HashiCorp IPO today
hashicorp.com
hashicorp.com
You made life as a cloud infra beard better for a while, and I wish you all success going onwards.
I've gotten a ton of value out of Fabric (this is in no way a criticism of Jeff's great work) but I've seen multiple projects where people took at advantage of everything they could do in Python and made a deployment system which is as much of a project to maintain as the code it deployed. There are only so many teams disciplined enough to avoid that and I think the declarative approach avoids many of those pitfalls, critically dependent on providing a sufficiently rich set of abstractions.
This is now my preferred method
I'm tired of config languages. Just be a library.
HCL 2 anyway.
Page 63
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1720671/000119312521...
"We and all of our directors, officers, and holders of approximately % of our outstanding stock and equity securities are subject to lock-up agreements with the underwriters that restrict their ability to transfer such shares of stock and such securities, including any hedging transactions, during the period ending on the date that is 180 days after the date of this prospectus, as further described in the section titled “Shares Eligible for Future Sale.”
End of the day, the secrets are being written to a .properties file or /proc/<pid>/env somewhere anyway and can be read by whomever has the permissions or the shellcode to do so..
Thanks for coming to my brain dump.
If you integrate properly throughout the stack (i.e “not being negligent”) then secrets will not hit properties files, rotation will happen correctly, and you will be able to audit everything.
You can also do this using a native secret management system if you’re in a a public cloud, but Vault is, for the most part, just better.
edited to add "files"
Vault's real value is in rotating credentials automatically. Some of that value has eroded over time, e.g. Kubernetes now having IAM Roles for Service Accounts. But Vault handles it for databases, and there are a variety of plugins to handle it for other usecases as well, e.g. https://github.com/martinbaillie/vault-plugin-secrets-github
The 3 of 5 keys thing is just a default and easily changed.
> ...a common confusion is multi-cloud vs. multi-vendor services. The latter is way more common, especially at smaller companies. Tools like Terraform are often touted as "multi-cloud" and people ask questions like "Why would I use Terraform if I use only AWS?" And the easy answer to that is tools like Terraform allow you to manage anything with an API as code. For example: do you want to manage DNS, or CDN, or DBs, etc. (that maybe aren't on AWS) as code? Terraform gives you the way to learn one config language/workflow to make that happen, even if 100% of your compute is on one provider. From a non-technical standpoint, this helps your organization start learning non-vendor-specific tooling, which better prepares you from a human standpoint for the future noted above.
> I think the #1 value of multi-cloud is organizational: you build your core infra/app lifecycle processes (dev, build, deploy, monitor, etc.) around a technology-agnostic stance. As technologies shift, other clouds become important, new paradigms emerge, etc. your organization is likely more prepared to experience that change. This is something that is core to our ideology at HashiCorp, its point #1 in our Tao that I published 4 years ago! https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/the-tao-of-hashicorp
-mitchellh, https://www.reddit.com/r/devops/comments/91afzz/why_multiclo...
Where i'm at it has been SQL Server for the last 12 years and now Azure for cloud services.
It's highly unlikely that will change for the next 10 years.
And almost equally unlikely that Terraform will be used instead of ARM templates and Bicep.
k8s is a nice way to get there, if your k8s is running on gcp, aws, or azure it doesn't really impact your pipelines or process at all.
Things are harder at the bleeding edge, I'm working atm on a site that's all in on aws lambda with server less framework and aurora, kinesis and such, to the point where a migration would mean a rewrite tbh.. And that's alright for them, they're ok with their cloud partner.. And it's cheap too..
Single cloud has a few extraordinary benefits for slow moving organizations.
Once you hang up the sign and declare "we are an xxx shop" it becomes an extraordinarily effective tool to drag unsophisticated employees and departments into the future.
"Microsoft said we have to do this so we have to" overcomes a LOT of internal barriers to technical change.
The biggest problems are never technology in large organizations, it's the humans beings anxiously protecting their overpaid managerial role. Single cloud is amazingly effective at improving the human factor.
At more sophisticated places with a bigger human appetite for innovation of course it's a different story.
“Microsoft said we have to do this so we have to” is a lot of internal barriers to technical change.
At least, that's what I see working in an public sector enterprise shop whose cloud transition started as involving a break from being a solid and conservative narrow Microsoft shop which is currently backsliding as that transition broadens and innovators at all levels (including the CTO that spearheaded it, who is departing for a CIO gig) move on or are marginalized.
That's often a moderately straightforward discussion.
It's still a great product for lots of other reasons, just don't believe for one second it will help you move from AWS to Azure. It's almost like saying YAML is multi-vendor.
Yes, there are alternative ways of accomplishing this, but simple config files that can be easily validated and used to check against current infrastructure is an ideal way to do this.
Before Terraform, I worked on a team that built what was basically terraform. It's just a natural, obvious, and effective way of managing cloud infrastructure.
Audit trails, authorization, authentication, sentry rules (don't allow devs to open a public port for example), centralized automation (plans executed in order), dedicated build agents.
That's a few reasons why we used TFE at Capital One.
I’ve seen interest increasing in Nomad lately as well. More conversations about it.
Terraform has a huge following though.
You joking but I read this comment way too often on HN.
If on the other hand, you have multiple devs, committing changes, and applying them, then you need something like TF to ensure that the applies are consistent, ordered, and auditable.
For personal use? You don't need TF cloud, but the problems it solves get obvious as you scale up.
Setting all my infrastructure in Terraform in general has been a big waste of time for our startup since as soon as we got it running we never ever had to touch it again. Actually curious if somone touches their infra regularly.
nerds: stop bringing your own cake to other people's birthday parties.
What does this have to do with nerds? Articles like that are probably written by PR staff.
I couldn't care less to be honest, just clarifying what I understood.
Happy for Hashicorp, also love Gitlab.
https://www.google.com/finance/quote/HCP:NASDAQ?sa=X&ved=2ah...
The bump and later positive price movements benefits employees and founders a lot, therefore helps in retention and lower compensation costs for new employees etc and also investors who sell .
If an employee joins with ISOs based on a $40 share price, and the market price is $35 or $15 a quarter or two later, it is bad for morale. A bump, even a small one, means everyone is “in the black”, which is good for morale.
Once employees are transitioned to RSUs, it’s less of a concern, because they’re still making money, just less money. It’s a big concern for ISOs granted close to an IPO, though.
This is why some companies switch to RSUs within a year or so of an expected IPO date.
Any ISO's pre-ipo will have some strike price, that is typically rooted in some valuation- the valuation per share is really just a function of the number of shares outstanding and this routinely gets adjusted right before the ipo, but the value of those ISOs or other grant types remains the exact same- its the same as reverse split where the share price doubles, or a 2 for 1 split where the share price halves but you have twice the number of shares- its financially equivalent.
You are really concerned with the valuation of the company when your grants were given, and what the valuation of the company is on the open market, and in the case of ISOs really just where the valuation of your options puts you above water. The IPO price in itself has nothing to do with either of those things, aside from a very brief moment in time after the opening auction where the company is worth the IPO price * shares outstanding.
The only way having an IPO go down on the first day actually hurts an employee is if they start that day or are granted stock or options at the IPO price, and I don't believe this has ever happened. Stock prices don't matter, total company value does.
This does routinely happen, because the 409A valuation for the quarter or more prior to an IPO is usually pretty close to the IPO valuation. Anybody who joins a company during that window of time will get ISO grants with unfavorable strike prices (prices close to the IPO price). These options could be worth nothing post-IPO if there’s a slump (in contrast to RSUs, which will always have value).
The difference between a company’s valuation and share price is important but irrelevant to this conversation as far as I can tell. Sorry that imprecise language on my part in my earlier comment created that distraction.
Edit: To be clear, the problem is not the bump or the slump (I tend to agree that it should be irrelevant, and if anything as a shareholder you may prefer a rational slump). Rather, it's the practice of granting ISOs at a soon-to-be market strike price that is the problem. The people with unfavorable ISO strike prices should be upset due to the strike price, not any slump or bump; but if there's a slump, they usually (incorrectly, IMO) blame the slump, and so the slump gets a bad rap internally. On the flip side, although I've never been in the position to make this decision, I find it unconscionable to offer ISOs as part of a compensation package within 6 months of an anticipated IPO date.
So with a large bump (like 100% on Snowflake for example), you defer a lot of tax to the future. And if you hold out 1 year until selling, you change a lot of that gain from income into long term capital gains (which has a lower tax rate)
One obvious problem with a pop is that it implies your stock was sold too cheaply and you could have raised more money for the same shares. However, your IPO investors love it.
Direct Listings are IPO alternatives that are sometimes purported to solve IPO pops.
Or is this a Google Fiance Bug?
Out of curiosity, I checked the two stock brokers I have accounts with (Revolut and DeGiro), and it's not there yet.
Do you know what EU (or French) brokers have the Nasdaq companies on the day of IPO?
No idea the likelihood of them actually adding it though.
On the flip side of the same coin, the ability to offer liquid equity and essentially pay employees using the company's projected growth (RSU issuance) is often financially lucrative for employees old and new and if done correctly, can attract a different group of really strong people who aren't in a place to take the startup gamble.
Within a few years post IPO the Composition of the company will have totally changed. The special place becomes a regular corporation. The hyenas will try to move on to the next Prize.
Those systems and processes are critical to staying out of trouble with the law after going public.
There is: don't go public or issue stocks. In Germany, we are famous for non-public companies: the "Mittelstand" is largely owned by the founders or their descendants, which frees them from a lot of external influences - for better (companies can focus on long term goals instead of phony quarterly/activist investor-driven "KPI/OKR" goals, companies save on a lot of the bureaucracy that the law mandates for public/share-issuing companies) or worse (we're notorious for a lack of digitalization and progress as well as inheritance squabbles).
An example are the retail chains ALDI and LIDL or manufacturers Bosch and Heraeus - all tens to hundreds of thousands of employees and many billions of net worth, but it's rare to even find somewhat reliable numbers on them.
Say you joined a company relatively early. If you're still around years later by an IPO, you probably liked that early environment where you had low-to-no management overhead, large direct impact, and everybody was personally invested in getting shit done. For most employees that environment was already slipping away pre-IPO, but you know you're close to the finish line and can't get off now. What remains is quickly going to be gone post-IPO.
The early employees get major cash-outs; some probably don't need to work at all anymore, so those that treat their job as a means-to-an-end and not their identity leave immediately. Maybe there's big incentives to stay for a few years, paid out annually, hung over your head so you don't quit immediately. But after a year of more managers and TPS reports and public company corporate governance you get your payout... That annual bonus structure practically forces you to decide if you want to leave now, or signup for a whole 'nother year of this, so a wave of people leave. After a 2nd year of this they're mostly gone to greener pastures.
Less-early employees still get significant cash-outs in a large event like this. Maybe they use it to take some time off, it's been a long few years. Once you're out for a while, why not look at what else is out there on the market. Some of them find out they liked this new big-company stuff and want more of it, so they'll probably stay for years. Others are like the early employees and want the good-old days back, they have to go find it somewhere else.
But you're 2 months away from an early RSU grant from vesting you a few hundred thousands dollars on top of the ISO's you haven't cashed out yet. But eventually the right opportunity comes your way and everyone is shocked you're leaving like you were when a legendary person left 6 months earlier. You take a pay cut and probably worse benefits and more ISO's than you could imagine to join that series a or b startup you connected with as soulmates and it's going to be OK.
Someone wrote, perhaps Tom DiMarco: “a process is per definition not agile”.
Too many processes are never automated, and people are assigned to manually enforce and follow up on processes, that should be completely automatic.
This is where process busywork creates yet further busywork. Prime example? ITIL (as this is an IT focused site many probably have heard of it).
If you don’t automate the heck out of ITIL you reduces quality, slow any pace down and the mess remains.
We had an all-night hackathon the night before (one of the hacks was to wire into the "Nasdaq bell" button to post an opengraph story) and the whole company was mostly in a "stay focused and keep shipping" mode.
The leadership team shared a few funny jokes each week at the all-hands events leading up to it talking about the roadshow but prep work for the IPO was mostly framed as "this thing we've got to do" and not as some kind of goal. The company was overwhelming focused on the work at hand.
Overall the IPO was cool and I'm sure for many momentus, but as a somewhat newly acquired employee it was mostly a non-event and no one made me feel like I'd missed out by not joining earlier. Everyone was really just starting to feel comfortable at the newish physical HQ and morale was generally high. Most if not all the internal chatter was around the idea that "this journey is 1% finished" and at least everyone I knew there was in "let's do this and move on" mode.
Mark had publicly committed to not selling any shares for at least a year so no one thought he was going to bail or anything.
The stock price then proceeded to fall from $30's to the $10's and despite the on-paper financial hit for many of us it was kind of validating that "those silly people in wallstreet still don't get it" and that we weren't at the end of anything, we were still at the beginning.
As FB then consistently grew for the next 9 years to nearly $400/share there was still plenty of upside so there wasn't much of a pre-IPO vs. post-IPO tribal thing going on either.
In short, the culture was never built around "let's get this thing to IPO" so it wasn't really impacted negatively by reaching that milestone.
I'm expecting it to rise due to retail investor hype. I would avoid it for now at these prices at this time. We'll see after this period of uncertainty and after the lockup period expiring in 180 days after the IPO.
``` sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmpswap bs=4096 count=1M && sudo chmod 0600 /tmpswap && sudo chown root:root /tmpswap && sudo mkswap /tmpswap && sudo swapon /tmpswap ```