12 ms·

Goodbye, CSS-Tricks

497 points by tagawa 4y ago

blamazon 4y ago
Layperson here and I didn't look exhaustively but DigitalOcean seems to only be announcing 11% layoff publicly through investor relations documents[1], IE the legal minimum requirement (sarbanes-oxley etc) which seems a bit cold: > Channel Futures reached out to DigitalOcean for insight into any changes on the channel side but the company only pointed us to its Securities and Exchange Filing[2] announcing the restructuring. [3] Like the McSweeney's satire [4] but without even a blog post. [1] https://investors.digitalocean.com/news/news-details/2023/DigitalOcean-Announces-Fourth-Quarter-and-Fiscal-Year-2022-Financial-Results/default.aspx https://investors.digitalocean.com/news/news-details/2023/Di... [2] https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001582961/1cb092a3-4498-4ad1-93df-d9147454600b.pdf https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001582961/1cb092a... [3] https://www.channelfutures.com/cloud-2/cloud-layoffs-job-cuts-hit-indie-provider-digitalocean https://www.channelfutures.com/cloud-2/cloud-layoffs-job-cut... [4] https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/macroeconomic-changes-have-made-it-impossible-for-me-to-want-to-pay-you https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/macroeconomic-changes-ha...
- jacobsenscott 4y ago
  They probably learned from all the awful tone deaf "we fired a bunch of human resources" blog posts that it is best to just say nothing at all. There's no good way for a bunch of rich executives who are literally incapable of understanding the lives of non-rich people to pretend they care.
  - DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
    > a bunch of rich executives Before we grab the pitchforks and guillotines, exactly how "rich" are DigitalOcean's executives?
    - foepys 4y ago
      Does it really matter? Even $10 million net worth is enough to not worry about most of the things that the average employee thinks about.
      - steve76 4y ago
        [dead]
      - luckylion 4y ago
        Even $1 million is enough to not worry about those things, at which point we're in the range of what many tech workers working for hot startups or big tech have made in the past couple years. They're often not saying who is being laid off. A bunch of engineers? Sales & marketing? I doubt that any of these companies (besides Amazon) even employ significant amount of low-wage staff, they get those via a staffing agency to avoid benefits and public responsibility for mistreatment.
        trynewideas 4y ago
        > many tech workers working for hot startups or big tech have made in the past couple years I can guarantee you no tech writer has made $1 million in salary or compensation in two years.
        luckylion 4y ago
        Probably, though the founder of CSS-Tricks probably did when he sold it. But many on this site are SWE and they maybe didn't make a million in the past two years, but in the past 5 years, the number will be significant. I assume DO didn't have 11% technical writers. These numbers are hard to judge if you don't know who got laid off.
        trynewideas 4y ago
        Their tech writers were under their marketing team, and the CMO got exited as part of this. At least one tech writing team got laid off.[1] Their opt-in list includes six technical writers or editors out of about 152, but I've seen more writers announce on LinkedIn than are listed here. (Engineering took it on the chin, 73 listed.)[2] DO had invested a lot over the last few years into expanding its technical content library as a SEO strategy. They seem to have completely backed out of that investment. Coyier's $4M exit was nice, sure. Built on 15 years of work, though, alongside his primary job being a developer/designer and CodePen founder who also wrote, not as a full-time writer. Still standing by my guarantee that no technical writer here got north of $1M of salary or compensation for two years of work. Not even close. If any got north of $500k they're both role models and were probably overpaid for the market. 1: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bphogan_hey-all-a-whole-bunch-of-amazing-people-activity-7031760011148087296-s_BK?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bphogan_hey-all-a-whole-bunch... 2: http://do.co/sharks http://do.co/sharks
  - Hackbraten 4y ago
    > There's no good way for a bunch of rich executives who are literally incapable of understanding the lives of non-rich people to pretend they care. “It’s one new job your concierge has to find you. What could it cost, two millions?”
    - actionfromafar 4y ago
      That's a google-whack. Catchy phrase... it sounded so nice I for sure thought it was from a movie or something.
      - jahnu 4y ago
        https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl_Qyk9DSUw https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl_Qyk9DSUw
  - Kiro 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - kubb 4y ago
      A pay cut, they should take a large pay cut. And do a proportional layoff at the executive level. How is that hard to understand? What do you gain by defending execs by reducing their criticism to absurd?
      - Kiro 4y ago
        Even when they do exactly that (e.g. Zoom whose CEO took a 98% pay cut) you guys are not happy, calling it a symbolic gesture or even propaganda unless they also give up all their equity. What do you gain by demonizing execs like they are not even human?
        kubb 4y ago
        You're claiming that you know my position on the Zoom CEO, which I didn't state AND insinuating that I'm demonizing executives? Are you a troll?
        Kiro 4y ago
        [flagged]
        ohgodplsno 4y ago
        Hatred of multimillionaires coming from generational wealth and being patterns of social reproduction is a healthy habit to take. They should indeed be bullied into humiliation. Especially when they go with a fake, pretend-heartfelt apology and saying they're "taking reponsibility" while trying to pull a veil over everyone's eyes. They lost nothing, they took no risk.
        robertlagrant 4y ago
        This is a horrible take. Do you know if they are rich, and how they got rich? And why would you demonise the children of people who went from nothing to doing really well?
- exizt88 4y ago
  Can you elaborate on the minimum legal requirement that you mentioned?
  - blamazon 4y ago
    Sure - again I'm a layperson so take this with a grain of salt but in USA the Sarbanes-Oxley act[1], one of the pieces of fallout from Enron and other corporate scandals, has various requirements for accurate and fulsome reporting of information to investors in mandated financial documents, earnings reports and SEC filings and whatnot, for publicly traded companies. Basically don't do Enron. One penalty involved is personal criminal liability for executives - for certain executive roles, if they unknowingly make a serious mistake, they face a $1 million dollar fine and up to 10 years in prison, and if they knowingly make a serious mistake, it's $5 million and 20 years. [2] Hence, executives have a strong motivation to ensure nothing is misrepresented, left out, or wrong in their investor relations documents. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes–Oxley_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes–Oxley_Act [2] https://www.diligent.com/insights/grc/sox-penalties/ https://www.diligent.com/insights/grc/sox-penalties/
- WWLink 4y ago
  I think I might have to pursue laying off digital ocean lol. I only pay them $6/mo for my container but they sound like a shitty company now.
Semaphor 4y ago
That’s sad. CSS Tricks has always been an amazing resource, "A Complete Guide to Flexbox" [0] is probably my most referenced article. I really hope a new steward appears. [0]: https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox/ https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox/
- camillomiller 4y ago
  Just saved it offline.
- jamesfinlayson 4y ago
  Me too! I remember looking at that page endlessly in around 2014 when my then boss decided that flexbox was in wide enough use that we could use it. The diagrams made it extra useful.
- k3liutZu 4y ago
  I'm still opening this up whenever I have to do anything with flex.
- hnbad 4y ago
  CSS Tricks was mostly defined by Chris. When he sold it off to Digital Ocean and left, there was a noticeable change in quality. I'm surprised they didn't either shelve it soon after or turn it into a pure marketing vehicle.
  - azangru 4y ago
    > When he sold it off to Digital Ocean and left, there was a noticeable change in quality. Yes, absolutely.
- robertwt7 4y ago
  omg same!! i have visited this page soo many times the first 6 months of my first web dev job. Really sad to see this, hoping all the best for OP
- azangru 4y ago
parasti 4y ago
CSS Tricks is my second go-to after MDN for web development knowledge. This is quite sad.
GSimon 4y ago
CSS-Tricks was and likely still is a great resource for web developers, congrats on your time working there! I once reached out for a position and heard back from Chris Coyier, ultimately I wasn’t quite motivated enough to start but in hindsight sounded like a great opportunity and appreciated the tentative offer
darkhorse13 4y ago
Damn, this is pretty sad news. Geoff gave me my first opportunity to write for CSS Tricks back when I was starting out, and he was always a wonderful person to collaborate with.
japanman425 4y ago
[dead]
pknerd 4y ago
Anyone who have done even a bit of web development have come across CSS Tricks. Wish you good luck!
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
leeoniya 4y ago
hopefully the existing content will remain online/preserved?
superjan 4y ago
And he’s been there since CSS-tricks was bought in april ‘22 if I read the blogposts correctly?
- eCa 4y ago
  > for eight years!
- rav 4y ago
  It was announced in March 2022, so under a year ago. "DigitalOcean acquires CSS-Tricks", March 2022 on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30684594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30684594
kyleyeats 4y ago
Sad to see this happen. Geoff, if you're reading this, please let me glom on to your next thing.
skilled 4y ago
It's very plausible that this is the first step of migrating CSS-Tricks to DigitalOcean Tutorials. They've had enough time to see how well CSS-Tricks traffic is converting into customers, and perhaps there is a strong decline for the past couple of months, but this is entirely my own speculation. Also, in their Q4 Report [0] they are using this wording, "Added thousands of tutorials, guides and educational content through the acquisition of CSS-Tricks and JournalDev." Back when DO acquired Scotch.io, they only migrated the best / most popular tutorials, and I wouldn't be surprised this is the fate for CSS-Tricks also. I think there are thousands of published pages on CSS-Tricks, many of which already overlap with what DO has written over the years, and on top of that - it would involve some serious work to migrate everything. Again, these are just my thoughts on it, but why else would they just kick Geoff off the team like that? [0]: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230215005423/en/DigitalOcean-Announces-Fourth-Quarter-and-Fiscal-Year-2022-Financial-Results https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230215005423/en/Dig...
- petercooper 4y ago
  They've had enough time to see how well CSS-Tricks traffic is converting into customers, and perhaps there is a strong decline for the past couple of months, but this is entirely my own speculation. You might be right, but I'd hope they weren't looking at it that way. Content sites like that are a long play. I've encountered lots of people who seem to have extra trust for DigitalOcean because of their (admittedly good) content and while they might not have directly "converted" from a specific article, it has hugely helped DO's brand. A site like CSS Tricks is so valuable in the long term rather than for short term conversions.
  - logifail 4y ago
    > I've encountered lots of people who seem to have extra trust for DigitalOcean because of their (admittedly good) content and while they might not have directly "converted" from a specific article, it has hugely helped DO's brand Umm, I am a customer of DigitalOcean, have several production workloads with them, yet until reading this article today I had no idea they had "content" of this type.
justeleblanc 4y ago
The headline makes it sound like the website is shutting down. It's just one guy leaving the staff and saying "goodbye".
- sofixa 4y ago
  Not one guy, the guy who run it and was acquired with it, therefore a shutdown lurks in the future.
  - bdlowery 4y ago
    Chris Coyier built css tricks, ran css tricks, and sold css tricks to digital ocean. Geoff was an employee.
    - hnbad 4y ago
      Chris built it. Geoff was the chief editor and had been with CSS Tricks for half its lifetime (i.e. seven years) when Chris sold it to Digital Ocean and left. Pretending he was just "an employee" is seriously underselling what this layoff means. Yes, Chris leaving caused more damage to CSS Tricks than Geoff being laid off. But Geoff being laid off is the killing blow to what CSS Tricks used to be. I'm not the first person to say this: https://zellwk.com/blog/spirit-of-css-tricks/ https://zellwk.com/blog/spirit-of-css-tricks/
  - justeleblanc 4y ago
    I can't predict the future like you seem to be able to, so I'll stand by my assessment of a misleading headline. I can count at least two comments in here that were written under the impression that the website is shutting down for good.
SavageBeast 4y ago
This site was always a handy goto for the tricky stuff I don't do every day. It was a really great resource and I'm sad to see it go. Time keeps marching on I suppose.
polytely 4y ago
is css-tricks completely archived on the iternet archive? it would be a shame to lose all the knowledge that is contained in there, I'm specifically thinking about the comments under posts because I doubt they would survive any migration to digital oceans tutorial site.
irrational 4y ago
Which articles are the most important or influential to save offline before (or, in case) the site disappears?
- esskay 4y ago
  Pretty sure the whole site is already on archive.org
noduerme 4y ago
I'm pretty baffled by this layoff wave. I assumed sites like CSS-Tricks never turned a profit, but were a loss-leader (marketing expenditure) for a company like DigitalOcean. I still have to assume that's some of the best marketing they have. Cutting your marketing's golden goose is less strategic retrenchment, more battlefield amputation.
- whstl 4y ago
  Yeah, I also wonder this is a sign of a change in strategy. DigitalOcean was always developer friendly. Maybe they want to double down and start selling direct to enterprises. (I'm out of the loop, maybe that's already happening)
  - noduerme 4y ago
    It's pretty hard to put yourself in the shoes of someone running a company that's steadily losing relevance, but personally I'd double down on the esoteric shit like CSS-Tricks, and then rebrand, as opposed to chopping off limbs and becoming even more B2B-ish and inaccessible to the next startup looking for a cloud service. What is their moat? Widen whatever they have. Jettisoning the most popular property sure seems like a preliminary to the executives cashing out.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- suddenclarity 4y ago
  I've used their flexbox guide for years and had no idea DigitalOcean was involved. Not sure how good marketing that is. The
  - petercooper 4y ago
    DO only acquired CSS Tricks very recently and have been quite gentle in terms of the branding there (other than in the emails where a lot of DO links have appeared in my experience).
- 4y ago
orwin 4y ago
I'm new to webdev (literally started learning some front-end two month ago), and this was probably the website who taught me the most, as I kinda knew xml and was already proficient in language ES6-adjascent. So long and thanks for all the fish.
neom 4y ago
Somewhat surprised to see this. When Yancey took over from Mark, he seemed like someone who really understood the developer focus of DO was not only what brought the company to the door of the public markets, but would probably be what kept it growing once it was out there. With Gabe coming in having built Deis, it felt double good. That said, what worked for DO in the early days may not be what will work for it in the future. The main thing we banked on in the early days of DigitalOcean was the explosion of web SWE as a relatively new concentration, remember, we hit our stride in the angular vs ember days, docker was still getting it's footing, coding bootcamps where the hottest new thing. Tutorials, hackathons, OSS made a lot of sense as a go to market for hyper growth. We often talked about the business as b2c not b2b. That's the DO that grew up on HN (something I was personally eternally grateful for). The market has shifted a lot over the past 10 years, the abstractions are way more defined, and web engineering just isn't what it was. It's been a long long long time since I've talked to anyone at DO, but I can can guess that market conditions have changed drastically and continuing a growth push just looks very different from the DigitalOcean we knew when I was selling it. I think Yancey is a smart guy though, and I think he cares about developers, so I still believe in them figuring it out. Still sad to see a move like this, it feels disrespectful, not just to Geoff, but to the community he and Chris built.
- pard68 4y ago
  > what worked for DO in the early days may not be what will work for it in the future Last year I made the pitch at my previous employer to migrate to DO. It made sense, the company was almost entirely on VMs and DO has much better support and offerings for VMs. I was the manager of Operations. I only needed my CIO to approve. The response was "they're amateur, we need Azure of AWS." I could see a bigger DO changing their image as their main customer goes from in the trenches to in the boardroom.
golol 4y ago
Every time I use flexbox I google flexbox and click on the top result.
- darekkay 4y ago
  > Every time I use flexbox I google flexbox The CSS Tricks post is excellent to learn flexbox. If you instead want a quick overview about all the properties, you can check out my (printable) flexbox cheat sheet [1]. Someone even built a VSCode extension around it [2]. [1] https://darekkay.com/flexbox-cheatsheet/ https://darekkay.com/flexbox-cheatsheet/ [2] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=dzhavat.css-flexbox-cheatsheet https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=dzhavat....
BaudouinVH 4y ago
who owns the content ? can it be saved/moved/transferred ? how much does it cost per year ? can that amount be crowdfunded ?
- nailer 4y ago
  I think CSS tricks makes money for DO as content marketing. So it will continue to exist.
berkle4455 4y ago
Hell of a flip for him. He sold on March 15th, 2022 and was laid-off on Feb 15th, 2023. I sure hope he negotiated his exit payout optimally.
- arusahni 4y ago
  He was an employee of CSS Tricks. The founder did not stay on.
jehb 4y ago
For all of the folks worried about the future of CSS Tricks, this is why licensing matters! I spent most of the past decade producing (as a writer, editor, and community manager) tutorial and other technical content for a large software company. Because the company I worked for values open source principles, every single article I ever wrote for them was licensed under CC BY-SA or a similar license. If the sites I worked on disappeared tomorrow, I would be free to republish them on a new home on the web, and more importantly, to continue to keep them up to date. I don't work there any more, and it's such a relief not to have to worry about a lawsuit from a former employer just to be able to reuse my own work.
- abetusk 4y ago
  Are the articles on CSS Tricks under a libre license? I can't find any mention of it, though I haven't searched in depth, so it's proprietary? For the record, their code on CodePen looks to be MIT licensed (though CodePen requires a login). For example, Infinite Burger is MIT licensed [0]. [0] https://codepen.io/team/css-tricks/pen/mNBrNG#_=_ https://codepen.io/team/css-tricks/pen/mNBrNG#_=_
  - johannesch 4y ago
    Seems, the license allows for copying [1]. Maybe worth rescuing them. [1] https://css-tricks.com/license/ https://css-tricks.com/license/
    - jehb 4y ago
      I'm actually amazed this license is still there post-acquisition, and perhaps equally amazed this license didn't tank the acquisition in the first place.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  this is why licensing matters! Yes. And it's also why any resource you use more than once should be submitted to archive.org — just in case! https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://css-tricks.com https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://css-tric...
xyzal 4y ago
Excuse me, is it really the norm to just cut off people who are being let go, without the opportunity to say goodbye to their former colleagues? In my country it is 2 months notice by law...
- reaperducer 4y ago
  is it really the norm to just cut off people who are being let go, without the opportunity to say goodbye to their former colleagues? It varies from company to company, and often based on your relationship with your boss and coworkers, or just how the higher managers want to handle things. In my country There are 200+ countries, and 200+ ways of doing things. Not everywhere is like home.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- joshmanders 4y ago
  Majority of the US is at-will employment, meaning you can be let go or quit at any time with no need to give notice. The only difference is we were conditioned to believe that we as employees to "not burn bridges" must give at least 2 weeks notice, but companies never give notice to you, just wake up one day and you're no longer employed.
- WWLink 4y ago
  Yes, it's the norm. Typically they'll call a mandatory all-hands meeting (or a mandatory meeting with the laid off people with HR or something), and then when that meeting begins they deactivate those people's access to everything. They announce the layoffs and hand out final paychecks, and have security guards escort people out of the building. For people working from home, depends on the company - most will send a message to the laid off person's personal email and immediately lock the person out. If they don't have a personal email on record they'll just lock them out and send a letter in the mail or something. Yep, pretty shitty behavior. They do it to keep people from retaliating or organizing a protest or starting drama or whatever. To me the really weird thing is the way people talk so positively about getting fired on linkedin.
datavirtue 4y ago
I just said goodbye to CSS. Long live tailwindcss. I'm done fiddling with the assembly language of markup styling. My revulsion to new UI stuff only prolonged the pain.
sixQuarks 4y ago
According to SEMRush, CSS-Tricks has close to 4 million unique visitors per month. DigitalOcean gets 11.5 million unique visitors per month. CSS-Tricks gets almost 40% of the traffic, I doubt they will be shutting it down entirely.
barnitim 4y ago
Sad to see folks who were still holding fort for a lost cause. Business minded person like Chris Coyier dropped the thing long ago, made $4million of a blog and left. Chris was never passionate about coding. It was all setup to make money.
- bigwheeler 4y ago
  No matter what batshit crazy things I stumble upon while running around the internet today, none of them will be as insane as “Chris Coyier was never passionate about coding”. Being “business minded” and “having passion for coding” is not exclusive. Chris is a living breathing coding resource, and that definitely came before he realized that the blogging and conferences and book writing was going to lead to a multimillion dollar payout. He was in the right place at the right time, and willing to put in an overwhelming amount of effort. But it all started with the passion.
zeptonaut22 4y ago
Man, this sucks. CSS-Tricks has long been one of the best resources on the web for doing CSS right and the quality of their writing and research is outstanding. Bad on DO for going through with this acquisition and then lopping off its head: it's a net negative contribution to the web. Geoff, thank you for your contributions.
trynewideas 4y ago
I got recruited for DO's technical writing team a few years back but passed because I was happy in the role I had at the time. Feels like a dodged bullet.
butz 4y ago
Everyone from original CSS-Tricks team should get back together and build a new website. "Tricky-CSS" maybe? Green-fielding a new site is so much more interesting then trying to keep legacy site and its content working. Sad, that we still do not have any decent method to support such sites, that saves from many headaches in daily job.
- itsuka 4y ago
  Over the past couple of years, I have come across numerous articles on CSS-Tricks that discuss other related technologies such as (semantic) HTML, SVG, Canvas, WebGL, UI libraries (e.g. Tailwind), and tools like Saas and PostCSS. So I think when starting a green-field project, it may be more appropriate to use a broader term like "style" or "look", than specifically using the keyword "CSS" (just an idea). If the license at https://css-tricks.com/license/ https://css-tricks.com/license/ is valid, anyone can scrape and rebuild a FOSS version of CSS-Tricks, ideally with a sustainable funding model to support its ongoing development. However, without an editor like Geoff, I am unsure whether it would maintain the same level of quality as CSS-Tricks.
KomoD 4y ago
Ok so... it's not shutdown?
cdman 4y ago
Who knows what the future holds, so I archived css-tricks.com and uploaded it to archive.org: https://archive.org/details/misc-crawls-warc-0002 https://archive.org/details/misc-crawls-warc-0002

497 points by tagawa 4y ago

Layperson here and I didn't look exhaustively but DigitalOcean seems to only be announcing 11% layoff publicly through investor relations documents[1], IE the legal minimum requirement (sarbanes-oxley etc) which seems a bit cold: > Channel Futures reached out to DigitalOcean for insight into any changes on the channel side but the company only pointed us to its Securities and Exchange Filing[2] announcing the restructuring. [3] Like the McSweeney's satire [4] but without even a blog post. [1] https://investors.digitalocean.com/news/news-details/2023/DigitalOcean-Announces-Fourth-Quarter-and-Fiscal-Year-2022-Financial-Results/default.aspx https://investors.digitalocean.com/news/news-details/2023/Di... [2] https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001582961/1cb092a3-4498-4ad1-93df-d9147454600b.pdf https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001582961/1cb092a... [3] https://www.channelfutures.com/cloud-2/cloud-layoffs-job-cuts-hit-indie-provider-digitalocean https://www.channelfutures.com/cloud-2/cloud-layoffs-job-cut... [4] https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/macroeconomic-changes-have-made-it-impossible-for-me-to-want-to-pay-you https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/macroeconomic-changes-ha...

jacobsenscott 4y ago
They probably learned from all the awful tone deaf "we fired a bunch of human resources" blog posts that it is best to just say nothing at all. There's no good way for a bunch of rich executives who are literally incapable of understanding the lives of non-rich people to pretend they care.
- DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
  > a bunch of rich executives Before we grab the pitchforks and guillotines, exactly how "rich" are DigitalOcean's executives?
  - foepys 4y ago
    Does it really matter? Even $10 million net worth is enough to not worry about most of the things that the average employee thinks about.
    - steve76 4y ago
      [dead]
    - luckylion 4y ago
      Even $1 million is enough to not worry about those things, at which point we're in the range of what many tech workers working for hot startups or big tech have made in the past couple years. They're often not saying who is being laid off. A bunch of engineers? Sales & marketing? I doubt that any of these companies (besides Amazon) even employ significant amount of low-wage staff, they get those via a staffing agency to avoid benefits and public responsibility for mistreatment.
      - trynewideas 4y ago
        > many tech workers working for hot startups or big tech have made in the past couple years I can guarantee you no tech writer has made $1 million in salary or compensation in two years.
        luckylion 4y ago
        Probably, though the founder of CSS-Tricks probably did when he sold it. But many on this site are SWE and they maybe didn't make a million in the past two years, but in the past 5 years, the number will be significant. I assume DO didn't have 11% technical writers. These numbers are hard to judge if you don't know who got laid off.
        trynewideas 4y ago
        Their tech writers were under their marketing team, and the CMO got exited as part of this. At least one tech writing team got laid off.[1] Their opt-in list includes six technical writers or editors out of about 152, but I've seen more writers announce on LinkedIn than are listed here. (Engineering took it on the chin, 73 listed.)[2] DO had invested a lot over the last few years into expanding its technical content library as a SEO strategy. They seem to have completely backed out of that investment. Coyier's $4M exit was nice, sure. Built on 15 years of work, though, alongside his primary job being a developer/designer and CodePen founder who also wrote, not as a full-time writer. Still standing by my guarantee that no technical writer here got north of $1M of salary or compensation for two years of work. Not even close. If any got north of $500k they're both role models and were probably overpaid for the market. 1: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bphogan_hey-all-a-whole-bunch-of-amazing-people-activity-7031760011148087296-s_BK?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bphogan_hey-all-a-whole-bunch... 2: http://do.co/sharks http://do.co/sharks
- Hackbraten 4y ago
  > There's no good way for a bunch of rich executives who are literally incapable of understanding the lives of non-rich people to pretend they care. “It’s one new job your concierge has to find you. What could it cost, two millions?”
  - actionfromafar 4y ago
    That's a google-whack. Catchy phrase... it sounded so nice I for sure thought it was from a movie or something.
    - jahnu 4y ago
      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl_Qyk9DSUw https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl_Qyk9DSUw
- Kiro 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - kubb 4y ago
    A pay cut, they should take a large pay cut. And do a proportional layoff at the executive level. How is that hard to understand? What do you gain by defending execs by reducing their criticism to absurd?
    - Kiro 4y ago
      Even when they do exactly that (e.g. Zoom whose CEO took a 98% pay cut) you guys are not happy, calling it a symbolic gesture or even propaganda unless they also give up all their equity. What do you gain by demonizing execs like they are not even human?
      - kubb 4y ago
        You're claiming that you know my position on the Zoom CEO, which I didn't state AND insinuating that I'm demonizing executives? Are you a troll?
        Kiro 4y ago
        [flagged]
      - ohgodplsno 4y ago
        Hatred of multimillionaires coming from generational wealth and being patterns of social reproduction is a healthy habit to take. They should indeed be bullied into humiliation. Especially when they go with a fake, pretend-heartfelt apology and saying they're "taking reponsibility" while trying to pull a veil over everyone's eyes. They lost nothing, they took no risk.
        robertlagrant 4y ago
        This is a horrible take. Do you know if they are rich, and how they got rich? And why would you demonise the children of people who went from nothing to doing really well?
exizt88 4y ago
Can you elaborate on the minimum legal requirement that you mentioned?
- blamazon 4y ago
  Sure - again I'm a layperson so take this with a grain of salt but in USA the Sarbanes-Oxley act[1], one of the pieces of fallout from Enron and other corporate scandals, has various requirements for accurate and fulsome reporting of information to investors in mandated financial documents, earnings reports and SEC filings and whatnot, for publicly traded companies. Basically don't do Enron. One penalty involved is personal criminal liability for executives - for certain executive roles, if they unknowingly make a serious mistake, they face a $1 million dollar fine and up to 10 years in prison, and if they knowingly make a serious mistake, it's $5 million and 20 years. [2] Hence, executives have a strong motivation to ensure nothing is misrepresented, left out, or wrong in their investor relations documents. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes–Oxley_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes–Oxley_Act [2] https://www.diligent.com/insights/grc/sox-penalties/ https://www.diligent.com/insights/grc/sox-penalties/
WWLink 4y ago
I think I might have to pursue laying off digital ocean lol. I only pay them $6/mo for my container but they sound like a shitty company now.

Semaphor 4y ago

That’s sad. CSS Tricks has always been an amazing resource, "A Complete Guide to Flexbox" [0] is probably my most referenced article. I really hope a new steward appears. [0]: https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox/ https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox/

camillomiller 4y ago
Just saved it offline.
jamesfinlayson 4y ago
Me too! I remember looking at that page endlessly in around 2014 when my then boss decided that flexbox was in wide enough use that we could use it. The diagrams made it extra useful.
k3liutZu 4y ago
I'm still opening this up whenever I have to do anything with flex.
hnbad 4y ago
CSS Tricks was mostly defined by Chris. When he sold it off to Digital Ocean and left, there was a noticeable change in quality. I'm surprised they didn't either shelve it soon after or turn it into a pure marketing vehicle.
- azangru 4y ago
  > When he sold it off to Digital Ocean and left, there was a noticeable change in quality. Yes, absolutely.
robertwt7 4y ago
omg same!! i have visited this page soo many times the first 6 months of my first web dev job. Really sad to see this, hoping all the best for OP
azangru 4y ago

parasti 4y ago

CSS Tricks is my second go-to after MDN for web development knowledge. This is quite sad.

GSimon 4y ago

CSS-Tricks was and likely still is a great resource for web developers, congrats on your time working there! I once reached out for a position and heard back from Chris Coyier, ultimately I wasn’t quite motivated enough to start but in hindsight sounded like a great opportunity and appreciated the tentative offer

darkhorse13 4y ago

Damn, this is pretty sad news. Geoff gave me my first opportunity to write for CSS Tricks back when I was starting out, and he was always a wonderful person to collaborate with.

japanman425 4y ago

[dead]

pknerd 4y ago

Anyone who have done even a bit of web development have come across CSS Tricks. Wish you good luck!

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

leeoniya 4y ago

hopefully the existing content will remain online/preserved?

superjan 4y ago

And he’s been there since CSS-tricks was bought in april ‘22 if I read the blogposts correctly?

eCa 4y ago
> for eight years!
rav 4y ago
It was announced in March 2022, so under a year ago. "DigitalOcean acquires CSS-Tricks", March 2022 on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30684594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30684594

kyleyeats 4y ago

Sad to see this happen. Geoff, if you're reading this, please let me glom on to your next thing.

skilled 4y ago

It's very plausible that this is the first step of migrating CSS-Tricks to DigitalOcean Tutorials. They've had enough time to see how well CSS-Tricks traffic is converting into customers, and perhaps there is a strong decline for the past couple of months, but this is entirely my own speculation. Also, in their Q4 Report [0] they are using this wording, "Added thousands of tutorials, guides and educational content through the acquisition of CSS-Tricks and JournalDev." Back when DO acquired Scotch.io, they only migrated the best / most popular tutorials, and I wouldn't be surprised this is the fate for CSS-Tricks also. I think there are thousands of published pages on CSS-Tricks, many of which already overlap with what DO has written over the years, and on top of that - it would involve some serious work to migrate everything. Again, these are just my thoughts on it, but why else would they just kick Geoff off the team like that? [0]: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230215005423/en/DigitalOcean-Announces-Fourth-Quarter-and-Fiscal-Year-2022-Financial-Results https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230215005423/en/Dig...

petercooper 4y ago
They've had enough time to see how well CSS-Tricks traffic is converting into customers, and perhaps there is a strong decline for the past couple of months, but this is entirely my own speculation. You might be right, but I'd hope they weren't looking at it that way. Content sites like that are a long play. I've encountered lots of people who seem to have extra trust for DigitalOcean because of their (admittedly good) content and while they might not have directly "converted" from a specific article, it has hugely helped DO's brand. A site like CSS Tricks is so valuable in the long term rather than for short term conversions.
- logifail 4y ago
  > I've encountered lots of people who seem to have extra trust for DigitalOcean because of their (admittedly good) content and while they might not have directly "converted" from a specific article, it has hugely helped DO's brand Umm, I am a customer of DigitalOcean, have several production workloads with them, yet until reading this article today I had no idea they had "content" of this type.

justeleblanc 4y ago

The headline makes it sound like the website is shutting down. It's just one guy leaving the staff and saying "goodbye".

sofixa 4y ago
Not one guy, the guy who run it and was acquired with it, therefore a shutdown lurks in the future.
- bdlowery 4y ago
  Chris Coyier built css tricks, ran css tricks, and sold css tricks to digital ocean. Geoff was an employee.
  - hnbad 4y ago
    Chris built it. Geoff was the chief editor and had been with CSS Tricks for half its lifetime (i.e. seven years) when Chris sold it to Digital Ocean and left. Pretending he was just "an employee" is seriously underselling what this layoff means. Yes, Chris leaving caused more damage to CSS Tricks than Geoff being laid off. But Geoff being laid off is the killing blow to what CSS Tricks used to be. I'm not the first person to say this: https://zellwk.com/blog/spirit-of-css-tricks/ https://zellwk.com/blog/spirit-of-css-tricks/
- justeleblanc 4y ago
  I can't predict the future like you seem to be able to, so I'll stand by my assessment of a misleading headline. I can count at least two comments in here that were written under the impression that the website is shutting down for good.

SavageBeast 4y ago

This site was always a handy goto for the tricky stuff I don't do every day. It was a really great resource and I'm sad to see it go. Time keeps marching on I suppose.

polytely 4y ago

is css-tricks completely archived on the iternet archive? it would be a shame to lose all the knowledge that is contained in there, I'm specifically thinking about the comments under posts because I doubt they would survive any migration to digital oceans tutorial site.

irrational 4y ago

Which articles are the most important or influential to save offline before (or, in case) the site disappears?

esskay 4y ago
Pretty sure the whole site is already on archive.org

noduerme 4y ago

I'm pretty baffled by this layoff wave. I assumed sites like CSS-Tricks never turned a profit, but were a loss-leader (marketing expenditure) for a company like DigitalOcean. I still have to assume that's some of the best marketing they have. Cutting your marketing's golden goose is less strategic retrenchment, more battlefield amputation.

whstl 4y ago
Yeah, I also wonder this is a sign of a change in strategy. DigitalOcean was always developer friendly. Maybe they want to double down and start selling direct to enterprises. (I'm out of the loop, maybe that's already happening)
- noduerme 4y ago
  It's pretty hard to put yourself in the shoes of someone running a company that's steadily losing relevance, but personally I'd double down on the esoteric shit like CSS-Tricks, and then rebrand, as opposed to chopping off limbs and becoming even more B2B-ish and inaccessible to the next startup looking for a cloud service. What is their moat? Widen whatever they have. Jettisoning the most popular property sure seems like a preliminary to the executives cashing out.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
suddenclarity 4y ago
I've used their flexbox guide for years and had no idea DigitalOcean was involved. Not sure how good marketing that is. The
- petercooper 4y ago
  DO only acquired CSS Tricks very recently and have been quite gentle in terms of the branding there (other than in the emails where a lot of DO links have appeared in my experience).
4y ago

orwin 4y ago

I'm new to webdev (literally started learning some front-end two month ago), and this was probably the website who taught me the most, as I kinda knew xml and was already proficient in language ES6-adjascent. So long and thanks for all the fish.

neom 4y ago

Somewhat surprised to see this. When Yancey took over from Mark, he seemed like someone who really understood the developer focus of DO was not only what brought the company to the door of the public markets, but would probably be what kept it growing once it was out there. With Gabe coming in having built Deis, it felt double good. That said, what worked for DO in the early days may not be what will work for it in the future. The main thing we banked on in the early days of DigitalOcean was the explosion of web SWE as a relatively new concentration, remember, we hit our stride in the angular vs ember days, docker was still getting it's footing, coding bootcamps where the hottest new thing. Tutorials, hackathons, OSS made a lot of sense as a go to market for hyper growth. We often talked about the business as b2c not b2b. That's the DO that grew up on HN (something I was personally eternally grateful for). The market has shifted a lot over the past 10 years, the abstractions are way more defined, and web engineering just isn't what it was. It's been a long long long time since I've talked to anyone at DO, but I can can guess that market conditions have changed drastically and continuing a growth push just looks very different from the DigitalOcean we knew when I was selling it. I think Yancey is a smart guy though, and I think he cares about developers, so I still believe in them figuring it out. Still sad to see a move like this, it feels disrespectful, not just to Geoff, but to the community he and Chris built.

pard68 4y ago
> what worked for DO in the early days may not be what will work for it in the future Last year I made the pitch at my previous employer to migrate to DO. It made sense, the company was almost entirely on VMs and DO has much better support and offerings for VMs. I was the manager of Operations. I only needed my CIO to approve. The response was "they're amateur, we need Azure of AWS." I could see a bigger DO changing their image as their main customer goes from in the trenches to in the boardroom.

golol 4y ago

Every time I use flexbox I google flexbox and click on the top result.

darekkay 4y ago
> Every time I use flexbox I google flexbox The CSS Tricks post is excellent to learn flexbox. If you instead want a quick overview about all the properties, you can check out my (printable) flexbox cheat sheet [1]. Someone even built a VSCode extension around it [2]. [1] https://darekkay.com/flexbox-cheatsheet/ https://darekkay.com/flexbox-cheatsheet/ [2] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=dzhavat.css-flexbox-cheatsheet https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=dzhavat....

BaudouinVH 4y ago

who owns the content ? can it be saved/moved/transferred ? how much does it cost per year ? can that amount be crowdfunded ?

nailer 4y ago
I think CSS tricks makes money for DO as content marketing. So it will continue to exist.

berkle4455 4y ago

Hell of a flip for him. He sold on March 15th, 2022 and was laid-off on Feb 15th, 2023. I sure hope he negotiated his exit payout optimally.

arusahni 4y ago
He was an employee of CSS Tricks. The founder did not stay on.

jehb 4y ago

For all of the folks worried about the future of CSS Tricks, this is why licensing matters! I spent most of the past decade producing (as a writer, editor, and community manager) tutorial and other technical content for a large software company. Because the company I worked for values open source principles, every single article I ever wrote for them was licensed under CC BY-SA or a similar license. If the sites I worked on disappeared tomorrow, I would be free to republish them on a new home on the web, and more importantly, to continue to keep them up to date. I don't work there any more, and it's such a relief not to have to worry about a lawsuit from a former employer just to be able to reuse my own work.

abetusk 4y ago
Are the articles on CSS Tricks under a libre license? I can't find any mention of it, though I haven't searched in depth, so it's proprietary? For the record, their code on CodePen looks to be MIT licensed (though CodePen requires a login). For example, Infinite Burger is MIT licensed [0]. [0] https://codepen.io/team/css-tricks/pen/mNBrNG#_=_ https://codepen.io/team/css-tricks/pen/mNBrNG#_=_
- johannesch 4y ago
  Seems, the license allows for copying [1]. Maybe worth rescuing them. [1] https://css-tricks.com/license/ https://css-tricks.com/license/
  - jehb 4y ago
    I'm actually amazed this license is still there post-acquisition, and perhaps equally amazed this license didn't tank the acquisition in the first place.
reaperducer 4y ago
this is why licensing matters! Yes. And it's also why any resource you use more than once should be submitted to archive.org — just in case! https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://css-tricks.com https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://css-tric...

xyzal 4y ago

Excuse me, is it really the norm to just cut off people who are being let go, without the opportunity to say goodbye to their former colleagues? In my country it is 2 months notice by law...

reaperducer 4y ago
is it really the norm to just cut off people who are being let go, without the opportunity to say goodbye to their former colleagues? It varies from company to company, and often based on your relationship with your boss and coworkers, or just how the higher managers want to handle things. In my country There are 200+ countries, and 200+ ways of doing things. Not everywhere is like home.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
joshmanders 4y ago
Majority of the US is at-will employment, meaning you can be let go or quit at any time with no need to give notice. The only difference is we were conditioned to believe that we as employees to "not burn bridges" must give at least 2 weeks notice, but companies never give notice to you, just wake up one day and you're no longer employed.
WWLink 4y ago
Yes, it's the norm. Typically they'll call a mandatory all-hands meeting (or a mandatory meeting with the laid off people with HR or something), and then when that meeting begins they deactivate those people's access to everything. They announce the layoffs and hand out final paychecks, and have security guards escort people out of the building. For people working from home, depends on the company - most will send a message to the laid off person's personal email and immediately lock the person out. If they don't have a personal email on record they'll just lock them out and send a letter in the mail or something. Yep, pretty shitty behavior. They do it to keep people from retaliating or organizing a protest or starting drama or whatever. To me the really weird thing is the way people talk so positively about getting fired on linkedin.

datavirtue 4y ago

I just said goodbye to CSS. Long live tailwindcss. I'm done fiddling with the assembly language of markup styling. My revulsion to new UI stuff only prolonged the pain.

sixQuarks 4y ago

According to SEMRush, CSS-Tricks has close to 4 million unique visitors per month. DigitalOcean gets 11.5 million unique visitors per month. CSS-Tricks gets almost 40% of the traffic, I doubt they will be shutting it down entirely.

barnitim 4y ago

Sad to see folks who were still holding fort for a lost cause. Business minded person like Chris Coyier dropped the thing long ago, made $4million of a blog and left. Chris was never passionate about coding. It was all setup to make money.

bigwheeler 4y ago
No matter what batshit crazy things I stumble upon while running around the internet today, none of them will be as insane as “Chris Coyier was never passionate about coding”. Being “business minded” and “having passion for coding” is not exclusive. Chris is a living breathing coding resource, and that definitely came before he realized that the blogging and conferences and book writing was going to lead to a multimillion dollar payout. He was in the right place at the right time, and willing to put in an overwhelming amount of effort. But it all started with the passion.

zeptonaut22 4y ago

Man, this sucks. CSS-Tricks has long been one of the best resources on the web for doing CSS right and the quality of their writing and research is outstanding. Bad on DO for going through with this acquisition and then lopping off its head: it's a net negative contribution to the web. Geoff, thank you for your contributions.

trynewideas 4y ago

I got recruited for DO's technical writing team a few years back but passed because I was happy in the role I had at the time. Feels like a dodged bullet.

butz 4y ago

Everyone from original CSS-Tricks team should get back together and build a new website. "Tricky-CSS" maybe? Green-fielding a new site is so much more interesting then trying to keep legacy site and its content working. Sad, that we still do not have any decent method to support such sites, that saves from many headaches in daily job.

itsuka 4y ago
Over the past couple of years, I have come across numerous articles on CSS-Tricks that discuss other related technologies such as (semantic) HTML, SVG, Canvas, WebGL, UI libraries (e.g. Tailwind), and tools like Saas and PostCSS. So I think when starting a green-field project, it may be more appropriate to use a broader term like "style" or "look", than specifically using the keyword "CSS" (just an idea). If the license at https://css-tricks.com/license/ https://css-tricks.com/license/ is valid, anyone can scrape and rebuild a FOSS version of CSS-Tricks, ideally with a sustainable funding model to support its ongoing development. However, without an editor like Geoff, I am unsure whether it would maintain the same level of quality as CSS-Tricks.

KomoD 4y ago

Ok so... it's not shutdown?

cdman 4y ago

Who knows what the future holds, so I archived css-tricks.com and uploaded it to archive.org: https://archive.org/details/misc-crawls-warc-0002 https://archive.org/details/misc-crawls-warc-0002