Want to wish you well, and its quite nice after all this sorrow to see that there are still nice ideas out there that are capable to not only survive but prosper.
That's the principle, but it doesn't reflect to the reality around us, or at least my reality.
I am in the tourism industry, owning a small-medium hotel.
If I stop paying any loans and generally I am left out of cash-flow I am pretty much screwed for the next few years, if not closing down.
I know though a few people around my area with massive resorts and a debt over 100mil that have already stopped paying quite a few loans themselvs and they are getting away with a slap on their wrist. The gov gets involved cause the debt is enough to damage a bank, and the people that are going to be left without a job are enough to cause a mini crisis. Then the bank itself... well for them its not just about ceasing the asset as its gonna be a hard thing to sell or manage.
Meanwhile the owners are taking out massive salaries + bonuses for their personal accounts and don't care about their balance sheet being a mess and their debts growing.
> I would like to see if Gov officials apply the same 'herd immunity' tactic to themselves and their relatives as well.
The problem is not getting the virus. But, if everybody gets it at the same time. That will make hospitals collapse as queues of people wait for treatment.
If Goverment officials have access to health care, it does not matter for them what happens to the rest of the population.
Herd immunity works. And one hundred years from now what the government did is irrelevant. The problem is the suffering that may be caused to the current UK citizens.
It may work, but the price to pay if it doesn't is very high. It not only includes lives but the long term trust in the government and its institutions, that is quite eroded already.
I wouldn't say that directly applies to what Google is trying to do.
I think what Google is doing is just re-investing back into x amount of companies/ideas where even if 1-2 of those companies bounces back and becomes profitable they make up their investments + they make profit.
I think they do realise how much money there is to be made in the gaming world and such. Its just time and money against profit for them.
Throw eggs in the wall and see what sticks or not.
Personally I don't like that model and thats why I use google services less and less. Even gmail is a huge no-go for me due to their nonexistent support.
Take PHP as an example. I'd say from a technical perspective not many people would go with it from a technical standpoint but we can't ignore that massive companies like FB for example were build on that (no matter if they grew out of it at a later date).
> Lots of Money + Lots of People =/= Guaranteed Success
I'll agree on that.
I won't agree with the rest though, I don't think DO can compete in an enterprise level.
Actually in the longrun I don't see DO ever being viable. AWS and google are going to become simpler as the time passes and they are going to take over that margin that is left on services like DO, ovh etc. I think the only viable business plan for them right now would be to focus on their simplicity and continue building on it hoping they will get bought out by the big players.
Obviously thats not good for us -> amazon and google owning everything on the web but unless there is some crazy law that limits them from doing so, they are going to do it.
There are still MANY old style ISPs playing in the DO-like space. Hosting is HUGE. Plenty of room for many DO like players at .1-1% marketshare.
Google and AWS are NOT going to become simpler, to the contrary, that would defeat their entire proposition. To eliminate the traditional enterprise data center entirely, build sufficient lock-in moats, and then continue to innovate around costs and value requires tons of bespoke capabilities and complexities.
I agree I don't see AWS and Google becoming simpler, but instead becoming more complex. They are also catering to workloads that are completely different and they really need to have every single possible knob and dial and configuration possible to satisfy these enterprise customers.
Doing what they do is complex and takes a certain skill set, but also doing simplicity right is it's own skill set.
I would say that I would be more worried in the past when AWS was more of a single player, but now that Google and Azure are firmly in the picture, AWS has some real competition in their core market which takes their focus away from us which is great.
ye I agree, it feels impossible to penetrate that market unless you have many billions and the actual engineering knowledge behind it.
I think DO is good for the small/average player that doesn't wanna invest time into having his team learning the AWS quirks because his business isn't in heavy need of it.
If AWS or even google ever goes after the small/average user by creating an easier to understand/navigate service for the user that doesn't need all that overhead and time investment of that bizarre learning curve just to setup a simple application, then its just gonna kill DO and other services like that out there.
I disagree, you can't just tack on simplicity to an incredibly complex product. Elastic Beanstalk is not in the same class as Heroku (despite both running on AWS). When you look at AWS the strength is in breadth and loose coupling. This allows internal teams to push a massive set of products forward in parallel, but the tradeoff is that the seams show everywhere, which directly works against having a simple and cohesive product experience. Theoretically it is possible, but I think you'd need to brand it outside AWS and probably dedicate way more headcount than a beancounter would deem reasonable to compete with DO, and even then I'm not sure AWS or Google are structurally capable of producing such a thing.
>If AWS or even google ever goes after the small/average user by creating an easier to understand/navigate service for the user that doesn't need all that overhead and time investment of that bizarre learning curve just to setup a simple application, then its just gonna kill DO and other services like that out there.
Currently both AWS and GCE cost is multiple times more per gigabyte served, compared to DO. E.g. AWS S3 is $0.09 per gigabyte served, while Do Spaces is about $0.01.
For certain businesses, traffic is a major cost, and paying many tomes as much for it could make them unprofitable.
So no, a cloud provider of the DO class must be long-term viable, just in a different niche.
Auth0 is nice tbh but I find it quite pricey once you scale a bit.
I think it’s important to make good decisions at the very start.
I am definitely not against auth0 and I think it’s great, just think well enough before using it because it might come free at the start but after you acquire more users it comes at a hefty price
>And as my healing journey has progressed, any ambitions I held to achieve business success on par with the Airbnb founders has faded, and been eclipsed by the realisation in order to do _anything_ well – from running businesses and leading social/political movements, to simply having successful friendships/relationships, a healthy family life and a physiologically healthy body – a healthy emotional foundation is of prime importance.
I feel also one has to realize that he can't have it all in life. I think its almost impossible and out of our nature to be able to achieve greatness in all fields. You might be the most successful CEO in the world and having the most money in the world but that doesn't mean that you are going to have and lead a successful family life as well.
Same way you can be successful at having a nice family and a loving partner etc but that requires time, time which you'll not be able to invest the time that being a CEO requires.
Thats my personal take from life so far - you have to decide what you want to be.
I don't feel like a top engineer. I think am no way near that tbh. I rank myself as an ok-ish engineer.
I feel more like a hybrid though and I feel like I am valuable to a startup as I can bring on the table several things which include some photoshoping skills, being able to build a comprehensive front-end, can contribute to ideas as well as manage a db, build an api etc (to a level).
The past 2 years I was working part-time for a startup as I am running a business of my own which is almost on autopilot and allows me time to work on other things as well.
After 2 years I realized the positive and negative sides of working for a startup that is hard to find out before working for one.
First of all there were 3 main guys running the show. Only one of them was a tech guy, the other two came from a business background with no tech knowledge wanting to build up a tech startup. Joining that startup as an early employee didn't mean much apart from getting close to 1% in options (which is nothing considering my contribution to the cause was worth way more but obviously 1% is an industry standard).
The work became increasingly more demanding, although they knew I had other things to do and I was part-time, I was asked to work more than what was normal and almost reached working full-time helping them out (which was stupid of me, I was sacrificing time that I could be doing other things).
The paycut I took also from my previous part-time gig was about 40% which is almost half.
The cause of the startup also started changing increasingly and although at the start I was keen to have the paycut etc it felt like I didn't belong anymore (thats important for others wanting to work at a startup to know. The idea is not gonna remain the same as it is especially with business people driving research all the time).
The only positive was that I got some more experience on as a fullstack than before as I had to work a bit more on aws and backend systems and also was using "newish" tech.
My honest opinion and advice to anyone that is willing to try out working for a startup is:
Don't compromise your salary and well-being.
Startups will offer you options which is usually crap unless you are a co-creator. If you are taking a paycut but you support and like the cause of that startup then ask for a bigger %.
Realise that most likely the startup is not gonna vest or sell and generally think of your options as a gamble.
Its most likely that the chances of you making real money out of your options is the same as you winning the lottery.
If you are asked to work hard and stupid hours, then reconsider your well-being and ask yourself if its worth it.
Also look at the composition of that startup. For me personally it was stupid thinking that 2 business guys having the biggest % in the company would ever work for a tech startup. They contributed in writing long essays and doing research all the time, but at the end they couldn't attract more engineers by paying shit salaries and giving out 0.2-1% in options. The product failed because it couldn't be delivered on time due to having less people working on it than it initially required, and because those business people in order to justify their own % to the company were going on heavy research and constantly deciding shift changes on the product completely out of the blue just because they had nothing else to work on. (we were supposed to release within the 1st year which would be a year ahead of our competition. We released after 2 years which gave competition the lead of releasing before us and a much better product)
All in all - don't sacrifice your salary, thats how you feed yourself and your family and someone elses weird-ass dream is not gonna make you silly money out of the blue. And also remember that working should be taking some part of your day, but you also have one life and working your ass off for someone elses shitty dream aint worth it.
Thank you for your detailed take here. I'd like to nuance this a bit to a more general rule.
Every person taking equity needs to justify their value now
This means that a setup with two "business people" founders need to justify their worth immediately. Not with promises of future sales. Not with vague research.
Worthy ways to prove their worth could be raising a giant amount of funding, or putting their own money into the startup as a sign of skin-in-the-game, or purchase orders standing ready to purchase the product once it is complete, or paid PoCs. Or serious track record of delivery/wins.
If you find a setup where engineers are taking all the initial risk while "business founders" stay on the sidelines waiting for a product to be built until they start to work -- run away. Think about it this way -- they have all the upside (they can choose later to work or to flee) while you have all the risk (you invested your pay-cut for vague promises of future work.)
