CircleCI Layoffs(circleci.com)
circleci.com
CircleCI Layoffs
https://circleci.com/blog/ceo-jim-rose-email-to-circleci-employees/
144 comments
CircleCI lets go of 17% of their workforce today.
but hey, they get to keep their laptops
For those of you unfamiliar with layoff practices in most other industries, this is as good as it gets. The terms enumerated in the note are generous. Also, the value of the job placement support should not be underestimated.
They don’t want to pony up $ for the prepaid labels I’m guessing? The laptops are sunk cost anyway and then there’s also the additional overhead of processing the returned laptops with their IT? Man things must be really bad if that’s the case..
Are there tax implications? Do the laptops count as losses CircleCI can write off, and compensation the ex-employee has to report?
Laptops aren’t typically amortized and are immediately written off and depreciated the year of purchase.
So it’s probably not a tax write off but is a loss of whatever the laptops would get in bankruptcy liquidation.
So it’s probably not a tax write off but is a loss of whatever the laptops would get in bankruptcy liquidation.
This depends on the size of the company. It probably doesn't affect CircleCI but Section 179 deductions are limited to small and midsize companies.
Surprised that is possible in the age of compliance for certifications (PCI, HIPPA, SOC2, etc).
Was also wondering about this. Perhaps they will push a wipe or a clean reinstall..
If they are using Mobile Device Management (MDM), they can remotely wipe all the laptops before allowing departing staff to keep them.
from another comment here by someone who was part of these layoffs it doesn't seem like they're being wiped
[deleted]
Can you link to that comment?
It seems the person's statement I've found is not incongruent with the company also wiping it.
It seems the person's statement I've found is not incongruent with the company also wiping it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33901808
Implication seems to be that they'd have to wipe it themselves
Implication seems to be that they'd have to wipe it themselves
No, that is not the implication.
It's simply stating he plans to have it wiped. It does not make any statement about the companies plans.
IMO, even if my company wiped a laptop they gave to me, I'd do another wipe just to make sure it's perfectly fresh and clean. It's way easier to transfer to a pristine Mac than one that's had all of the initial setup skipped to validate a wipe.
It's simply stating he plans to have it wiped. It does not make any statement about the companies plans.
IMO, even if my company wiped a laptop they gave to me, I'd do another wipe just to make sure it's perfectly fresh and clean. It's way easier to transfer to a pristine Mac than one that's had all of the initial setup skipped to validate a wipe.
Well I guess we have different readings on it then
> Surprised that is possible in the age of compliance for certifications (PCI, HIPPA, SOC2, etc).
If you can’t manage devices in a way which makes it possible to give them away to staff on separation, you can’t manage devices in a way which effectively protects against the risk of theft or loss.
If you can’t manage devices in a way which makes it possible to give them away to staff on separation, you can’t manage devices in a way which effectively protects against the risk of theft or loss.
> Despite today’s news, we’re confident in our business. I believe we have the right strategy to succeed in the long term. We have the best CI/CD platform on the market by leaps and bounds. We see that success reflected in the continued growth of our business, adding thousands of high-performing engineering teams to our platform over the past 12 months.
Clearly that's not the case if you're doing layoffs, no? Wouldn't you want to keep those folks around so you can do that bit at the bottom: "Our customers are some of the most innovative, engineering-centric businesses on the planet, and helping them do great work will continue to be our focus."
Clearly that's not the case if you're doing layoffs, no? Wouldn't you want to keep those folks around so you can do that bit at the bottom: "Our customers are some of the most innovative, engineering-centric businesses on the planet, and helping them do great work will continue to be our focus."
> Wouldn't you want to keep those folks around…
I'm sure they would if they felt they could, however…
"…there is a ripple effect of uncertainty in our sector. Since the start of Q4, we’ve seen a dramatic shift in how every company’s performance is evaluated. Companies were once praised for growth at all costs. Very rapidly, market expectations have shifted. The emphasis now is on maximizing efficiency."
Meaning, this is (as I read it) largely a response to investor pressure to right-size.
I'm sure they would if they felt they could, however…
"…there is a ripple effect of uncertainty in our sector. Since the start of Q4, we’ve seen a dramatic shift in how every company’s performance is evaluated. Companies were once praised for growth at all costs. Very rapidly, market expectations have shifted. The emphasis now is on maximizing efficiency."
Meaning, this is (as I read it) largely a response to investor pressure to right-size.
This is how the business cycle works. Companies expand during the booms, so that they can prepare to take on more business than they are currently doing. Eventually somebody realizes that it has all been irrationally exuberant, and a bunch of them get laid off.
This is why the standard economics policy is to try to grow slowly and smoothly rather than have big boom and bust cycles. As the saying goes, the Fed's job is to take the punch bowl away just as the party gets started.
But unfortunately, everybody loves punch, and boos when the Fed takes measures to rein in the economy. The last recession in the US ended in 2009, but the central bankers treated it as a crisis until... until it became a different crisis.
This is why the standard economics policy is to try to grow slowly and smoothly rather than have big boom and bust cycles. As the saying goes, the Fed's job is to take the punch bowl away just as the party gets started.
But unfortunately, everybody loves punch, and boos when the Fed takes measures to rein in the economy. The last recession in the US ended in 2009, but the central bankers treated it as a crisis until... until it became a different crisis.
What's the context behind this? I've used CircleCI at many jobs, and I guess people must have moved on to some better tool? What's the better tool?
I am not sure about "better" but a lot of people who previously used Travis and Circle use GitHub Actions these days (and maybe azure in the meantime).
It does seem like CI/CD turned out to be less of a product and more of a feature.
I think CI in particular turned out to be something that people really, really don't like being unreliable and it's incredibly challenging to operate reliably and cost effective. For Microsoft providing that service is somewhat possible because they have the warchest and operation teams.
I think there is a different world where Travis (and Circle) could have been built differently and maybe with a slightly different operating model (eg: easier to operate self hosted runners) where they could have made it harder for GitHub to compete in the beginning. But not sure if that would have delayed the inevitable.
I think there is a different world where Travis (and Circle) could have been built differently and maybe with a slightly different operating model (eg: easier to operate self hosted runners) where they could have made it harder for GitHub to compete in the beginning. But not sure if that would have delayed the inevitable.
I would assume some combination of “VC funding is no longer raining from the sky” and “GitHub
Actions are good enough for enough teams not to want a second procurement”.
> What's the context behind this?
From the article:
> Right now, however, there is a ripple effect of uncertainty in our sector. Since the start of Q4, we’ve seen a dramatic shift in how every company’s performance is evaluated. Companies were once praised for growth at all costs. Very rapidly, market expectations have shifted. The emphasis now is on maximizing efficiency.
It sounds like they are cowardly using the Google/Amazon/Twitter workforce decimation campaign as a scapegoat to fire people.
From the article:
> Right now, however, there is a ripple effect of uncertainty in our sector. Since the start of Q4, we’ve seen a dramatic shift in how every company’s performance is evaluated. Companies were once praised for growth at all costs. Very rapidly, market expectations have shifted. The emphasis now is on maximizing efficiency.
It sounds like they are cowardly using the Google/Amazon/Twitter workforce decimation campaign as a scapegoat to fire people.
I find their explanation pretty reasonable. In 2020 and 2021 money used to be close to free, with interest rates near zero and VCs throwing money at anyone with a growth story. Now both of these are no longer true, VCs are much more reserved and bank loans much more expensive. And with money being more expensive to acquire, everyone is more considerate about spending money (and thus manpower).
> I find their explanation pretty reasonable. In 2020 and 2021 money used to be close to free, with interest rates near zero and VCs throwing money at anyone with a growth story.
You're trying to put words in their mouth. Nowhere in their rationale they mention funding or money or interest rates or revenue or results. They only argue that they decided to base their HR policies on a fad. To me this looks like an awfully cowardly way to justify their own decisions on a pseudo-force majeure. Bullshit through and through.
You're trying to put words in their mouth. Nowhere in their rationale they mention funding or money or interest rates or revenue or results. They only argue that they decided to base their HR policies on a fad. To me this looks like an awfully cowardly way to justify their own decisions on a pseudo-force majeure. Bullshit through and through.
I've heard about Twitter and Amazon campaigns, but not Google's yet. Would it be possible to provide a link for that?
Just about everyone is being more cautious about headcount and even if they're not net shrinking their workforce, they're looking harder at what people are working on.
Just because this comment and/or like of discussion could be perceived as insensitive on a day when people are getting tough news, can I jump in to say that I think it’s more likely to be symptomatic of the general global downturn and current wave of cost-cutting than it is any particular issue with product fit or competitors.
I’d also add something along the line of SaaS fatigue. The costs of managing vendors, securing & monitoring, etc. add up and it’s not uncommon for the overhead cost of another service to be more than the benefits of using it. CI falls into that category since there’s an upper bound to how much a dedicated service can give you, especially when the competition like GitHub or GitLab gives you a bunch of other features for the same price.
CircleCI has gone the same way as Docker. They pioneered a paradigm but late entrants like GitHub/GitLab/Bitrise etc stole the show with their offerings. Most teams I’ve seen use either of these instead of CircleCI
Too many engineers getting caught up in the engineering of it and not the problem solving of it.
I love the concept of Docker, but I hate working with it any time I need to work with it. It's extremely opaque and unnecessarily hard to do basic things.
I love the concept of Docker, but I hate working with it any time I need to work with it. It's extremely opaque and unnecessarily hard to do basic things.
I don't know what language you use, but I figured out the success of Docker. I use Go, so my entire program is just one statically-linked binary. I can //go:embed any non-code files that I need at runtime. So I am naturally annoyed at the overhead Docker introduces with builds (throwing away my beloved and reliable ~/.cache for no reason), but I realize I'm not the target market, because most people don't program in a language with a build system. The target market is Python and Javascript programmers. Those languages can't even compute what modules you depend on without running arbitrary code from the Internet, much less produce a single file that will run on any reasonable Linux box. ("Hi! I got drunk and ran someone over with my motorcycle, but I'm out of jail and I need a job. Click here to give me one!" is an actual message that NPM will print in any large project, though it omits some details about the whole killing someone thing.)
Docker is a system for shipping your laptop to production, and because of the inadequacies in the tooling of those popular languages, it's in high demand.
Docker is a system for shipping your laptop to production, and because of the inadequacies in the tooling of those popular languages, it's in high demand.
> Docker is a system for shipping your laptop to production, and because of the inadequacies in the tooling of those popular languages, it's in high demand.
I know this is in jest, but I don't agree with this. Docker is a way to run code in an environment you fully control without knowing exactly what it will be running on.
Many of the popular tools can generate a single file, but they'll be built for a specific architecture or require a certain run time.
I know this is in jest, but I don't agree with this. Docker is a way to run code in an environment you fully control without knowing exactly what it will be running on.
Many of the popular tools can generate a single file, but they'll be built for a specific architecture or require a certain run time.
Yeah, that's a very fair interpretation. Honestly, a lot of programming languages need a lot of files to be in exactly the right place or your code will blow up. I like minimizing the number of files you need around, but making sure that you can have all of those files you need in production is a good strategy as well.
The list is already updated here: https://layoffs.fyi/
It would be really great if this broke out engineering from support and other roles.
Circle was the first CI/CD tool I used and opened my eyes up to a whole new way of deploying. I haven’t used it for a few years but hope they can find a space.
I feel for all the engineers impacted by this layoff, but I do not agree that they are "the best CI/CD platform on the market".
Our small team has moved away from CircleCI for all new projects. We are mostly using Github Actions these days. The major driver was not cost, which was minimal for our team, but the fact that CircleCI keeps breaking our build. In the ~5 years that we have used them, we have experienced at least 3 major breakages, including the migration from v1 to v2 yaml configs and the new docker architecture.
They have strayed far from their early value prop and cause us more headaches than delight. CircleCI, if you are listening, all I want with CI/CD is to forget about it, not have to revisit a working project every year to rearchitect it onto a new builder.
Our small team has moved away from CircleCI for all new projects. We are mostly using Github Actions these days. The major driver was not cost, which was minimal for our team, but the fact that CircleCI keeps breaking our build. In the ~5 years that we have used them, we have experienced at least 3 major breakages, including the migration from v1 to v2 yaml configs and the new docker architecture.
They have strayed far from their early value prop and cause us more headaches than delight. CircleCI, if you are listening, all I want with CI/CD is to forget about it, not have to revisit a working project every year to rearchitect it onto a new builder.
I guess this is a good place to remind folks that scheduled workflows will probably stop working soon
> The scheduled workflows feature is set to be deprecated. Using scheduled pipelines rather than scheduled workflows offers several benefits. Visit the scheduled pipelines migration guide to find out how to migrate existing scheduled workflows to scheduled pipelines.
https://circleci.com/docs/configuration-reference/#schedule
One more thing to migrate out of the config file in the repo and off behind some API call or pointy-clicky UX.
Edit: it looks like they've postponed the deprecation, which was originally planned for 2022-06-03 https://discuss.circleci.com/t/scheduled-pipelines-are-here/...
> The scheduled workflows feature is set to be deprecated. Using scheduled pipelines rather than scheduled workflows offers several benefits. Visit the scheduled pipelines migration guide to find out how to migrate existing scheduled workflows to scheduled pipelines.
https://circleci.com/docs/configuration-reference/#schedule
One more thing to migrate out of the config file in the repo and off behind some API call or pointy-clicky UX.
Edit: it looks like they've postponed the deprecation, which was originally planned for 2022-06-03 https://discuss.circleci.com/t/scheduled-pipelines-are-here/...
Also moved off CircleCI to GitHub Actions for similar reasons.
It is going to be interesting to see how many breaking changes GitHub Actions will have in the next 5 years.
At least they have the advantage that they weren't a first mover so they hopefully learned from the mistakes of other companies.
At least they have the advantage that they weren't a first mover so they hopefully learned from the mistakes of other companies.
> including the migration from v1 to v2 yaml configs
Holy shit. I forgot about this. I was infuriated when I needed to waste nearly a week rewriting my config with more complexity and reduced features. I literally wasted a week of my life so a company I was paying could save costs.
I would have happily paid 50% more to not have to waste my time on that crap.
Holy shit. I forgot about this. I was infuriated when I needed to waste nearly a week rewriting my config with more complexity and reduced features. I literally wasted a week of my life so a company I was paying could save costs.
I would have happily paid 50% more to not have to waste my time on that crap.
We also made the same switch for the same reasons. Outages were so common this past year (particularly on Wednesdays for some reason), that it's become a meme of being an indicator for if it's Wednesday at our company or not.
Honestly, we have run into similar issues with GHA as well. I recently heard about Drone/Harness CI. I tried it last week and it is holy shit fast. Not sure how they do they do it without charging an arm and a leg. We are probably going to go with Harness. They are the only other platform other than Gitlab and GHA. Some competition is good.
With these non-IPO companies doing layoffs is the correct way to read these announcements "we are letting people go to lower expenses because we are not profitable and are actually at risk of running out of money" or is it more "we are letting people go to lower expenses because our investors are asking that we look better on paper because they would like us to have a liquidity exit event (acquisition, private equity, IPO)"?
I suppose my larger question is if a private company is break-even/profitable would the investors/board ever ask management to make these cuts? If so, why?
I suppose my larger question is if a private company is break-even/profitable would the investors/board ever ask management to make these cuts? If so, why?
For all companies, public or private, they need to grow their gross margins if they want to survive. The last 5-10 years was inappropriately focused on revenue and headcount growth and the tide has very abruptly shifted.
I suspect it has a lot to do with the rate at which companies can borrow money.
did circleci borrow any money? I know they raised $315mil, and none of the smaller companies I've ever worked for have ever borrowed anything.
All of the above.
Suppose you have a company with no money, but with a bank willing to loan you money at market rate. You can do three projects, one costs $1 mil, and after a year brings you $1.5 mil in profit, the second costs $1 mil and brings $1.05 mil after a year, and the third costs $1 mil and brings $1.01 mil.
In 2021 interest rates were near zero, so all three projects would have given you a profit. The worst of the bunch only $10,000, but that's still nice. So you hire people to do all of them. But now at the end of 2022 interest rates are about 4% and climbing. The loan for each project now costs $40,000, making the last project unprofitable, and the second project will only be profitable for a couple more months at best. So you cut projects 2 and 3, laying off everyone working on them.
That's how a healthy company would end up with layoffs. A less healthy company might only have projects like the second and third one, and is now running around trying to improve efficiency. And some companies don't make profit at all, being afloat on the hope of eventually making some, and slowly sinking as that money becomes more and more expensive.
Suppose you have a company with no money, but with a bank willing to loan you money at market rate. You can do three projects, one costs $1 mil, and after a year brings you $1.5 mil in profit, the second costs $1 mil and brings $1.05 mil after a year, and the third costs $1 mil and brings $1.01 mil.
In 2021 interest rates were near zero, so all three projects would have given you a profit. The worst of the bunch only $10,000, but that's still nice. So you hire people to do all of them. But now at the end of 2022 interest rates are about 4% and climbing. The loan for each project now costs $40,000, making the last project unprofitable, and the second project will only be profitable for a couple more months at best. So you cut projects 2 and 3, laying off everyone working on them.
That's how a healthy company would end up with layoffs. A less healthy company might only have projects like the second and third one, and is now running around trying to improve efficiency. And some companies don't make profit at all, being afloat on the hope of eventually making some, and slowly sinking as that money becomes more and more expensive.
Really good summary of how different economic times are handled differently at a business strategy level. It's worth noting as an engineer because risky startups 2 years ago are not carrying the same level of risk for you as an IC to contribute to today. It could be case that a startup closes doors way faster/quicker today whereas a few years back they'd continue burning cash.
This is why jobs are not just a job but you are investing in a company so to speak because if the company is not successful your job may also not be needed any longer.
This is why jobs are not just a job but you are investing in a company so to speak because if the company is not successful your job may also not be needed any longer.
so you make this assumption that these companies laying off mostly fund their business with short-term bank loans? really?
VC $ works out the same. 18-24mo, with an even higher burn than a bank would accept, and the assumption that you can raise a 2X+ bigger round at the end of it to pay for the previous staff + next round of hires.
VC $ works the same as short-term bank loans? how? in any case, all of this interest rate "math" the parent wrote is only applicable to short-term loans. This is math for a shawarma stand, not a company that raised 300 mil of non-borrowed money.
aren't these companies continually raising funds to stay in operation, which would mean they would be looking out as far as their next anticipated investment and those rates? Looking up CircleCI in particular on crunchbase it looks like they've raised an investment in all but 2 years of the last decade. Last one was two years ago and presumably they'll need more soon if they aren't profitable.
> anticipated investment and those rates
Sorry, what rates are you talking about? VC investment doesn't have any rates, at least not to the startup.
Sorry, what rates are you talking about? VC investment doesn't have any rates, at least not to the startup.
VC funds are not directly controlled by the federal interest rates but their ability to get _their_ investors to invest in the VC is affected. VC funds tend to get less investment when the return on cash becomes much higher. If the VCs cant get enough funding then they are going to turn around to their investments and either whip them to make more money or start giving worse terms to companies looking to raise another round
The interesting difference, and current problem, is VCs expect raised funds to be spent as burn on hiring more people despite existing people already being paid from VC capital instead of revenue. And they expect that to keep happening: each next round will be bigger and cover even bigger payrolls. If the next round doesn't happen, layoffs, and if flat (ex: bc markups are down 3x), dilution & quitting by the best - either way, downward spiral that is hard to return from. The gamble is nothing breaks while this happens -- doubling down the bet.
With interest loans based on revenue, it's fine to stop whenever bc you have revenue for (most of) payroll.
Operationally, that expectation is now worse than interest. In the good times, it was free money for free growth, but with fewer and marked down rounds, a killer. Some founders value efficiency, which avoids this issue, but in the last few years, VC boards certainly were encouraging inefficient growth, meaning bad times for such VC-dependent companies.
With interest loans based on revenue, it's fine to stop whenever bc you have revenue for (most of) payroll.
Operationally, that expectation is now worse than interest. In the good times, it was free money for free growth, but with fewer and marked down rounds, a killer. Some founders value efficiency, which avoids this issue, but in the last few years, VC boards certainly were encouraging inefficient growth, meaning bad times for such VC-dependent companies.
Lots of mature companies use leverage: if you have a million to spend, you can just ask the bank to give you another two million so you can do three times as much. [1]
If you do have three million sitting around, you still have to consider if you can invest it somewhere else for more money. Why do a low-return project if you get more from investing into bonds?
And of course VCs don't get their money out of thing air, they also have to compete with all other forms of investments for money. So if short term bonds become more attractive while capital is harder to get for potential investors that puts pressure on VCs, who will pass it on.
Of course the actual dynamics are complicated and could fill books. But in the end if you are loaning money you have to do better than the cost of capital, and if you have money your own profit margin still has to outcompete other potential investments.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_structure#Leverage
If you do have three million sitting around, you still have to consider if you can invest it somewhere else for more money. Why do a low-return project if you get more from investing into bonds?
And of course VCs don't get their money out of thing air, they also have to compete with all other forms of investments for money. So if short term bonds become more attractive while capital is harder to get for potential investors that puts pressure on VCs, who will pass it on.
Of course the actual dynamics are complicated and could fill books. But in the end if you are loaning money you have to do better than the cost of capital, and if you have money your own profit margin still has to outcompete other potential investments.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_structure#Leverage
It's still money and money is like sterile water. If the 0 risk interest rate is 4% and your little project will yield 1%, you are much better parking the money at the bank. Of course, it's a bit more complicated than that; and people like to do projects and build stuff.
But I have seen this in a construction company when interest rates were high (different country, not US). "Big Boss" was always "uncertain" about any new construction work and the bank paid him around 7% to park his money. Come the time when inflation started rising fast (that was 2018, pre-pandemic); and suddenly all that capital was deployed without an after-thought.
So yeah, these interest rates number have real effects.
But I have seen this in a construction company when interest rates were high (different country, not US). "Big Boss" was always "uncertain" about any new construction work and the bank paid him around 7% to park his money. Come the time when inflation started rising fast (that was 2018, pre-pandemic); and suddenly all that capital was deployed without an after-thought.
So yeah, these interest rates number have real effects.
I don't know about CircleCI specifically, but generally, pre-IPO companies are pushed to reinvest profits in favor of aggressive/continued growth, instead of profit. Most companies intentionally overspend, but now that the investments are drying out, they are changing their posture. So, I would guess it's the former, i.e., letting people go to reduce the risk of running out of money.
At the same time, depending on how the business is doing, some investors might look for exits too instead of plateau or later raising another round. So, it could be both.
At the same time, depending on how the business is doing, some investors might look for exits too instead of plateau or later raising another round. So, it could be both.
There doesn't need to be any external pressure. Companies can and do layoffs even when they're doing well. If a line of business just isn't profitable or they this they can be just as effective with fewer staff or they want to outsource headcount. Happens all the time it just doesn't get headlines.
A down-round is basically death for a startup.
The easiest way to avoid a down-round is to layoff a big portion of your company, and hope investors believe it won't impact your future revenue.
Unless we get back to ZIRP, pretty much every startup in existence is going to down-round on their next raise.
The easiest way to avoid a down-round is to layoff a big portion of your company, and hope investors believe it won't impact your future revenue.
Unless we get back to ZIRP, pretty much every startup in existence is going to down-round on their next raise.
I feel bad for the employees.
Does anyone... actually like CircleCI?
Last time I used it, it just felt way too opinionated. Then they introduced their way of standardizing jobs with templates or something (it has been a while) and for some reason made the decision that any templates had to be public instead of private for the first version (which was completely backwards).
Personally for me I always lean towards Jenkins just because I can do whatever I want with it. But baring that I feel like I would end up either going with something my git hosted provides (like GitHub actions) or something my cloud provider has (like AWS CodeBuild).
Is there something I am missing? Looking at the pricing it isn't exactly cheap either.
Does anyone... actually like CircleCI?
Last time I used it, it just felt way too opinionated. Then they introduced their way of standardizing jobs with templates or something (it has been a while) and for some reason made the decision that any templates had to be public instead of private for the first version (which was completely backwards).
Personally for me I always lean towards Jenkins just because I can do whatever I want with it. But baring that I feel like I would end up either going with something my git hosted provides (like GitHub actions) or something my cloud provider has (like AWS CodeBuild).
Is there something I am missing? Looking at the pricing it isn't exactly cheap either.
[deleted]
I used to love CircleCI then they broke all my CI jobs when they deprecated their "Convenience image". Rather than continue to maintain CircleCI jobs and pay them for the pleasure I am just migrating to GH actions. It is painful. They have good lock in.
> Last time I used it, it just felt way too opinionated.
That's exactly what I like about it.
That's exactly what I like about it.
> Does anyone... actually like CircleCI?
It's a weird feeling where they once felt like a reprieve from all the PITA "enterprise" stuff, but now they're that PITA kinda-poorly-minded "SaaS" stuff, which sucks compared to... a Microsoft product?
It's kinda obvious in retrospect. Enterprise became SaaS faster than SaaS could become enterprise.
It's a weird feeling where they once felt like a reprieve from all the PITA "enterprise" stuff, but now they're that PITA kinda-poorly-minded "SaaS" stuff, which sucks compared to... a Microsoft product?
It's kinda obvious in retrospect. Enterprise became SaaS faster than SaaS could become enterprise.
I set up CircleCI at a previous company because it was "easy" and neither GitHub Actions nor AWS CodeBuild existed yet. Eventually, we outgrew it (memory issues, I think?) and set up our own Jenkins instance. This would've been back in 2016, so I'm sure it's better now.
No not really.
I think it is one of the few providers that offers Apple runners. Not much else besides that. We switched to self hosted teamcity and 1/3 our build time with a 6 month payback.
I think it is one of the few providers that offers Apple runners. Not much else besides that. We switched to self hosted teamcity and 1/3 our build time with a 6 month payback.
I'm a former CircleCI employee (I left the company almost a year ago), and I generally really liked the product.
It's probably a little overpriced, and I wish they had just focused on "doing the same thing but better" rather than spending a lot of efforts on value-add gimmicks, but I do like the core product very much.
It's probably a little overpriced, and I wish they had just focused on "doing the same thing but better" rather than spending a lot of efforts on value-add gimmicks, but I do like the core product very much.
I would rather cut off a finger than ever use Jenkins again. What a piece of shit. Design from the 90s, maintained by people who can't code and don't care about users, trying to turd-polish it into new tech stacks to justify themselves to the sad old enterprises invested in them.
Circle is decent. It has all the functionality you wish was built into Jenkins, but way easier and better, with no maintenance cost or insane languages to learn. It has some drawbacks but nothing you can't work around. Orbs work fine, they also can be private. Circle's self hosted functionality is... bizarrely stupidly designed, but essentially works.
I would much rather use Drone.io for any new paid CI project. The best functionality, literally as simple as possible, with cloud native design. Extensible, flawless as self-hosted, does everything you need.
Circle is decent. It has all the functionality you wish was built into Jenkins, but way easier and better, with no maintenance cost or insane languages to learn. It has some drawbacks but nothing you can't work around. Orbs work fine, they also can be private. Circle's self hosted functionality is... bizarrely stupidly designed, but essentially works.
I would much rather use Drone.io for any new paid CI project. The best functionality, literally as simple as possible, with cloud native design. Extensible, flawless as self-hosted, does everything you need.
I don't want to turn a discussion surrounding layoffs into a lens about the business itself; it sucks to be laid off, and I wish everyone who was impacted great expediency in finding a new role.
But I'm going to anyway: I genuinely don't understand how CircleCI is still a business. Every major code repository provider has CI built in. All of the ones I've interacted with (Github Actions & Gitlab) are just as good as CircleCI and in some ways far better (e.g. there's a stellar community of Actions builders on GHA, that can be included with one line; CCI Orbs don't have nearly the same uptake). Pricing is all pretty similar. Some companies want to self-host stuff: JetBrains & Atlassian still own this.
Ultimately we left CCI because their stability was unacceptable. While its been quite a few months, their status page history even today showcases this well [1]; they legitimately have partial or full outages once every two or so weeks (and those are just the ones they tell people about; we regularly, weekly, saw build failures that could only be explained by "freakin circleci, just re-run it").
[1] https://status.circleci.com/
But I'm going to anyway: I genuinely don't understand how CircleCI is still a business. Every major code repository provider has CI built in. All of the ones I've interacted with (Github Actions & Gitlab) are just as good as CircleCI and in some ways far better (e.g. there's a stellar community of Actions builders on GHA, that can be included with one line; CCI Orbs don't have nearly the same uptake). Pricing is all pretty similar. Some companies want to self-host stuff: JetBrains & Atlassian still own this.
Ultimately we left CCI because their stability was unacceptable. While its been quite a few months, their status page history even today showcases this well [1]; they legitimately have partial or full outages once every two or so weeks (and those are just the ones they tell people about; we regularly, weekly, saw build failures that could only be explained by "freakin circleci, just re-run it").
[1] https://status.circleci.com/
You're being downvoted for telling people exactly why they got laid off. It's time to wake the fuck up engineers. When you complacently don't pay attention to your business and core offering, this is what happens.
Engineers aren't generally setting the priorities on what gets fixed when or what the business is actually offering. The complacency problem is usually in management.
Can't speak for how CCI is run, but that's how it is at most places with more than 10 people.
Can't speak for how CCI is run, but that's how it is at most places with more than 10 people.
> Engineers aren't generally setting the priorities on what gets fixed
A good engineer would be like: “f—k it, I fixed it.” And the priorities would then get shifted around it.
Identifying when this is the right time to act and fixing it often makes the engineer gain seniority.
(Yes, it only works when both business and tech are broken. If it’s just the tech broken, then engineer will probably get pipped for working on wrong thing)
A good engineer would be like: “f—k it, I fixed it.” And the priorities would then get shifted around it.
Identifying when this is the right time to act and fixing it often makes the engineer gain seniority.
(Yes, it only works when both business and tech are broken. If it’s just the tech broken, then engineer will probably get pipped for working on wrong thing)
I'm not sure how an engineer could be like "f--k it, I fixed it" to the company's business and pricing model.
By being 10x, full-stack, and a ninja rockstar.
I've done this multiple times in my career.
The context to my post are the reliability issues that def. can be instrumented and fixed.
Business and pricing model not so much unless the engineer is willing to add the Sales prefix to their engineer role ;)
But even the pricing model - measure and compare the costs, competitors, and value derived (ok, commodity now vs 5yrs ago) and work with people pitching prices.
That’s still designing, analyzing, measuring systems - prices instead of code - definition of engineering.
Business and pricing model not so much unless the engineer is willing to add the Sales prefix to their engineer role ;)
But even the pricing model - measure and compare the costs, competitors, and value derived (ok, commodity now vs 5yrs ago) and work with people pitching prices.
That’s still designing, analyzing, measuring systems - prices instead of code - definition of engineering.
Exactly this. I've worked for founders at small companies (<20 people) who just did not want to listen to advice or suggestions. It would be almost impossible to change anything at a larger firm. Let's just keep doing the same old thing that isn't working.
I think the saying is “vote with your feet”. There’s always at least one thing you can change. Your time is worth more than your salary, otherwise they wouldn’t pay it. If you don’t think a business will survive, stop investing into them with your time.
Definitely. And I did exactly that, eventually. (I waited too long!)
Engineers choose who to work for.
We go through these cycles where “I have no idea how they make money but they keep paying me” stops working. There’s only so long you can work for a company that doesn’t have a viable business strategy.
I don’t expect engineers to fix the business strategy, but I expect them to consider it when choosing to join a company or to stay.
We go through these cycles where “I have no idea how they make money but they keep paying me” stops working. There’s only so long you can work for a company that doesn’t have a viable business strategy.
I don’t expect engineers to fix the business strategy, but I expect them to consider it when choosing to join a company or to stay.
> I don’t expect engineers to fix the business strategy, but I expect them to consider it when choosing to join a company or to stay.
For many companies, you cannot be qualified to make this determination.
Let's say I interview at a farming tech startup. They tell me that there are X million farms in america, and Y million have told them they want the crop software they're building. How do I make that determination of whether this is a viable business strategy? I'm not a farmer, I do not know enough farmers operating large farms to gather that data myself, I have to trust the company to represent this truthfully.
This even applies to things like CircleCI, where the product is something an engineer can understand well. I know what tools I as an individual developer use, but CircleCI is targeting enterprises, which I decidedly am not. I have no clue how some enterprise shop works. Again, I have to trust how the business present itself.
For many companies, you cannot be qualified to make this determination.
Let's say I interview at a farming tech startup. They tell me that there are X million farms in america, and Y million have told them they want the crop software they're building. How do I make that determination of whether this is a viable business strategy? I'm not a farmer, I do not know enough farmers operating large farms to gather that data myself, I have to trust the company to represent this truthfully.
This even applies to things like CircleCI, where the product is something an engineer can understand well. I know what tools I as an individual developer use, but CircleCI is targeting enterprises, which I decidedly am not. I have no clue how some enterprise shop works. Again, I have to trust how the business present itself.
I do agree, though I think on the CircleCI front at least, it's had some not positive press on Hacker News this year (big price rises and or cutting the free tier from memory, plus the launch of GitHub actions).
But yeah, for industries we don't understand... hope it's publicly listed and has some insightful annual reports is probably the only option.
But yeah, for industries we don't understand... hope it's publicly listed and has some insightful annual reports is probably the only option.
Engineers should be domain experts. This isn’t the case now but I imagine as more people become engineers, and more stuff leans towards automation, this will end up being the case
> For many companies, you cannot be qualified to make this determination.
It’s hard but useful. If you know this, you will be more successful whether you’re in engineering or sales or whatever.
I research every business and organization I do business with. It’s not perfect, but it’s part of my decision making process.
In CircleCI’s case, this would be me looking at the financials (hard because they are private), talking to some friends who use them, and, since I know some tech, trying the product.
It’s not wise to trust every business as every business has people thinking and saying they are great. It’s wise for an individual to assess these for themself. Companies success isn’t entirely random.
It’s hard but useful. If you know this, you will be more successful whether you’re in engineering or sales or whatever.
I research every business and organization I do business with. It’s not perfect, but it’s part of my decision making process.
In CircleCI’s case, this would be me looking at the financials (hard because they are private), talking to some friends who use them, and, since I know some tech, trying the product.
It’s not wise to trust every business as every business has people thinking and saying they are great. It’s wise for an individual to assess these for themself. Companies success isn’t entirely random.
This research helps you form a more informed opinion, but it doesn't make you any more qualified at predicting the companies future success potential. The people running these companies are barely in such a position, nonetheless the average person who thinks they're privy to prescient insight.
I’m not sure what you mean by qualified.
The research makes you more able to make an accurate decision. It helps improve your outcome.
I don’t think being qualified is important here. I think the important piece is to make a good decision to join a firm, or leave a firm.
There’s no perfect information, but every potential employee has the ability to improve their chances by researching important decisions like this.
I think a good litmus test is if I can’t answer “how do they make money” or “how will they make money” or “how do they create value,” then I don’t want to work for them.
The research makes you more able to make an accurate decision. It helps improve your outcome.
I don’t think being qualified is important here. I think the important piece is to make a good decision to join a firm, or leave a firm.
There’s no perfect information, but every potential employee has the ability to improve their chances by researching important decisions like this.
I think a good litmus test is if I can’t answer “how do they make money” or “how will they make money” or “how do they create value,” then I don’t want to work for them.
Instead of just giving up that you are not qualified to do so, you can at least do a preliminary analysis.
1) Follow the money - where is it coming from ? why would it keep coming in, what is needed ? where does it go ?
2) Competitors - who are they and what are they doing.
For your hypothetical farming tech company, find out about other farm tech companies who have similar product/market segment and look at their offerings, valuations and revenue model. If one does not have this reference point and doesn't have the domain knowledge, then one should not consider said opportunity unless one wants to gamble.
1) Follow the money - where is it coming from ? why would it keep coming in, what is needed ? where does it go ?
2) Competitors - who are they and what are they doing.
For your hypothetical farming tech company, find out about other farm tech companies who have similar product/market segment and look at their offerings, valuations and revenue model. If one does not have this reference point and doesn't have the domain knowledge, then one should not consider said opportunity unless one wants to gamble.
I think the point is more that there's increasingly no reason for CircleCI to exist. All your major code hosting players have a CI tool and the various accessories you'd want to attach to it.
I think CircleCI has a niche in orgs that self-host code in e.g. phabricator or gerrit, and want a cadillac CI experience without building it themselves in jenkins or similar. I'd argue that niche is shrinking, and as a CCI employee or potential job-seeker I would wonder whether CircleCI is a good place to be because of that.
I think CircleCI has a niche in orgs that self-host code in e.g. phabricator or gerrit, and want a cadillac CI experience without building it themselves in jenkins or similar. I'd argue that niche is shrinking, and as a CCI employee or potential job-seeker I would wonder whether CircleCI is a good place to be because of that.
Even that niche has better competitors, I think. I haven't used on-prem CCI, but I used hosted CCI for several years and when my team switched to https://buildkite.com/ it was a huge breath of fresh air. I think BuildKite is the only CI system I've used I thought was actually worth paying for, and I bet it works out cheaper than self-hosted CCI in most cases as well.
I never used CircleCI so I can't speak to it specifically, but there's tons to improve on GitHub actions.
The Actions web UI is so bad it's almost a parody. Debugging stuff is harder than it needs to be. No good way to manually control builds. Possible but not very easy to run stuff locally. Very limited platform support (Linux Windows, and macOS, although other platforms are possible with VirtualBox hackery but it's SLOW and pretty unreliable).
It is enough to make a viable business when GitHub actions is right there? Who knows... But there are tons of reasons for external CI tools to exist, IMO.
The Actions web UI is so bad it's almost a parody. Debugging stuff is harder than it needs to be. No good way to manually control builds. Possible but not very easy to run stuff locally. Very limited platform support (Linux Windows, and macOS, although other platforms are possible with VirtualBox hackery but it's SLOW and pretty unreliable).
It is enough to make a viable business when GitHub actions is right there? Who knows... But there are tons of reasons for external CI tools to exist, IMO.
We intentionally involve our engineers in product decisions and customer discovery.
We don't expect them to be driving novel, new features (unless they're technical in nature), but we do expect that they call out BS and make sure what they're working on is valuable to the business. Exception is platform teams who's "customer" is other developers.
We don't expect them to be driving novel, new features (unless they're technical in nature), but we do expect that they call out BS and make sure what they're working on is valuable to the business. Exception is platform teams who's "customer" is other developers.
> exactly why they got laid off
not really. A circleci pm down a few threads mentions its not caused by any available numbers. Another observation is that currently even perfectly healthy, focused and money-making businesses with solid products (e.g. stripe) also do layoffs.
As for circle, it's ok. I switched our thing to it from internal Jenkins, it has its ups and downs, not the worst in my experience.
not really. A circleci pm down a few threads mentions its not caused by any available numbers. Another observation is that currently even perfectly healthy, focused and money-making businesses with solid products (e.g. stripe) also do layoffs.
As for circle, it's ok. I switched our thing to it from internal Jenkins, it has its ups and downs, not the worst in my experience.
No, I think this is short sighted management not realising how hard this will be for them to recover. Hiring is a hard, slow process - they won't recover this scale quickly.
Not being able to find work for engineers is a failure of imagination - again a failure of management.
Not being able to find work for engineers is a failure of imagination - again a failure of management.
We also recently left them for self-hosted GHA runners. The other problem is that their pricing is insane - we're building exactly the same code for ~20% of the cost.
I could never understand their bills. I seemed to get dozens of small invoices throughout the month. Their whole concept of credits was completely puzzling too. Left to GHA.
I'd love for self-hosted GitHub Actions runners to work in ECS Fargate.
Agreed, the pricing is all wrong. That's the #1 reason I know people have actively moved off. Not competitive esp as all source control services have it included now.
When GHA has decent instance sizes I imagine they'll eat a lot of CCIs lunches. The automatic test splitting is also a god send for parallelising builds.
Github Actions now has up-to 64-core Linux and Windows instances.
Thanks for pointing that out. Are these large runners somewhat new? I feel like I check every few months and I hadn't seen them before.
https://docs.github.com/en/actions/using-github-hosted-runne...
4 core | 16gb RAM | 150gb SSD is the next size up which is just about what I need.
Edit: September 1 was the announcement, so I was probably due to check back in: https://github.blog/changelog/2022-09-01-github-actions-larg...
https://docs.github.com/en/actions/using-github-hosted-runne...
4 core | 16gb RAM | 150gb SSD is the next size up which is just about what I need.
Edit: September 1 was the announcement, so I was probably due to check back in: https://github.blog/changelog/2022-09-01-github-actions-larg...
I thought CircleCI offered iOS builds which neither Github or Bitbucket did in the past (maybe they do now?)
GitHub Actions definitely offers iOS builds.
GHA has macOS runners but they're persistently 9 - 12 months behind macOS versions, making it difficult to keep using them when Apple starts requiring the latest OS version for Xcode. Luckily self-hosting is pretty easy, if you have the time, money, and expertise.
A lot of places probably set up
CircleCI and don't want to invest into switching since the value add between services is so minimal.
Why start a new project with CircleCI? That I don't have a clue.
Why start a new project with CircleCI? That I don't have a clue.
We used to pay CircleCI $200/month to run CI on a widely-used open-source project, which was set up before GHA was available. Around one year ago we switched to GHA, which was significantly better, and cost $0.
At around the same time we made the switch, we got an opaque email from CircleCI about their new `performance plan` which would have increased the cost to $300/mo. This was more metered pricing.
Anyway GHA has been a breath of fresh air and I have convinced several open-source maintainers do dump CircleCI in favor of GHA.
At around the same time we made the switch, we got an opaque email from CircleCI about their new `performance plan` which would have increased the cost to $300/mo. This was more metered pricing.
Anyway GHA has been a breath of fresh air and I have convinced several open-source maintainers do dump CircleCI in favor of GHA.
When I read this, not judging or anything, no ulterior motive, I'm reminded Microsoft and embrace, extend, extinguish.
When and if they get rid of the competition, it likely won't be free aka 0 monetary costs again.
When and if they get rid of the competition, it likely won't be free aka 0 monetary costs again.
Agreed on their stability. For a period of time earlier this year it felt like CircleCI went down every other day, and since we require checks before deployment it was a pain constantly having to deal with outages.
CI has essentially become a commodity with a need for reliability.
For us, we moved from Travis to Github because Travis just wasn't reliable enough (and had terrible security). We'd be blocked from deploying for hours at a time because Travis had a random outage. I know it's way more complex than "boxes that run some stuff", but CI/CD isn't exactly rocket science.
We also noticed that by using a dedicated CI provider, we doubled our deployment downtime. We'd be blocked from deploying when either Travis or Github had issues. Whereas, we're only blocked now when Github has issues.
For us, we moved from Travis to Github because Travis just wasn't reliable enough (and had terrible security). We'd be blocked from deploying for hours at a time because Travis had a random outage. I know it's way more complex than "boxes that run some stuff", but CI/CD isn't exactly rocket science.
We also noticed that by using a dedicated CI provider, we doubled our deployment downtime. We'd be blocked from deploying when either Travis or Github had issues. Whereas, we're only blocked now when Github has issues.
100% can back the claim about Travis. It is awful and very buggy.
For our case, we are migrating to the Google Cloud Build. More stable and features but also some things are still lacking. Nonetheless, a big step up from Travis.
For our case, we are migrating to the Google Cloud Build. More stable and features but also some things are still lacking. Nonetheless, a big step up from Travis.
I wish it was a commodity, but here I am forced to use Azure CI
> I genuinely don't understand how CircleCI is still a business.
In slight defense of Circle CI I think that could be applied to at least 50% of tech companies. Though CCI is perhaps more guilty than most of this transgression.
In slight defense of Circle CI I think that could be applied to at least 50% of tech companies. Though CCI is perhaps more guilty than most of this transgression.
Atlassian's bamboo has a terrible reputation
I don't know how bad CircleCI is, but if it is worse than GH Actions, then that's quite an achievement ;) GH Actions kinda works, but I don't know who it has been designed for (especially compared to much more mature solutions like Gitlab CI). On top of that, GH Actions VMs seem to be extremely performance-throttled, and it can take forever to get a free Mac runner. It's hard to imagine how another CI service can be any worse TBH.
I agree this is really sad and I also hope everyone affected finds a new opportunity quickly. CI is a commodity so it's hard for CircleCI to sustain as a stand-alone business. I found DroneCI to be simplest and fastest CI tool I have used. In fact just recently Harness published some bold claims of being 4x faster than leading CI vendors(https://harness.io/blog/fastest-ci-tool). I have been using it myself and it's faster. The benefit of having CI, CD, Security testing and governance features makes it a compelling platform offering similar to GitHub & Gitlab.
This was my exact reaction to. I was a customer for CircleCI for years and it was my go to choice and introduced it to countless companies, they were clearly at first an engineering led company that obsessed about functional programming.
At some point after their series C they became rent-seeking, their support became increasingly distant, and the quality overall started degrading. Then I get an email that we need to pay for seats.. on top of paying for CI minutes.
It was an extra > $500 a month for no additional service, no additional usage, no nothing, and they would not budge on their new pricing plan. So I just moved all the stuff to GitHub who was barely mature enough at that point and never looked back.
Putting the finance department in charge of product decisions is a mistake with long term reproductions and CircleCI is only seeing the results of this. Treating your oldest customers like a financial liability is a mistake.
At some point after their series C they became rent-seeking, their support became increasingly distant, and the quality overall started degrading. Then I get an email that we need to pay for seats.. on top of paying for CI minutes.
It was an extra > $500 a month for no additional service, no additional usage, no nothing, and they would not budge on their new pricing plan. So I just moved all the stuff to GitHub who was barely mature enough at that point and never looked back.
Putting the finance department in charge of product decisions is a mistake with long term reproductions and CircleCI is only seeing the results of this. Treating your oldest customers like a financial liability is a mistake.
Pretty good severance terms all things considered.
Best of luck to all impacted employees!
The terms seem above average, I hope something like this will become the standard.
The terms seem above average, I hope something like this will become the standard.
I was one of the 17% laid off from CircleCI today. It's true, we did get to keep our laptops :) As for reasons, it doesn't seem to be from any current woes in the numbers (or at least from the stats I saw).
So, um, anyone looking for a PM with experience in security or data privacy? Hit me up!
I'm happy to answer any questions I can, and good luck to all those who've been laid off recently (at Circle or otherwise).
So, um, anyone looking for a PM with experience in security or data privacy? Hit me up!
I'm happy to answer any questions I can, and good luck to all those who've been laid off recently (at Circle or otherwise).
What kind of computers did you get to keep? M-based Mac’s?
To this date I cannot build the hypothetical result of a PR with CircleCI. Number 1 reason not to use it.
What hinders you from doing a rebase onto the base branch after the initial code checkout of the PR branch?
Maybe it would be good to have this as a built in feature but it can get complicated quickly, I actually prefer doing it manually.
Maybe it would be good to have this as a built in feature but it can get complicated quickly, I actually prefer doing it manually.
Over the course of 2017-2018 we did a trial run of Circle CI and they promised it could work on-prem or at least in govcloud over and over again, and then just didn't. So we reverted back to using Jenkins.
Lol. Engineers pretending to unders6sales and business. That's why you make 250k tops and we make 400k
It baffles me that in the US you can throw an employee out on a day-to-day basis and there's so little job security. In EU countries I know, this can only happen with some out-of-the-books cheap labor employment. Stronger laws protect employees, not businesses.
US? Little job security, hospitals you want to stay out of due to life-destroying costs, ultra high homelessness, little safety overall and the "American Dream" being reserved for sociopaths with no empathy nor morals.
US? Little job security, hospitals you want to stay out of due to life-destroying costs, ultra high homelessness, little safety overall and the "American Dream" being reserved for sociopaths with no empathy nor morals.
Lol. A bunch of needs pretending to understand business. Yiu'vw never run point on 6-7 figure procurement, nor will you ever.
CCI has the most resources classes and highest concurrency of any cloud solution.
Put the pipe back in.
CCI over expanded when money was cheap and is contracting because their customers, who you mongs mostly work for did even worse.
Real culprit is fiat money and the fed without which 50 percent of tech would not exist.
CCI has the most resources classes and highest concurrency of any cloud solution.
Put the pipe back in.
CCI over expanded when money was cheap and is contracting because their customers, who you mongs mostly work for did even worse.
Real culprit is fiat money and the fed without which 50 percent of tech would not exist.
I don't know if I'm shocked or impressed at how directly he states that the reason for the change is the stock market.
Basically, if I'm reading this right: "Our business is doing great! We're going to keep doing great! But the stock market doesn't agree. So even though the stock market has zero impact on our revenues or expenses, I want to keep my board happy. So we're letting you go. But it has nothing to do with the company, my leadership, or your performance. Just whiny stockholders."
I know companies do this all the time, but this seems as cold as liquid helium to me.
Basically, if I'm reading this right: "Our business is doing great! We're going to keep doing great! But the stock market doesn't agree. So even though the stock market has zero impact on our revenues or expenses, I want to keep my board happy. So we're letting you go. But it has nothing to do with the company, my leadership, or your performance. Just whiny stockholders."
I know companies do this all the time, but this seems as cold as liquid helium to me.
The stock market has every impact on a potential IPO next year though. I imagine their thinking is that they can get an immediate boost to gross margin by making this move without raising any alarms since they have cover by much of the sector right now, without sacrificing much in terms of delivery.