6 ms·

> Despite executing well over the last eight quarters, sustaining high growth and dramatically improving operating margins, there is more to do to secure PagerD

> Despite executing well over the last eight quarters, sustaining high growth and dramatically improving operating margins, there is more to do to secure PagerDuty’s future. Thank you for all your hard work and execution - please be sure to pick up your pink slip on the way out the door.

fourseventy 4y ago
It's a business not a charity. Did the company not pay them for their work already?
- mutatio 4y ago
  I'm with you, so long as this "work family" and other crap ends.
  - beambot 4y ago
    Did PagerDuty ever say "Work family" or is this just a strawman?
    - prettyStandard 4y ago
      Sorry... "People First" https://www.pagerduty.com/blog/pagerdutys-people-first-approach-to-community/ https://www.pagerduty.com/blog/pagerdutys-people-first-appro...
      - next_xibalba 4y ago
        Nothing in that article seems to indicate a perpetual guarantee of employment.
      - wintogreen74 4y ago
        They refer to employees as "Dutonians". Barf.
      - beambot 4y ago
        People First is still wildly different from "we are family". The former implies treating people with respect as humans versus entries in a spreadsheet, whereas the latter implies nothing can ever separate your bond. I see nothing wrong with people first on their about page. What part do you take issue with? (Dutonians is cheeky, but a reasonable standin for stodgy 'PagerDuty Employees')
        darkwater 4y ago
        > People First is still wildly different from "we are family". The former implies treating people with respect as humans versus entries in a spreadsheet Few things embody better the "entries in a spreadsheet" concept than laying off people to adjust a finance balance. They are not a charity, sure, but "People first" is still bullshitting people.
  - mythhouse 4y ago
    [dead]
- ye-olde-sysrq 4y ago
  I keep seeing this sentiment everywhere. I think it's just two continental plates continuing to rub together: 1. Employment is purely transactional. Time is exchanged for money and money-equivalents. Full stop. 2. Your work is an act of self-expression. You derive meaning from your work, take pride in it, and feel a sense of ownership and responsibility in it. The work and its output bears the indelible mark of the mind and hands that crafted it. To try to separate the self from the fruit its hands bore is not only futile, but an act of alienation of human nature. (I don't know if I'm a Marxist yet, but everything he wrote about alienation makes a lot of sense to me.) (And I'm not saying 1 and 2 are the only 2 positions to take - I'm just saying they're the two opposing distilled ideas that are butting heads.) Combine these with the fact that (in the US): - you have ~no protections against being dismissed. - there is a tremendous power imbalance between the company (which is a fictitious entity composed of many sub-units, and can just be dissolved or restructured etc) and the employee (which is O(1) human organisms and prone to starvation) - employment isn't just the simple money and money-equivalents outlined in 1). It's access to affordable, competent healthcare. If I go without health insurance, I do not simply exchange some amortized payment plan for paying per-service. I incur a huge amount of risk if anything major happens to me or my family. - etc it's just a recipe for disaster and nobody being happy. We're left in this quagmire of everyone wanting to eat their cake and have it too. Personally, I think we should create a strong social safety net at the government/societal level (guaranteed income/guaranteed basics, healthcare, education, etc) and then make employment the sellsword's dream that companies seem to want it to be (they seem to enjoy being able to fire at-will more than they enjoy employees acting like family, afaict). Japan seems to have tried out the other extreme (where the company becomes a quasi-government and acts like your paternal-feudal lord) and is now having some problems with it. Just my analysis and 2c though.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    "I switch jobs every 2 years for a raise" vs "my employer laid me off, this should be illegal". You get the good with the bad. It's easier to get hired if it's easy to get fired. I'd buy your point about power imbalance if it was about blue collar workers. But not for IT, where jobs are plentiful and compensation is through the roof. Why not start a coop with likeminded folks and give yourselves the protection from being laid off?
- jscheel 4y ago
  Here are a few notes from their latest financial statement: - Revenue was $94.2 million, an increase of 31.3% year over year. - Delivered a third quarter dollar-based net retention rate of 123% as of October 31, 2022, compared to 124% in the year ago period. - Achieved non-GAAP profitability a quarter ahead of previous guidance, expanding non-GAAP operating margin to 3% for the three months ended October 31, 2022, an improvement of 1,000 basis points over the year ago period. My point isn't to say that employees are owed something. You are right, business is not charity. The problem is the lack of any consistent social contract. You can spend all of your time and energy executing at 110% and still be shown the door. At the end of the day, you are labor, not capital. And capital reigns supreme today. As a public company, PD has to make its shareholders happy at all costs. I'm not casting judgement on that, but no real assurance of loyalty in employment combined with no good social safety net (at least here in the USA) is a dangerous and often stressful mix. Add out-of-control inflation, increasing housing costs, and a tightening labor market to that to really ramp up the pressure on folks.
mc32 4y ago
I wonder, once the hokey stick days are over, what _are_ the growth expectations by the top executives?
- nradov 4y ago
  For publicly traded companies you can reverse engineer investors' future growth expectations by analyzing the stock price relative to their current financial statements. Those expectations then flow to top executives via the Board. Obviously not all of those expectations can be met.
- jacobr1 4y ago
  Many quarters of flailing to find the next thing, that this time, will really restart the growth engine. New markets, changing sales channel strategy, product pivots, reorgs.
throwaway894345 4y ago
I was laid off like this during the pandemic. Our company had one product that we were pinning all our hopes on and my department was operating at the highest levels of success according to industry benchmarks. However, that meant that my job wasn’t the bottleneck to this product’s success, so the folks who weren’t excelling kept their jobs (for the company’s time horizon, it didn’t make sense to replace them) but my department was laid off. It sucked at the time, but it was an understandable call for the business and I landed a much better job on the flip side. Business is weird.

fourseventy 4y ago

It's a business not a charity. Did the company not pay them for their work already?

mutatio 4y ago
I'm with you, so long as this "work family" and other crap ends.
- beambot 4y ago
  Did PagerDuty ever say "Work family" or is this just a strawman?
  - prettyStandard 4y ago
    Sorry... "People First" https://www.pagerduty.com/blog/pagerdutys-people-first-approach-to-community/ https://www.pagerduty.com/blog/pagerdutys-people-first-appro...
    - next_xibalba 4y ago
      Nothing in that article seems to indicate a perpetual guarantee of employment.
    - wintogreen74 4y ago
      They refer to employees as "Dutonians". Barf.
    - beambot 4y ago
      People First is still wildly different from "we are family". The former implies treating people with respect as humans versus entries in a spreadsheet, whereas the latter implies nothing can ever separate your bond. I see nothing wrong with people first on their about page. What part do you take issue with? (Dutonians is cheeky, but a reasonable standin for stodgy 'PagerDuty Employees')
      - darkwater 4y ago
        > People First is still wildly different from "we are family". The former implies treating people with respect as humans versus entries in a spreadsheet Few things embody better the "entries in a spreadsheet" concept than laying off people to adjust a finance balance. They are not a charity, sure, but "People first" is still bullshitting people.
- mythhouse 4y ago
  [dead]
ye-olde-sysrq 4y ago
I keep seeing this sentiment everywhere. I think it's just two continental plates continuing to rub together: 1. Employment is purely transactional. Time is exchanged for money and money-equivalents. Full stop. 2. Your work is an act of self-expression. You derive meaning from your work, take pride in it, and feel a sense of ownership and responsibility in it. The work and its output bears the indelible mark of the mind and hands that crafted it. To try to separate the self from the fruit its hands bore is not only futile, but an act of alienation of human nature. (I don't know if I'm a Marxist yet, but everything he wrote about alienation makes a lot of sense to me.) (And I'm not saying 1 and 2 are the only 2 positions to take - I'm just saying they're the two opposing distilled ideas that are butting heads.) Combine these with the fact that (in the US): - you have ~no protections against being dismissed. - there is a tremendous power imbalance between the company (which is a fictitious entity composed of many sub-units, and can just be dissolved or restructured etc) and the employee (which is O(1) human organisms and prone to starvation) - employment isn't just the simple money and money-equivalents outlined in 1). It's access to affordable, competent healthcare. If I go without health insurance, I do not simply exchange some amortized payment plan for paying per-service. I incur a huge amount of risk if anything major happens to me or my family. - etc it's just a recipe for disaster and nobody being happy. We're left in this quagmire of everyone wanting to eat their cake and have it too. Personally, I think we should create a strong social safety net at the government/societal level (guaranteed income/guaranteed basics, healthcare, education, etc) and then make employment the sellsword's dream that companies seem to want it to be (they seem to enjoy being able to fire at-will more than they enjoy employees acting like family, afaict). Japan seems to have tried out the other extreme (where the company becomes a quasi-government and acts like your paternal-feudal lord) and is now having some problems with it. Just my analysis and 2c though.
- luckylion 4y ago
  "I switch jobs every 2 years for a raise" vs "my employer laid me off, this should be illegal". You get the good with the bad. It's easier to get hired if it's easy to get fired. I'd buy your point about power imbalance if it was about blue collar workers. But not for IT, where jobs are plentiful and compensation is through the roof. Why not start a coop with likeminded folks and give yourselves the protection from being laid off?
jscheel 4y ago
Here are a few notes from their latest financial statement: - Revenue was $94.2 million, an increase of 31.3% year over year. - Delivered a third quarter dollar-based net retention rate of 123% as of October 31, 2022, compared to 124% in the year ago period. - Achieved non-GAAP profitability a quarter ahead of previous guidance, expanding non-GAAP operating margin to 3% for the three months ended October 31, 2022, an improvement of 1,000 basis points over the year ago period. My point isn't to say that employees are owed something. You are right, business is not charity. The problem is the lack of any consistent social contract. You can spend all of your time and energy executing at 110% and still be shown the door. At the end of the day, you are labor, not capital. And capital reigns supreme today. As a public company, PD has to make its shareholders happy at all costs. I'm not casting judgement on that, but no real assurance of loyalty in employment combined with no good social safety net (at least here in the USA) is a dangerous and often stressful mix. Add out-of-control inflation, increasing housing costs, and a tightening labor market to that to really ramp up the pressure on folks.

mc32 4y ago

I wonder, once the hokey stick days are over, what _are_ the growth expectations by the top executives?

nradov 4y ago
For publicly traded companies you can reverse engineer investors' future growth expectations by analyzing the stock price relative to their current financial statements. Those expectations then flow to top executives via the Board. Obviously not all of those expectations can be met.
jacobr1 4y ago
Many quarters of flailing to find the next thing, that this time, will really restart the growth engine. New markets, changing sales channel strategy, product pivots, reorgs.

throwaway894345 4y ago

I was laid off like this during the pandemic. Our company had one product that we were pinning all our hopes on and my department was operating at the highest levels of success according to industry benchmarks. However, that meant that my job wasn’t the bottleneck to this product’s success, so the folks who weren’t excelling kept their jobs (for the company’s time horizon, it didn’t make sense to replace them) but my department was laid off. It sucked at the time, but it was an understandable call for the business and I landed a much better job on the flip side. Business is weird.