased the cost to $300/mo. This was more metered pricing. Anyway GHA has been a breath of fresh air and I have convinced several open-source maintainers do dump CircleCI in favor of GHA.
- lakomen 4y ago
  When I read this, not judging or anything, no ulterior motive, I'm reminded Microsoft and embrace, extend, extinguish. When and if they get rid of the competition, it likely won't be free aka 0 monetary costs again.
SkyPuncher 4y ago
CI has essentially become a commodity with a need for reliability. For us, we moved from Travis to Github because Travis just wasn't reliable enough (and had terrible security). We'd be blocked from deploying for hours at a time because Travis had a random outage. I know it's way more complex than "boxes that run some stuff", but CI/CD isn't exactly rocket science. We also noticed that by using a dedicated CI provider, we doubled our deployment downtime. We'd be blocked from deploying when either Travis or Github had issues. Whereas, we're only blocked now when Github has issues.
- yla92 4y ago
  100% can back the claim about Travis. It is awful and very buggy. For our case, we are migrating to the Google Cloud Build. More stable and features but also some things are still lacking. Nonetheless, a big step up from Travis.
- smeagull 4y ago
  I wish it was a commodity, but here I am forced to use Azure CI
intelVISA 4y ago
> I genuinely don't understand how CircleCI is still a business. In slight defense of Circle CI I think that could be applied to at least 50% of tech companies. Though CCI is perhaps more guilty than most of this transgression.
klooney 4y ago
Atlassian's bamboo has a terrible reputation
flohofwoe 4y ago
I don't know how bad CircleCI is, but if it is worse than GH Actions, then that's quite an achievement ;) GH Actions kinda works, but I don't know who it has been designed for (especially compared to much more mature solutions like Gitlab CI). On top of that, GH Actions VMs seem to be extremely performance-throttled, and it can take forever to get a free Mac runner. It's hard to imagine how another CI service can be any worse TBH.
throwaway5959 4y ago
rustd 4y ago
I agree this is really sad and I also hope everyone affected finds a new opportunity quickly. CI is a commodity so it's hard for CircleCI to sustain as a stand-alone business. I found DroneCI to be simplest and fastest CI tool I have used. In fact just recently Harness published some bold claims of being 4x faster than leading CI vendors(https://harness.io/blog/fastest-ci-tool https://harness.io/blog/fastest-ci-tool). I have been using it myself and it's faster. The benefit of having CI, CD, Security testing and governance features makes it a compelling platform offering similar to GitHub & Gitlab.
thirdusername 4y ago
This was my exact reaction to. I was a customer for CircleCI for years and it was my go to choice and introduced it to countless companies, they were clearly at first an engineering led company that obsessed about functional programming. At some point after their series C they became rent-seeking, their support became increasingly distant, and the quality overall started degrading. Then I get an email that we need to pay for seats.. on top of paying for CI minutes. It was an extra > $500 a month for no additional service, no additional usage, no nothing, and they would not budge on their new pricing plan. So I just moved all the stuff to GitHub who was barely mature enough at that point and never looked back. Putting the finance department in charge of product decisions is a mistake with long term reproductions and CircleCI is only seeing the results of this. Treating your oldest customers like a financial liability is a mistake.

by 015a 4y ago

Syntaf 4y ago

Agreed on their stability. For a period of time earlier this year it felt like CircleCI went down every other day, and since we require checks before deployment it was a pain constantly having to deal with outages.

zamalek 4y ago

We also recently left them for self-hosted GHA runners. The other problem is that their pricing is insane - we're building exactly the same code for ~20% of the cost.

mousetree 4y ago
I could never understand their bills. I seemed to get dozens of small invoices throughout the month. Their whole concept of credits was completely puzzling too. Left to GHA.
LunaSea 4y ago
I'd love for self-hosted GitHub Actions runners to work in ECS Fargate.
martinald 4y ago
Agreed, the pricing is all wrong. That's the #1 reason I know people have actively moved off. Not competitive esp as all source control services have it included now.

meta2023 4y ago

You're being downvoted for telling people exactly why they got laid off. It's time to wake the fuck up engineers. When you complacently don't pay attention to your business and core offering, this is what happens.

Tao3300 4y ago
Engineers aren't generally setting the priorities on what gets fixed when or what the business is actually offering. The complacency problem is usually in management. Can't speak for how CCI is run, but that's how it is at most places with more than 10 people.
- icedchai 4y ago
  Exactly this. I've worked for founders at small companies (<20 people) who just did not want to listen to advice or suggestions. It would be almost impossible to change anything at a larger firm. Let's just keep doing the same old thing that isn't working.
  - pitched 4y ago
    I think the saying is “vote with your feet”. There’s always at least one thing you can change. Your time is worth more than your salary, otherwise they wouldn’t pay it. If you don’t think a business will survive, stop investing into them with your time.
    - icedchai 4y ago
      Definitely. And I did exactly that, eventually. (I waited too long!)
- prepend 4y ago
  Engineers choose who to work for. We go through these cycles where “I have no idea how they make money but they keep paying me” stops working. There’s only so long you can work for a company that doesn’t have a viable business strategy. I don’t expect engineers to fix the business strategy, but I expect them to consider it when choosing to join a company or to stay.

jsmeaton 4y ago

When GHA has decent instance sizes I imagine they'll eat a lot of CCIs lunches. The automatic test splitting is also a god send for parallelising builds.

015a 4y ago
Github Actions now has up-to 64-core Linux and Windows instances.
- jsmeaton 4y ago
  Thanks for pointing that out. Are these large runners somewhat new? I feel like I check every few months and I hadn't seen them before. https://docs.github.com/en/actions/using-github-hosted-runners/using-larger-runners#machine-specs-for-larger-runners https://docs.github.com/en/actions/using-github-hosted-runne... 4 core | 16gb RAM | 150gb SSD is the next size up which is just about what I need. Edit: September 1 was the announcement, so I was probably due to check back in: https://github.blog/changelog/2022-09-01-github-actions-larger-runners-are-now-in-public-beta/ https://github.blog/changelog/2022-09-01-github-actions-larg...

tppiotrowski 4y ago

I thought CircleCI offered iOS builds which neither Github or Bitbucket did in the past (maybe they do now?)

parkerhiggins 4y ago
GitHub Actions definitely offers iOS builds.
- jshier 4y ago
  GHA has macOS runners but they're persistently 9 - 12 months behind macOS versions, making it difficult to keep using them when Apple starts requiring the latest OS version for Xcode. Luckily self-hosting is pretty easy, if you have the time, money, and expertise.

willcipriano 4y ago

A lot of places probably set up CircleCI and don't want to invest into switching since the value add between services is so minimal. Why start a new project with CircleCI? That I don't have a clue.

juanbyrge 4y ago

We used to pay CircleCI $200/month to run CI on a widely-used open-source project, which was set up before GHA was available. Around one year ago we switched to GHA, which was significantly better, and cost $0. At around the same time we made the switch, we got an opaque email from CircleCI about their new `performance plan` which would have increased the cost to $300/mo. This was more metered pricing. Anyway GHA has been a breath of fresh air and I have convinced several open-source maintainers do dump CircleCI in favor of GHA.

lakomen 4y ago
When I read this, not judging or anything, no ulterior motive, I'm reminded Microsoft and embrace, extend, extinguish. When and if they get rid of the competition, it likely won't be free aka 0 monetary costs again.

SkyPuncher 4y ago

CI has essentially become a commodity with a need for reliability. For us, we moved from Travis to Github because Travis just wasn't reliable enough (and had terrible security). We'd be blocked from deploying for hours at a time because Travis had a random outage. I know it's way more complex than "boxes that run some stuff", but CI/CD isn't exactly rocket science. We also noticed that by using a dedicated CI provider, we doubled our deployment downtime. We'd be blocked from deploying when either Travis or Github had issues. Whereas, we're only blocked now when Github has issues.

yla92 4y ago
100% can back the claim about Travis. It is awful and very buggy. For our case, we are migrating to the Google Cloud Build. More stable and features but also some things are still lacking. Nonetheless, a big step up from Travis.
smeagull 4y ago
I wish it was a commodity, but here I am forced to use Azure CI

intelVISA 4y ago

> I genuinely don't understand how CircleCI is still a business. In slight defense of Circle CI I think that could be applied to at least 50% of tech companies. Though CCI is perhaps more guilty than most of this transgression.

klooney 4y ago

Atlassian's bamboo has a terrible reputation

flohofwoe 4y ago

I don't know how bad CircleCI is, but if it is worse than GH Actions, then that's quite an achievement ;) GH Actions kinda works, but I don't know who it has been designed for (especially compared to much more mature solutions like Gitlab CI). On top of that, GH Actions VMs seem to be extremely performance-throttled, and it can take forever to get a free Mac runner. It's hard to imagine how another CI service can be any worse TBH.

throwaway5959 4y ago

rustd 4y ago

I agree this is really sad and I also hope everyone affected finds a new opportunity quickly. CI is a commodity so it's hard for CircleCI to sustain as a stand-alone business. I found DroneCI to be simplest and fastest CI tool I have used. In fact just recently Harness published some bold claims of being 4x faster than leading CI vendors(https://harness.io/blog/fastest-ci-tool https://harness.io/blog/fastest-ci-tool). I have been using it myself and it's faster. The benefit of having CI, CD, Security testing and governance features makes it a compelling platform offering similar to GitHub & Gitlab.

thirdusername 4y ago

This was my exact reaction to. I was a customer for CircleCI for years and it was my go to choice and introduced it to countless companies, they were clearly at first an engineering led company that obsessed about functional programming. At some point after their series C they became rent-seeking, their support became increasingly distant, and the quality overall started degrading. Then I get an email that we need to pay for seats.. on top of paying for CI minutes. It was an extra > $500 a month for no additional service, no additional usage, no nothing, and they would not budge on their new pricing plan. So I just moved all the stuff to GitHub who was barely mature enough at that point and never looked back. Putting the finance department in charge of product decisions is a mistake with long term reproductions and CircleCI is only seeing the results of this. Treating your oldest customers like a financial liability is a mistake.