Also missing from that blog post but important:
As usual, Oxide raised the salary when we took more money, so some of that profit is going back to us workers. (Not all of it, obviously, Oxide is a VC-funded corporation, but some of it.)
Since the salary's on the website, you could have noticed this for yourself, so I figure there's no harm in pointing it out.
@cliffle Can you explain how VC funding is “profit”? Or have I misunderstood your toot?
@pmonks you have. People are paying us money to make computers for them; this money has started to be more than our operating costs. So, we got additional investment to help build out manufacturing, which we plan to make worthwhile by selling more computers as a result.
@cliffle Right, but VC investment is essentially debt, not revenue, so I’m confused at the application of the term “profit” to describe it. And to be clear I’m all for increased salaries when revenue goes up, but VC funding is not revenue.
@pmonks Oxide is not publishing the revenue number right now, so I can't walk you through the whole equation.
@pmonks At a base level, I think @cliffle is saying that their current business was bringing in revenues that exceeded their costs. But they realized that the main thing limiting that profit margin was that they couldn't produce enough stuff fast enough, so they are taking on investment to increase capital in the expectation that this will lead to a state of greater profits. Whereas a typical case in tech is that a company is not profitable and is taking on investment in the hopes of someday becoming profitable.