Adam Wiggins Leaving Heroku

https://gist.github.com/adamwiggins/5687917

by goronbjorn • 13 years ago

124 33 13 years ago

gist.github.com

jcrites• 13 years ago

Leaving for where? Departure posts without "what's next" feel like a cliffhanger.

Edit: I was able to find https://twitter.com/hirodusk/status/340573647813083136 which says "My near future involves a lot of r&r, but I'm definitely not done building things. :)"

jedberg• 13 years ago

> Leaving for where? Departure posts without "what's next" feel like a cliffhanger.

People had the same complaint when I left reddit. :)

Sometimes it's just more fun to see where the winds take you.

georgeoliver• 13 years ago

I hold an unreasonable hope that he'll create Blood Dusk II :).

routergate• 13 years ago

Fall out from the Rap Genius/routing debacle?

46Bit2• 13 years ago

Why have people downvoted this? The linked statement doesn't give any background on why he's leaving so it's not an unreasonable question.

briancurtin• 13 years ago

I downvoted it because it was needless speculation by an anonymous account called "routergate" which was created 35 minutes ago for the purpose of stirring the pot.

steveklabnik• 13 years ago

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)#Concern_trol...

wmf• 13 years ago

It doesn't read like he was fired or quit in disgust, so what's a hypothesis that could explain the connection?

jonahx• 13 years ago

> but none seem to capture the enormity of what's transpired these past six years.

I always knew they were a wicked, wicked company :)

craigkerstiens• 13 years ago

Here's Adam Wiggin's Heroku values list as part of his parting Heroku - https://gist.github.com/adamwiggins/5687294

mark_l_watson• 13 years ago

That is great. I keep an Evernote notebook on inspiring business ideas and material, where I just stashed his values list.

nodesocket• 13 years ago

There are some absolute gems in this.

andrewcooke2• 13 years ago

ok, since another attempt was sidelined for being anon, and it's the obvious question, i'll ask:

is this related to the rap genius mess?

jplewicke• 13 years ago

I would actually guess that the timing is mostly driven by the vesting schedule from the Salesforce acquisition. They announced the acquisition in December 2010, and it closed fairly quickly thereafter. I think 2 years is a standard vesting period after an acquisition, so now is a good time to leave unless he wants to make a career of it at Salesforce.

You see stories all the time like "Founder X leaves ____ 2 years after acquisition by ____." There's one just from today about a Tweetdeck founder: http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/31/iain-dodsworth-leaves-twitt... .

smegel• 13 years ago

I found the whole rap genius thing overblown. The idea that a single request should block a server until it returns is absurd, given that it probably is spending most of its time waiting on io. If you really need to load balance CPU bound tasks you should do it properly with a work queue rather than expecting your reverse proxy to do it. Its true their docs got out of date, but i found their response "we'll help you design your apps properly for the 21st century" reasonable, even though they got slammed for it.

latchkey• 13 years ago

During the whole Rap Genius fallout, I posted here a few times about the things I was bothered with on Heroku based on my own experiences running a large >100 dyno setup in production. Adam reached out privately and invited me to the offices for a free lunch and discussion about the issues I was having. He was super nice and I gained a huge amount of respect for the way he dealt with things himself. I wish him the best of luck in whatever he does next. Funny enough, I'm now working on the team that is creating CloudFoundry and seeing just how hard it is to build something like Heroku.

JuDue• 13 years ago

Nice post, thanks.

markdown2• 13 years ago

Who is Adam Wiggins, a man the OP assumes we all know and who needs no introduction?

whyleyc• 13 years ago

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Adam+wiggins

Can you come back when you have something useful to say ?

markdown2• 13 years ago

Thanks for the help with that.

Apparently he doesn't even have a Wikipedia page.

His own website says "I'm a hacker, entrepeneur, anarcho-crypto-geek, and drug policy reformer. I'm a cofounder of Heroku and a board member at the Marijuana Policy Project. In the past I've made video games, electronic music, and Burning Man art installations. I like Norse mythology and things that glow."

The only thing that stands out I guess is "cofounder of Heroku", but that's not very informative. Was he someone of special import at Heroku... will the service die without him?

So... right back at you. Can you come back when you have something useful to say?

adamwiggins• 13 years ago

So maybe I'll start making a FAQ for everything.

Q. Who is this Adam Wiggins guy?

A. http://about.adamwiggins.com/

Q. Why did you leave Heroku?

A. It was time to move on. I'm proud of Heroku and everything I've done in the last six years. But like any other entrepreneur (or human being), sooner or later it's time to do the next thing.

Q. What's the next thing?

A. Vacation, travel, time with friends & family. Tinkering with new technologies.

Q. Are you going to start a new startup?

A. Almost certainly. But not in the immediate future.

Q. Is Heroku awesome?

A. Obviously. I'd like to thank YC/PG; all our investors (Redpoint, Baseline, Ignition, &c); everyone who's ever been a Heroku employee; Salesforce.com; the authors of Ruby, Rails, Ubuntu, and Git; and my mom.

Adam Wiggins Leaving Heroku

Related Stories