6 ms·

It will be a blood bath. Postman "Labs", a company that produces a glorified cURL UI and some incoherent most likely useless tools around it received $433M inv

It will be a blood bath. Postman "Labs", a company that produces a glorified cURL UI and some incoherent most likely useless tools around it received $433M investment at valuation of $2B and apparently has hundreds of employees. Current state of tech is not sustainable.

distrill 4y ago
wow. i usually push back against the mindless "that's too many engineers what are they all doing XDDD" meme. but this is actually insane, i can't believe there's more than a single person working on postman.
- bydlocoder 4y ago
  They do have other tools with the word API in them but I kinda doubt their usefulness because of gems like "it will move you left on Gartner quadrant" all over Postman "Labs" website. Another reference point - WhatsApp had around 50 engineers when it was sold to Facebook.
onion2k 4y ago
As always you have to remember that the public UI of a SaaS business is rarely telling the whole story about why the headcount is what it is, and without significantly deeper knowledge of everything the business is doing, including future products in development, it's really hard to say if there are too many people or not. Most engineers are not in a business to support the day to day running of an app. They're there to build new things to provide growth and support change. This is why you can do an Elon and fire 75% of the staff without something collapsing immediately. That strategy even works in the long term if you're happy to scale back future ambitions and focus on a single app. It wouldn't work for most companies that are constantly fighting for market share though.
- bydlocoder 4y ago
  That's why I mentioned "incoherent and probably useless other tools". Apparently, they launched some sort of no-code tool for stringing APIs together but still not ready with their GraphQL client. For reference, another company that sells developer tools, JetBrains, has around 2000 employees.
  - notimetorelax 4y ago
    Margins are still very high for a tech company, so the business can be sustainable even with high R&D costs. What’s happening is the end of a cycle where everyone pulled back on their spending and companies try to keep the same margins by managing their expenses as they cannot attract more revenue.
  - cooperadymas 4y ago
    I can't tell where you're driving with the JetBrains comparison. Truthfully, I'm a little surprised they only have 2000 employees. They have a suite of IDEs supporting a multitude of languages, that are almost universally considered best in class. IDEs are not an easy thing to build. They developed and maintain the Kotlin language which has all but become the standard for Android dev. And they have integrated team collaboration tools that range from project management to CI to cloud dev environments.
    - krooj 4y ago
      I am not surprised. Hire carefully with specific requirements in mind, stay hyper-focused on your product(s), and eschew corporate trends towards bloat, fomo, and "feel good" initiatives.
    - bydlocoder 4y ago
      Isn't it obvious? Postman Labs is bloated and overvalued, compared to what JetBrains does their product is just nothing.
  - philliphaydon 4y ago
    But JetBrains has a whole suite of tools, supporting many plugins, creating their own jvm lang, with support team who actually respond and verify tickets. Atlassian on the other hand lol.
- SecretDreams 4y ago
  > This is why you can do an Elon and fire 75% of the staff without something collapsing immediately. It is to be determined if "doing an Elon" will work out for Twitter in even the short term. Give Twitter 1-2 years of "doing an Elon" before we judge the success of this approach.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  Oh, man, I guess you are just repeating the point that every company is bloated. The public UI (and performance) of a SaaS business is the one thing that adds value to society and is valued by its customers. Yes, new products development is a really great place to put some people, but how often do you see those large companies develop something good by themselves?
systematical 4y ago
postman, another shit product.
- ejb999 4y ago
  I actually find postman quite useful for the work I do (heavily api-related) - if you work in that space, what other tools would you recommend instead?
  - rukshn 4y ago
    I use https://hoppscotch.io/ https://hoppscotch.io/ as a replacement for postman And also ThundeClient a VS Code extension when using VS code.
  - philliphaydon 4y ago
    I use insomnia after the stunt postman pulled with pricing.
    - pxc 4y ago
      Insomnia seems like a good replacement for web devs who don't want to rely on proprietary tools as part of their core workflow, as well. I like HTTPie and HTTPie/http-prompt, too, although I wish they had more secure storage for cookies.
  - XorNot 4y ago
    Honestly? Jupyterlab with python and requests. It'll do more, with richer libraries, and an obvious path towards automation into CI/CD.
  - kimburgess 4y ago
    IMO Postman is a good tool. On alternatives though, https://httpie.io/ https://httpie.io/ is pretty nice too.
  - porker 4y ago
    The problem I've had with Postman is the sharing between team members. Everyone needs to add new requests, edit (locally) but sometimes sav the edits back to the collection. Someone has to modify the auth script and have it update for everyone. I thought this is what the tool is designed for, but it's been a nightmare. Team members have to wipe their environment and start again regularly. I want to think that we've completely mucked up using it but I'm not sure it's us and not the tool.
siva7 4y ago
Their focus group seem to be rather big enterprises, not indie devs/small teams like with insomnia so it's not surprising.
- bydlocoder 4y ago
  Selling developer tools to corporate managers is an interesting idea let's see how it works out. Reminds me of Rational/IBM.

distrill 4y ago

wow. i usually push back against the mindless "that's too many engineers what are they all doing XDDD" meme. but this is actually insane, i can't believe there's more than a single person working on postman.

bydlocoder 4y ago
They do have other tools with the word API in them but I kinda doubt their usefulness because of gems like "it will move you left on Gartner quadrant" all over Postman "Labs" website. Another reference point - WhatsApp had around 50 engineers when it was sold to Facebook.

onion2k 4y ago

As always you have to remember that the public UI of a SaaS business is rarely telling the whole story about why the headcount is what it is, and without significantly deeper knowledge of everything the business is doing, including future products in development, it's really hard to say if there are too many people or not. Most engineers are not in a business to support the day to day running of an app. They're there to build new things to provide growth and support change. This is why you can do an Elon and fire 75% of the staff without something collapsing immediately. That strategy even works in the long term if you're happy to scale back future ambitions and focus on a single app. It wouldn't work for most companies that are constantly fighting for market share though.

bydlocoder 4y ago
That's why I mentioned "incoherent and probably useless other tools". Apparently, they launched some sort of no-code tool for stringing APIs together but still not ready with their GraphQL client. For reference, another company that sells developer tools, JetBrains, has around 2000 employees.
- notimetorelax 4y ago
  Margins are still very high for a tech company, so the business can be sustainable even with high R&D costs. What’s happening is the end of a cycle where everyone pulled back on their spending and companies try to keep the same margins by managing their expenses as they cannot attract more revenue.
- cooperadymas 4y ago
  I can't tell where you're driving with the JetBrains comparison. Truthfully, I'm a little surprised they only have 2000 employees. They have a suite of IDEs supporting a multitude of languages, that are almost universally considered best in class. IDEs are not an easy thing to build. They developed and maintain the Kotlin language which has all but become the standard for Android dev. And they have integrated team collaboration tools that range from project management to CI to cloud dev environments.
  - krooj 4y ago
    I am not surprised. Hire carefully with specific requirements in mind, stay hyper-focused on your product(s), and eschew corporate trends towards bloat, fomo, and "feel good" initiatives.
  - bydlocoder 4y ago
    Isn't it obvious? Postman Labs is bloated and overvalued, compared to what JetBrains does their product is just nothing.
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  But JetBrains has a whole suite of tools, supporting many plugins, creating their own jvm lang, with support team who actually respond and verify tickets. Atlassian on the other hand lol.
SecretDreams 4y ago
> This is why you can do an Elon and fire 75% of the staff without something collapsing immediately. It is to be determined if "doing an Elon" will work out for Twitter in even the short term. Give Twitter 1-2 years of "doing an Elon" before we judge the success of this approach.
marcosdumay 4y ago
Oh, man, I guess you are just repeating the point that every company is bloated. The public UI (and performance) of a SaaS business is the one thing that adds value to society and is valued by its customers. Yes, new products development is a really great place to put some people, but how often do you see those large companies develop something good by themselves?

systematical 4y ago

postman, another shit product.

ejb999 4y ago
I actually find postman quite useful for the work I do (heavily api-related) - if you work in that space, what other tools would you recommend instead?
- rukshn 4y ago
  I use https://hoppscotch.io/ https://hoppscotch.io/ as a replacement for postman And also ThundeClient a VS Code extension when using VS code.
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  I use insomnia after the stunt postman pulled with pricing.
  - pxc 4y ago
    Insomnia seems like a good replacement for web devs who don't want to rely on proprietary tools as part of their core workflow, as well. I like HTTPie and HTTPie/http-prompt, too, although I wish they had more secure storage for cookies.
- XorNot 4y ago
  Honestly? Jupyterlab with python and requests. It'll do more, with richer libraries, and an obvious path towards automation into CI/CD.
- kimburgess 4y ago
  IMO Postman is a good tool. On alternatives though, https://httpie.io/ https://httpie.io/ is pretty nice too.
- porker 4y ago
  The problem I've had with Postman is the sharing between team members. Everyone needs to add new requests, edit (locally) but sometimes sav the edits back to the collection. Someone has to modify the auth script and have it update for everyone. I thought this is what the tool is designed for, but it's been a nightmare. Team members have to wipe their environment and start again regularly. I want to think that we've completely mucked up using it but I'm not sure it's us and not the tool.

siva7 4y ago

Their focus group seem to be rather big enterprises, not indie devs/small teams like with insomnia so it's not surprising.

bydlocoder 4y ago
Selling developer tools to corporate managers is an interesting idea let's see how it works out. Reminds me of Rational/IBM.