On Heroku and 2012

http://kennethreitz.org/on-heroku-and-2012.html

by rdegges • 14 years ago

225 49 14 years ago

kennethreitz.org

luigi• 14 years ago

Kenneth is awesome, in the true sense of the word.

jason_adleberg• 14 years ago

shoutout to OP for making django-skel

rdegges• 14 years ago

Shout out: confirmed. >:)

jpadvo2• 14 years ago

> Life's not a race, but there's no speed limit either.

I love this. I've been learning recently that one of my chief sources of stress is feeling pinched for time. Mainly from feeling like I'm not getting as much done as I need to (I'm a cofounder of a bootstrapped startup). But what I've discovered is that if I relax, and enjoy the feeling of progress as it happens, I can be much more excited about work. And a much happier person.

And, somewhat ironically, extra motivation kicks in and I'm pretty sure I wind up getting more done.

That one line from Kenneth sums up the entire glorious contradiction in a way that makes sense.

unimpressive• 14 years ago

Reminded me of this story:

https://sivers.org/kimo

jpadvo2• 14 years ago

Thank you -- I haven't read that story in a long time, and it is a great reminder.

zachwill• 14 years ago

Kenneth's a badass. The libraries he puts out are incredibly helpful.

Steveism• 14 years ago

As the saying goes, "If you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life."

It's great to read posts like this. Learning Python, or any modern language for that matter, can lead to a lot more in life than just web apps and server scripts. In this case it lead to 8 countries visited in a single year and countless handshakes.

olasitarska• 14 years ago

Wow, now I'm even more exciting to meet you Kenneth! ;)

atomical• 14 years ago

I don't think unlimited vacation is a good thing because it really isn't unlimited and just keeps the employee guessing as to what is appropriate.

bjornsteffanson• 14 years ago

I absolutely agree. My last and current employer both offer unlimited vacation. For whatever psychological reason, I find myself taking less vacation than I did when I was _earning_ it at my McJob for the rate of 6.33 hours every month.

If you are such an employer, please consider setting a realistic expectation of what is an appropriate amount of time-off. If there really is no limit, then please consider more intensive training with regard to your company's culture .

shykes5• 14 years ago

We had a similar debate at dotCloud when the team discussed the appropriate amount of vacation. Unlimited was very tempting, but in the end we decided against it because 1) it's ambiguous and offers little guarantees, 2) it makes a lot of people suspicious ("Like AT&T unlimited?") and 3) it doesn't force people to take vacation.

Number 3 was the worst. Passionate people will burn themselves out if you don't setup some sort of "vacation monitoring". We liked the idea of making that explicit: lots of vacation, and rules that force you to use them regularly.

In the end we went for 2+1 weeks on the first year, and 3+2 weeks after that.

jordan0day• 14 years ago

I've been at places where a switch to "unlimited" would basically mean : You no longer have a number you can point to and say "I'm owed this many days of vacation time."

Fortunately, at my current company, when we switched to "unlimited" there was an added "and you're expected to take a minimum of 3 weeks per year". So, while the upper bound is still completely nebulous, by setting a reasonable minimum, it's clear they're not just trying to screw anyone over.

kenneth_reitz3• 14 years ago

I think it really depends on the culture of the company.

At Heroku, we are actively encouraged to take vacation. There has actually been talk of building something to track employee vacation time, to ensure that everyone is taking enough :)

thinkbohemian• 14 years ago

I work at Heroku and have never had pushback on taking vacation. Our CTO just took a month sabbatical. Sometimes I work on weekends and take some weekdays off. Whenever i'm in the (coding) flow I just do what feels right and Heroku let's me do that.

bgentry2• 14 years ago

That's not how it really works out at Heroku. Our managers and vibe team really push us all to take at least a few weeks (3-4) off per year at a minimum. That's important because we all love our work so much that we work hard the rest of the time.

jarek• 14 years ago

So what would happen if you took 20 weeks off? 8 weeks? Where's the cutoff?

cglee• 14 years ago

I think his point was that there's some unwritten upper bound, like say, 16 weeks. Would be easier to just tell me what the upper bound is, so I can take that, rather than under utilize my vacation days or offend the unwritten rule.

yxhuvud• 14 years ago

Is it unlimited vacation without salary or is it unlimited paid vacation? There is a world of difference there as to how people will behave around it.

kenneth_reitz3• 14 years ago

Paid.

w3pm2• 14 years ago

Agreed. What I've seen happen is the company becomes destructively divided into two camps: Those who have a slightly too healthy work-life balance and take liberal amounts of vacation, and those who have a tendency towards work-aholism, take little vacation, and grow to resent the first group as a result.

What works much better is to just decide on what's an acceptable amount of vacation, say 3 weeks, and tell everyone that's what they get; take it or leave it.

xradionut• 14 years ago

Or those in the first camp that expect those in the second camp to do their work. That's where the resentment may stem from.

gbog2• 14 years ago

> Don't spend a single moment in life doing something you don't want to do.

This advice or its cousins are found in many places around here and, well, I have a bad feeling about it. Is it not the epitome of egoism?

Is it possible to share a house with friends, or a spouse, or your kids, without ever "doing something you don't want to do"?

And in professional life, if you are a janitor, do you "want" to clean this toilets again? If you are a coder, you will do your share of boring work because you are in a team, right? And if you are a Big Boss, do you really want to fire this poor guy who is no fit here, will be no fit in no company you can think of, and has had already his content of shit on the head?

Even a painter, or a writer, or a comics guy like Mr Oatmeal have to do sometimes some things they do not "want" to do, professionally

The only people who really can avoid doing anything they do not want to do for a long period of time are the movie superstars and kids of some people of power. I do not think they represent a suitable ideal of life, and I do not think they are more happy than more normal poeple, quite the opposite in fact.

Then there are a few short-lived exceptions, a little slice of a life that is mostly free from hassles of any sort. I experienced this state during a few months myself: I got fired from a boring job, so I had the nice French wellfare and got 70% income for nothing. I also broke with my gf. At that time nobody counted in my life, I could and I did take risks, like getting involved in knife fight. I remember the only thing I did that I did not want to do was to take the train and join my parents to meet my grand-parents. for some important occasion. I actually had to wake up early and shave... But that's not real life, that's a short and egoistic period of my life. It has been somewhat useful in build my experience, but I'd not say I was happy. And most important is I would not make a general advice out of it. Only very few people in the world are lucky enough to find themselves with no professional or familial bounds and enough money to live free-wheeling for some month.

Or maybe the split is on another line: If young Americans can claim to never do what they do not want to do, maybe it is because they use autosuggestion, also known as The Coué method* , to make themselves "want" to do what they really just "have" to do. Using autosuggestion, I could proactively "want" to clean my toddler's diapers, or smile candidly and listen to this friend's spouse, while at the same time, deep in my heart, knowing she is really the boringest person in the world and I'd rather lick the streets than listen to her blabla (but I really like this friend, would not like to lose him...)

So yes, with autosuggestion, it is possible to force oneself to love to do what we hate to do, and it is most likely what many people do. But then, you'd have to balance carefully, because it is cheating, it is lying to oneself, and pushed too far it can become a poison, I guess.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Cou%C3%A9#The_Cou.C3...

PieSquared• 14 years ago

This advice comes up very often when people write about re-evaluating their lives. (Also, this retort comes up very often when people read what those people wrote. I don't disagree with your logic, per se...)

I think you're right, but the author probably did not mean the advice as literally as you're reading it. You're interpreting the advice as a call for egoism [0]; selfishness to the point of being unwise. I think that when people write this, they're actually writing a call for hedonism[1].

Hedonism is different from egoism. Hedonism, the way I see it, is realizing that our existence is ultimately meaningless, and that we should optimize for our own happiness (and well-being) rather than any other metric; all metrics are meaningless, so we might as well stick to what makes us happy. In actionable terms, embracing hedonism means realizing that you should aim towards doing things that make you happy, and that this aim should be your guiding force (at every "single moment in life"). This doesn't mean that you should be happy every single moment; it means you should be optimizing for happiness every single moment. (To use your examples: a spouse knows that compromising will make them happier overall; a janitor knows that although his/her life aren't perfect, doing this is what will lead to his/her life improving (hopefully) or at least keeping them happier.)

Anyway, that's the way I understand this type of advice, and I appreciate the occasional reminders. (Also, I don't actually know much about philosophy, so I might be misusing terminology here; if so, please correct me!)

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_egoism (maybe?)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonism

kenneth_reitz3• 14 years ago

Fantastic summary.

gbog2• 14 years ago

Yes, read flatly this advice is borderline egoism, but it can be read in a more useful way if some ideas are added.

You shall not want to do something that you would not want others to be allowed to do. (Eg: you cannot want to kill people for fun in the streets. That's a Kantian principle, IIRC)

You should better have a long-term perspective on what you want to do, and why. If you are tooth ache, your primary self probably do not "want" to go to dentist, but your reasonable self tells you that you have to do it, even without any immediate wishes to go.

Even if you were Xi Jinping or Obama, you cannot control everything you wish to control. The stoistic advice works here: you should do all you can to prepare yourself a nice cruise (or life), but once on the boat, you can't help if you are caught in a storm and should better shut up than complain.

An example is marriage+kids: you should probably jump carefully on this little boat, but once in, better eat your hat than jump overboard at the first annoyance.

hoka• 14 years ago

"Is it possible to share a house with friends, or a spouse, or your kids, without ever "doing something you don't want to do"?"

I get what you and the OP mean, but I think there's an implicit cost that we're willing to pay in this case.

Do I want to take out the trash? Not always, but I want to live with the people I live with more than I don't want to take out the trash, so I take out the trash. It's probably more complicated psychologically than that, but I'm sure OP would agree.

scott_karana• 14 years ago

In the past, I've tried to convince myself to do things that weren't really working. It's always been to my expense.

Trying to convince yourself you're not unhappy is very different than pushing away anything that makes you unhappy. Just my take :)

andrewflnr2• 14 years ago

The problem is, "want" is an ambiguous word. I want to learn calculus, I don't want to do all the homework required. Which "want" should I follow? I think people who say "only do things you want to do" mean the top-level kind, or some "total want" function that searches the whole treButkusbut that's a rather difficult function to "compute", even just to find the sign.

Like lots of hard problems in real life, it's basically one of predicting the future: which option will result in more happiness later?

dfnkt• 14 years ago

I think it would be better written as:

As long as you have the power to change it, don't spend a single moment in life doing something you don't want to do.

I think it's a call to action and relates to mustering the will to do what really matters.

gizzlon• 14 years ago

Exactly. I read statements like that as either hyperbole or plain bullshit. Either way, they're not really helpful or profound.

gromi60• 14 years ago

"You won't remember names. Just ask."

Great advice. I often forget names and the stress and/or guilt is the worst part.

fyvush82• 14 years ago

I don't follow this "I work for Heroku" stuff. He works for Salesforce, which Heroku is a part of, no?

bgentry2• 14 years ago

Salesforce owns Heroku, and we leverage that relationship where it makes sense. Other than that, Heroku operates independently of Salesforce, which is how both sides want it to be.

We have our own office, we're keeping our brand, and we operate the business as we see fit.

We're 2 years into the acquisition with no signs of that relationship changing anytime soon.

bengl3rt• 14 years ago

A better question is, why don't some of the reasons that it's so great to work for Heroku symbiotically trickle up to the behemoth parent company?

On Heroku and 2012

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