this has been building for a while now #

I’m not really sure where to start with this. The tension has been building for a few years now, and I’m sure there’s going to be a lot to unpack with several more posts over the coming months.

rewind back to cPanel #

The first company I worked for after college was ideal. Smallish (less than 100 people), fairly simple management, very liberal and welcoming environment, and lots of room to move around the company. I went from a technical sales role, to tech support, to QA, to software development, to senior software developer, over the course of 9 years. I was happy there. I spent around a year working directly with the CEO (he in a software development role) and learned so much from him about how to lead well.

Later working as a software developer on the billing and licensing systems, I got to see things lots of people at the company didn’t (although the numbers themselves were never hidden from the employees). License growth started to wane, and wisely, the CEO saw the trajectory ahead. He wisely looked to sell, because he knew the company (I jokingly called it his child), needed a fresh perspective from leaders who could navigate the changing landscape.

enter private equity #

Although I’d been through an acquisition before, I didn’t care about the company at the time. I didn’t care about the culture I was a part of and didn’t really care how it changed. With cPanel, I was. I’d been through nearly every department and had maintained personal friendships with a lot of people there.

In 2018, cPanel was purchased by Oakley Capital. Nick (our CEO), explained to us his long process of carefully selecting investors who had little interest in changing the company. He assured us that great care would continue to be taken to care for the company, something which was very evident in everything Nick did. He demonstrated, time and time again, that investing in the employees first would see the greatest output. Money came second (or so it always seemed).

the age of webpros #

As new leaders were introduced over the next few years, Nick slowly transitioned out of his role. Several other companies were acquired and departments consolidated. The small company I’d grown at was now a part of a large, multinational organization. There were perks to the change, to be sure. The changes itself weren’t the issue. I should have seen the writing on the wall, despite reassurance by current leadership.

the field was still green and ripe #

I loved building software. Fixing bugs, designing new features, deployment planning, frontend, backend, and architecture; I loved it all. I knew that the skills I’d honed over the years were in high demand. Even though the field was saturated, I knew there were dozens, if not hundreds, of great companies out there like cPanel. Finding jobs and leveling up was something I never doubted.

My wife saw the flexibility and mobility software development allowed, so she decided to learn. She went to school and got good. Even though I didn’t work at cPanel anymore, I encouraged her to apply. I wanted her to have the opportunity to learn and grow there like I had. She was quickly hired (only one other person there knew who she was, which we tried to maintain for as long as we could).

the beginning of the end #

After four years away, I came back to cPanel. The company, of course, had changed. My wife told me over and over how it wasn’t the same company, but I didn’t want to believe it. I still saw cPanel as a gem of a company, in the little building, with the free lunches and free employee datacenter colocation, none of which existed anymore.

And just like private equity does, my wife, along with a swath of other roles, were laid off. Leadership had slowly built a plan to consolidate before future investment. People within the department specifically protested my wife’s layoff. She was a major asset to the department, but leadership didn’t know, nor did they care to know. All they saw was a chance to remove redundancy, based on title, without any future research. They had to keep it quiet as they were planning. They then froze raises and bonuses for those that remained. Every company wide meeting after that was met with anger and questions, which were all returned with platitude and promise that things where secure now.

I was fucking pissed. Enraged. Even though they’d given my wife a generous severance package (in exchange for a gag order and non-compete), it felt like betrayal. The choices of a detached board to value money over people, stung very deeply. Of course, my wife being the resilient and creative person she is, landed well. She started her own business, partnered with another business and doubled its profit two years in a row, and has since started a second business.

a very valuable lesson #

My wife moved on, but I didn’t. I couldn’t let go of that feeling of betrayal. The callous and devouring nature of private equity, which values money and growth over everything else; the executives they hire with their short-sighted goal of posturing for a large exit; without care for resilience or long term stability; which sees employees as a means to an end, had left its indelible mark.

A couple months later I was gone.

hope again, so quickly dashed #

The company I found was both perfectly timed and perfectly fit. I applied on a whim several months before, not expecting a call back. Two month after the layoff I received an email from the VP of Development. After a few very informal conversations, I accepted a generous offer. It felt like cPanel, but with much more mature senior software developers who didn’t compete with each other; with intentionally less bureaucracy and much more autonomy. The company was doing good for the communities it served.

My company, of course, was purchased by private equity. With uncanny precision, so far, the communication and changes from the top have followed a nearly identical song and playbook. “We carefully picked investors who don’t want to make changes, who want to stay out of the way and allow you all to continue to do what you do best” … “focused on growth and innovation” … “we’re one company” … “we must have a growth mindset”, and several other things I won’t go into detail about, since I’m still employed there. I expect layoffs within the next year, especially now that agentic software development has the main stage. The writing is on the wall and it’s easy to see, especially for people who’ve seen the show already.

are there downsides for the customers? #

To be sure, there’ve been changes that have impacted customers in good ways. Just like at cPanel, lots of the cruft that has been kicked down the road has finally gotten the attention it deserved. We have a much larger budget now for infrastructure, and are encouraged to make foundational changes. Just like cPanel, many of our “old guard” employees will stick around because they’re settled and stable in senior level positions. Maybe they’re just here to make a paycheck. Maybe that’s a wise position to take.

the rotten cherry on top #

Private equity has brought instability to software developers. The inevitable churn, commoditization, dwindling of jobs, and hiring freezes that come with the private equity playbook, are all now being accelerated with agentic software development (inaccurately, AI). The software developer’s role, and specifically the need for broad understanding and guidance, isn’t going away. Agents aren’t capable of designing well made and well thought out systems on their own, and they’re not even close to being able to do that yet. What agents are good at is quickly finding information, analyzing data, and making the software development process go much, much, faster. I (the agent, really) merged over 99k lines of code last month, and I’m still sitting there mostly bored, waiting for several prompts to finish the tasks they’re on so I can check their work.

Aside from the obvious environmental impacts, this is all good, right? Agents are empowering software developers in ways they weren’t able to before. Sure. But the inevitable outcome here is that it’s not going to just be a nice tool that helps developers do their job better. The expectation from leadership is now that senior level developers can do the output of three or four developers; literally everyone is now a “10x developer” (and I fucking hate that phrase) unless they’re intentionally choosing not to buy into hyper productivity. Growing teams based on developer need will stall. Software jobs, at least within traditional software development shops, will be stripped down to essential capacity. Remember, private equity is focused on being the most efficient as possible, to make the most money possible, in the quickest way possible. They don’t care about culture or well-being, so long as it doesn’t impact the next three years. They will absolutely exploit the competition for jobs. Pay won’t keep up with inflation. This’ll be akin to robots in assembly lines.

so very tired #

I’m so very tired of this whole industry; what it’s becoming at the hands of private equity, the distillation and inevitable enshittification of everything with genuine flavor, all at the expense of making rich people richer. The problem I find myself in now, is that no one’s hiring for traditional software roles anymore, and software development jobs have turned into babysitting agents all day. The joys I used to feel are no longer there.

not sure what’s up ahead #

Maybe the issue is just working for software companies themselves? I used to do freelance work, and I have friends who’ve made very nice and stable careers out of helping companies achieve their software goals so they don’t have to think about managing software projects or teams. I absolutely have the skills and experience to work the entire stack, from metal to frontend.

I’m in a very strange place. There’s still so much I love about software, but the industry itself has changed in ways that I don’t think it’ll ever recover from.

getting around to processing all of this #

Since cPanel, I don’t think I’ve really taken the time to process any of it. I thought I’d moved on, but maybe I just buried it down when I left. I’m not bitter anymore, and I’m starting to realize more fully that what happened at cPanel is the norm. I see it everywhere now. I’m taking the time to sit with feelings, and this is what this series of posts are going to be about. This is for me, but I also hope I can paint a picture of what’s happening in the world now. Not that greed and exploitation at the hands of the wealthy has ever really changed.

Blaine

[0] I’m not going to spend a lot of time editing for grammar. So if you see stuff, tough titty, I’m not going back to change things.