HashiCorp runs low on staff, calls a halt to Terraform pull requests
- Reference: 1631022365
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/09/07/hashicorp_pause/
- Source link:
[1]The warning came at the end of the August and followed the publication by the company of a report [2]warning of overspending in the cloud world.
But not, it seems, on staffing. At least not in the Terraform Cloud team where [3]open positions have reached double figures . Cloud engineers, it seems, are very much in demand these days.
[4]
Terraform is a neat infrastructure as code tool and supports AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure among others. Version 1.0 of the service arrived in [5]General Availability form on 8 June with the multi-cloud world squarely in its sights.
[6]In 2006, Amazon debuted EC2. 15 years on, HashiCorp says firms blowing their cloud budgets is all part of the fun
[7]HashiCorp reveals exposure of private code-signing key after Codecov compromise
[8]Project Bicep: Microsoft muscles in on Terraform's territory to manage Azure resources with code
[9]HashiCorp kicks off its annual Digital shindig with managed service versions of Vault, Consul config kit
HashiCorp boasted at the time of more than 100 million downloads as the version 1.0 milestone ticked over and took the time to thank those who had contributed to the project since it first emerged back in 2014. Reaching version 1.0 had product requirements that included it be "mature and stable," "deployed broadly," and have a "well-defined user experience."
Sadly, however, "having the resources to review community-submitted pull requests" does not appear to be one of the key requirements right now.
[10]
As for what has caused the low staffing, HashiCorp has remained tightlipped (we will update this piece should the company respond to our enquiry.) It has offices around the world, although its Terraform Cloud service (which uses Terraform) is looking for remote-based engineers mainly in the US, Canada and Australia. Not in the UK; handy, because there is every chance formerly well-paid techies are now pondering a career change to [11]Heavy Goods Vehicle driver.
"We do hope to begin processing them again soon once we're back up to full staffing again, but for the moment we need to ask for patience. Thanks!" said the company of its pull request pause. ®
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[1] https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/commit/6562466c32a8750d7a71a6cc6232e6b5a28fe13a
[2] https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/cloud-budgets-busted-almost-40-overspent-last-year
[3] https://www.hashicorp.com/jobs/engineering
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YTeMvTiGhmPLFCf@37RtzgAAAIw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/announcing-hashicorp-terraform-1-0-general-availability
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/24/ec2_at_15/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/26/hashicorp_reveals_exposure_of_private/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/03/project_bicep_microsoft/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/14/hashiconf/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YTeMvTiGhmPLFCf@37RtzgAAAIw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/24/mcdonalds_out_of_milkshake/
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
I'd bet on the codebase, Terraform is a large config file parser written in golang.
It establishes ordering using a DAG then makes backend api calls to create/destroy configured resources e.g. a load balancer, a github repo etc.
I can't imagine how tedious a code base it must be, especially given the domain and choice of implementation language.
I put my biases upfront, I'll not work with golang except to the minimal requirement, and I'll quit if it became my full time development language.
Terraform is fairly slow in operation as it's fairly chatty, so I imagine development is a fairly slow pace..
YMMV but who cares about the place if the work makes you want to punch yourself in the face.
And it would be easier and more fun to maintain in what - Java? Python?
Think tedious codebase is any enterprise or automation software, or pretty much anything which ships
Far more likely a combination of crap pay, AWS hoovering up any cloud engineer daft enough to work for them, rotten manglement of the terraform product team, and not being ansible or what ever the flavour of the month is on medium
Which one is it?
So we've got LiveCode dying because nobody's working on it... and Terraform dying because too many people are working on it.
In my experience there are usually 3 reasons why a firm is low on Staff.
1) The pay is shite. Therefore, the good engineers leave for greener pastures, and they cant attract new staff on those rates.
2) The company culture/atmosphere are toxic/shite. Once again this leads to an exodus of employees. This tends to lead to high turnover, and means they are stuck hiring youngsters who dont yet know any better. And who eventually will bugger of as well...
3) An unwillingness to hire anyone who doesnt have the right degree, from the right university and have X years experience in every possible field of IT that's ever existed. i.e. the not hiring what you need, only what you desire problem.
Too often it is all 3 of the above... Or at least some combination of them...
So which will we find out it is here?