8 ms·

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 l

• 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
    • olliej 4y ago
      Ok, we could add “or the hedge funds, VCs, that otherwise control the funds” to be more complete?
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • blamazon 4y ago
      In 2021 the CEO earned 82 million total compensation according to SEC proxy statement[1], then about 7-8 million for the next two named execs. [1] https://s27.q4cdn.com/619704647/files/doc_financials/2021/ar/2022_Proxy_Statement%5B1%5D.pdf https://s27.q4cdn.com/619704647/files/doc_financials/2021/ar...
      • ithkuil 4y ago
        A million is not what it used to be. Jokes aside, I was surprised to learn that there are 24 million millionaires in the U.S. that's more than 10% the working-age population. It's still a minority of course, and probably most of them are people who saved enough throughout their whole career (while here we were talking about people who made multiple millions every year), but still I found it interesting
        • deleted 4y ago
          [deleted]
        • hnbad 4y ago
          There's a difference between having a net worth of a million dollars, ten million dollars and a hundred million dollars. There's also a world of a difference between having a million dollars and making millions of dollars every year. If you own your house, you can easily be a "millionaire" based on the total cost of ownership but that doesn't mean you have anywhere near the disposable income or institutional power as an exec making upwards of 5 million dollars per year.
          • chasd00 4y ago
            that's correct, there may be a lot of millionaires in terms of total wealth but very few can walk into a Porsche dealership and write a check for two 911 turbos.
            • blamazon 4y ago
              A check? You're gonna pass on all those credit card points?
  • 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.