8 ms·

Hashicorp lays off 8% of staff

155 points by jstx1 3y ago

arthurcolle 3y ago
typo: Hashicrop
- predictabl3 3y ago
  I was thinking of declarative tractor/farm management, but I guess not.
  - arthurcolle 3y ago
    "Farming as Infrastructure" as a Service > 1 click deploys + 3 cows included free. (Geese, ducks optional as add-ons)
  - Hrun0 3y ago
    Coincidentally, Hashicorp has published multiple customer stories about Bowery Farming, an indoor vertical farming company. https://www.hashicorp.com/resources/connecting-farms-and-growing-plants-at-bowery-farming-with-nomad-and-consul https://www.hashicorp.com/resources/connecting-farms-and-gro... https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/managing-applications-at-the-edge-with-hashicorp-nomad https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/managing-applications-at-the-...
- jstx1 3y ago
  Thanks, fixed.
discordance 3y ago
terraform destroy --target employees
- koolba 3y ago
  If you want to do it immediately you should add “-auto-approve” to skip the confirmation. Employees should be singular as it’d be the type of resource. Each employee would have their own resource entry. It’d be something like employees[id] repeated for each employee. Otherwise you’d be terminating everybody by targeting the entire collection.
  - abledon 3y ago
    comment threads like this are the beauty of hackernews
fnordpiglet 3y ago
I’m sorry to everyone impacted. Losing your job hurts in a way that’s hard to describe and harder to recover from. Good luck, and remember this isn’t your worth.
- mr90210 3y ago
  It’s hard indeed but after what happened in other companies, I’d expect everyone in tech to be mindful about the layoff possibility. It’s been months of serial layoffs. Personally, I wouldn’t feel surprised if I were to get laid off tomorrow.
toomuchtodo 3y ago
> Investors heard it first, together with employees let go. The rest of staff heard nothing formal just yet. https://ir.hashicorp.com/news-releases/news-release-details/hashicorp-announces-first-quarter-financial-results-fiscal-0/ https://ir.hashicorp.com/news-releases/news-release-details/...
- gtirloni 3y ago
  I'm no expert but the numbers seem pretty good and only getting better. Puzzling.
  - ac29 3y ago
    As near as I can tell, they've never turned a profit. That cant go on indefinitely.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      It certainly hasn't been great for retail investors. I got in with a small investment right after the IPO. I swept it up with a bunch of other doggy stocks I didn't want in my account last year at one point.
  - PheonixPharts 3y ago
    HCP Operating Incomes (in thousands of dollars) - 1/31/2020: -56,217 - 1/31/2021: -84,009 - 1/31/2022: -289,314 - 1/31/2023: -297,287 This line seems to heading in a direction which is never making profit. Nearly all of the tech IPOs over the last few years share the same story. These are companies that have never been shown to make a profit, with no clear model how to. Finally these companies need to prove this is possible. We have an entire generation of C-levels running these sorts of companies that have never worked in a non-tech bubble where money is free. Based on my own experience in a similar company, "leadership" has absolutely no clue how to make these things happen, but enthusiastically believes they will. Leadership earnestly believes that this about surviving a tough time, and soon everything will be back to low interest rates and free money. I suspect these small layoffs will continue for a long time and then we'll start seeing more of these companies completely collapse.
29athrowaway 3y ago
See also: Vitality curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve - Were there company-wide performance evaluations before the layoff? - Was there a ~10% of promotions/bonuses at the same time? If so, it was the MBAs and their horoscope driven management again.
candiddevmike 3y ago
Hopefully they realize their products are too expensive for the value they provide beyond the open core offering. The recent Terraform Cloud pricing changes are not going in the right direction, please hire folks who understand how to price and capture value for your customers appropriately.
- jstx1 3y ago
  Terraform is open source. What are people paying for?
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    The cloud version & enterprise support. At every F500 or other large Enterprise I've been at you need to have some sort of support and escalation model. Lotta pushes to SaaS offerings too, esp. turnkey ones where it's their cloud and you pay an all-in price for software+infra+support.
  - candiddevmike 3y ago
    This right here HashiCorp, this is part of the problem. Layoffs are not going to solve this. I think Terraform has the same problem as Docker: HashiCorp isn't capturing the value of Terraform, and other companies are making more money off of it by seeing the real opportunity (like Docker/Docker Inc and Kubernetes). Cloud providers are reaping the benefits, and the other TACOS (Terraform Automation & Collaboration Software) like SpaceLift and Env0 see the value in bringing more collaboration and workflow aspects. There's nothing really "sexy" about automating and governing Terraform apply/plan.
    - Spooky23 3y ago
      Docker is even worse in that they changed terms and started sending goons to recover what they believe they are owed. Didn’t even try to sell the value of what they offer. I didn’t give them a dime and wouldn’t consider doing so in the future.
    - cbsmith 3y ago
oofta-boofta 3y ago
You know a company behaves extremely poorly when even notorious corporate simp Gergely Orosz calls them out.
- skrebbel 3y ago
  I mean he calls everybody out all the time right? And then retracts cause oops it was all half-truths and assumptions. I feel like there’s no signal here, this guy treats the truth as an inconvenient obstacle at best.
mabbo 3y ago
When I was laid off by Shopify last month, it was almost done perfectly. The day started. Everyone got an email saying what was happening and whether or not they were impacted. I was. I was given access to slack to say farewells for a few hours. I had a quick meeting with my senior manager. Then all access was cut and my personal email got all the needed details on what's next. It sucked, but it was pretty humane. But... There was a leak two days before that it was coming. The dread of knowing you might be laid off is worse than being laid off. And everyone had it for 48 hours. It was brutal and the company ground to a halt. I'm not mad at the leaker. They probably felt it was better that people know. But I don't think they were right. I don't think telling investors about the layoff before the people being laid off is right. But I also don't think dragging it out for many days or weeks is healthy for anyone.
- omginternets 3y ago
  How has the job market been? And out of curiosity, we’re you an engineer?
- emodendroket 3y ago
  I have not loved my work’s strategy of announcing a layoff in the coming months.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Why? At least at a personal level, assuming it wasn't already obvious to you, it seems as if it could serve as a kick in the pants to start looking around. A statement that it's going to happen doesn't change the reality. From a company perspective, it possibly makes less sense because you might prefer the oblivious folks to stay oblivious. But, personally, I'd prefer clear signals especially if it's not already blindingly obvious.
    - emodendroket 3y ago
      It's the opposite of a clear signal and it's not like "looking around" necessarily means more stability in sector-wide downturns. The cynic in me suspects the idea is to scare people into working harder.
pknomad 3y ago
I used to work for Pivotal before its acquisition by VMWare and one of the ops person told me that the town halls became a lot less interesting once the company went public and employees are usually the last ones to know with respect to insider-trading rules and policies. While I think the layoffs could have been better but I don't see Hashicorp flagrantly violating their own principles, as claimed by Gergely. Also - hope that employees affected by layoffs find another place soon.
sacnoradhq 3y ago
Layoffs are largely avoidable: stay profitable, avoid expanding too fast, treat employees well, and (time vested) worker-owned co-op.
- kredd 3y ago
  Argument can be made, the workers that are losing their jobs wouldn’t have these jobs at all if they didn’t expand, IPO out and etc.
  - eloisant 3y ago
    They would have a different job already and wouldn't have to go through a layoff and find a job in a time where most tech companies are in hiring freeze.
  - sacnoradhq 3y ago
    You appear to be making workers out to be helpless and dependent and should be thankful for the "benevolent generosity" of corporate greed and mismanagement. Advocating Amazon is generous for giving workers the privilege of urinating in bottles doesn't have a good ring to it. Perhaps workers should change the structures of where they work with fractional ownership and a cut of the value they helped to create?

155 points by jstx1 3y ago

arthurcolle 3y ago

typo: Hashicrop

predictabl3 3y ago
I was thinking of declarative tractor/farm management, but I guess not.
- arthurcolle 3y ago
  "Farming as Infrastructure" as a Service > 1 click deploys + 3 cows included free. (Geese, ducks optional as add-ons)
- Hrun0 3y ago
  Coincidentally, Hashicorp has published multiple customer stories about Bowery Farming, an indoor vertical farming company. https://www.hashicorp.com/resources/connecting-farms-and-growing-plants-at-bowery-farming-with-nomad-and-consul https://www.hashicorp.com/resources/connecting-farms-and-gro... https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/managing-applications-at-the-edge-with-hashicorp-nomad https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/managing-applications-at-the-...
jstx1 3y ago
Thanks, fixed.

discordance 3y ago

terraform destroy --target employees

koolba 3y ago
If you want to do it immediately you should add “-auto-approve” to skip the confirmation. Employees should be singular as it’d be the type of resource. Each employee would have their own resource entry. It’d be something like employees[id] repeated for each employee. Otherwise you’d be terminating everybody by targeting the entire collection.
- abledon 3y ago
  comment threads like this are the beauty of hackernews

fnordpiglet 3y ago

I’m sorry to everyone impacted. Losing your job hurts in a way that’s hard to describe and harder to recover from. Good luck, and remember this isn’t your worth.

mr90210 3y ago
It’s hard indeed but after what happened in other companies, I’d expect everyone in tech to be mindful about the layoff possibility. It’s been months of serial layoffs. Personally, I wouldn’t feel surprised if I were to get laid off tomorrow.

toomuchtodo 3y ago

> Investors heard it first, together with employees let go. The rest of staff heard nothing formal just yet. https://ir.hashicorp.com/news-releases/news-release-details/hashicorp-announces-first-quarter-financial-results-fiscal-0/ https://ir.hashicorp.com/news-releases/news-release-details/...

gtirloni 3y ago
I'm no expert but the numbers seem pretty good and only getting better. Puzzling.
- ac29 3y ago
  As near as I can tell, they've never turned a profit. That cant go on indefinitely.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    It certainly hasn't been great for retail investors. I got in with a small investment right after the IPO. I swept it up with a bunch of other doggy stocks I didn't want in my account last year at one point.
- PheonixPharts 3y ago
  HCP Operating Incomes (in thousands of dollars) - 1/31/2020: -56,217 - 1/31/2021: -84,009 - 1/31/2022: -289,314 - 1/31/2023: -297,287 This line seems to heading in a direction which is never making profit. Nearly all of the tech IPOs over the last few years share the same story. These are companies that have never been shown to make a profit, with no clear model how to. Finally these companies need to prove this is possible. We have an entire generation of C-levels running these sorts of companies that have never worked in a non-tech bubble where money is free. Based on my own experience in a similar company, "leadership" has absolutely no clue how to make these things happen, but enthusiastically believes they will. Leadership earnestly believes that this about surviving a tough time, and soon everything will be back to low interest rates and free money. I suspect these small layoffs will continue for a long time and then we'll start seeing more of these companies completely collapse.

29athrowaway 3y ago

See also: Vitality curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve - Were there company-wide performance evaluations before the layoff? - Was there a ~10% of promotions/bonuses at the same time? If so, it was the MBAs and their horoscope driven management again.

candiddevmike 3y ago

Hopefully they realize their products are too expensive for the value they provide beyond the open core offering. The recent Terraform Cloud pricing changes are not going in the right direction, please hire folks who understand how to price and capture value for your customers appropriately.

jstx1 3y ago
Terraform is open source. What are people paying for?
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  The cloud version & enterprise support. At every F500 or other large Enterprise I've been at you need to have some sort of support and escalation model. Lotta pushes to SaaS offerings too, esp. turnkey ones where it's their cloud and you pay an all-in price for software+infra+support.
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  This right here HashiCorp, this is part of the problem. Layoffs are not going to solve this. I think Terraform has the same problem as Docker: HashiCorp isn't capturing the value of Terraform, and other companies are making more money off of it by seeing the real opportunity (like Docker/Docker Inc and Kubernetes). Cloud providers are reaping the benefits, and the other TACOS (Terraform Automation & Collaboration Software) like SpaceLift and Env0 see the value in bringing more collaboration and workflow aspects. There's nothing really "sexy" about automating and governing Terraform apply/plan.
  - Spooky23 3y ago
    Docker is even worse in that they changed terms and started sending goons to recover what they believe they are owed. Didn’t even try to sell the value of what they offer. I didn’t give them a dime and wouldn’t consider doing so in the future.
  - cbsmith 3y ago

oofta-boofta 3y ago

You know a company behaves extremely poorly when even notorious corporate simp Gergely Orosz calls them out.

skrebbel 3y ago
I mean he calls everybody out all the time right? And then retracts cause oops it was all half-truths and assumptions. I feel like there’s no signal here, this guy treats the truth as an inconvenient obstacle at best.

mabbo 3y ago

When I was laid off by Shopify last month, it was almost done perfectly. The day started. Everyone got an email saying what was happening and whether or not they were impacted. I was. I was given access to slack to say farewells for a few hours. I had a quick meeting with my senior manager. Then all access was cut and my personal email got all the needed details on what's next. It sucked, but it was pretty humane. But... There was a leak two days before that it was coming. The dread of knowing you might be laid off is worse than being laid off. And everyone had it for 48 hours. It was brutal and the company ground to a halt. I'm not mad at the leaker. They probably felt it was better that people know. But I don't think they were right. I don't think telling investors about the layoff before the people being laid off is right. But I also don't think dragging it out for many days or weeks is healthy for anyone.

omginternets 3y ago
How has the job market been? And out of curiosity, we’re you an engineer?
emodendroket 3y ago
I have not loved my work’s strategy of announcing a layoff in the coming months.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Why? At least at a personal level, assuming it wasn't already obvious to you, it seems as if it could serve as a kick in the pants to start looking around. A statement that it's going to happen doesn't change the reality. From a company perspective, it possibly makes less sense because you might prefer the oblivious folks to stay oblivious. But, personally, I'd prefer clear signals especially if it's not already blindingly obvious.
  - emodendroket 3y ago
    It's the opposite of a clear signal and it's not like "looking around" necessarily means more stability in sector-wide downturns. The cynic in me suspects the idea is to scare people into working harder.

pknomad 3y ago

I used to work for Pivotal before its acquisition by VMWare and one of the ops person told me that the town halls became a lot less interesting once the company went public and employees are usually the last ones to know with respect to insider-trading rules and policies. While I think the layoffs could have been better but I don't see Hashicorp flagrantly violating their own principles, as claimed by Gergely. Also - hope that employees affected by layoffs find another place soon.

sacnoradhq 3y ago

Layoffs are largely avoidable: stay profitable, avoid expanding too fast, treat employees well, and (time vested) worker-owned co-op.

kredd 3y ago
Argument can be made, the workers that are losing their jobs wouldn’t have these jobs at all if they didn’t expand, IPO out and etc.
- eloisant 3y ago
  They would have a different job already and wouldn't have to go through a layoff and find a job in a time where most tech companies are in hiring freeze.
- sacnoradhq 3y ago
  You appear to be making workers out to be helpless and dependent and should be thankful for the "benevolent generosity" of corporate greed and mismanagement. Advocating Amazon is generous for giving workers the privilege of urinating in bottles doesn't have a good ring to it. Perhaps workers should change the structures of where they work with fractional ownership and a cut of the value they helped to create?