

My short history of Engine Yard and my Resignation - ezmobius
http://brainspl.at/articles/2010/08/13/4-years-at-engine-yard-what-a-long-strange-trip-its-been
This is the story of my startup experience of a company that took $38million in funding in 3 rounds. I am almost fully vested and I've just resigned and here is my story.
======
refulgentis
Not to turn HN into a gossip site, but here's some dots to connect:

Alex Payne quits Twitter, moves to Portland, cofounds BankSimple, an attempted
game-changer if there ever was one. - [http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/17/alex-
payne-twitter/?utm_sou...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/17/alex-payne-
twitter/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29)

"Wow. @banksimple just leveled up. In the last 24 hours we signed on four of
the best engineers I know. Can't wait to announce the team." Alex Payne - 8/11
- <https://twitter.com/al3x/status/20905067927>

"What comes next for me? Something truly awesome and even more challenging
then Engine Yard, but that will allow me to work from home in Portland. I
cannot yet reveal where I am going to work next but I can promise it will be
another game changing project and I am chomping at the bit to get started."
Ezra, 8/13

~~~
ezmobius
nice guess but I promise it is not BankSimple

~~~
railsdev
The VMware deal fell through...they couldn't get Engine Yard, so they'll just
have to settle for you. Sound about right?

~~~
railsdev
Yeah, I pretty much called this one.

------
wyclif
_That is the new way to build companies, College degrees don’t matter much
IMHO anymore, for developers anyway. It’s more how you interact with the open
source community and what you release yourself. Your github account has become
your new resume and what you say on Twitter and in various IRC channels are
more likely to get you the best jobs then any recruiters ever will._

I'm interested in education, hiring, and matters of accreditation. Those last
few paragraphs really got my attention. I'm glad I read all the way to the
end.

~~~
maukdaddy
That's a terribly short sighted thing to say (by the poster). I know HN users
don't seem to value education, but a college degree has a lot of value outside
of the education component. Living with others, compromising, group work,
social life, classes outside your area of focus, etc. I'd rather hire someone
who has been through this than a hacker who has only spent time in the echo
chamber of forums and fellow geeks.

As of July 2010, unemployment rate for college grad was 5.0% while for HS grad
was 9.9%.

~~~
whopa
In my ten year career, I haven't found there to be a correlation between
having a degree and being a good developer. I've worked with a number of
awesome people, most with degrees, some without, and plenty of bad people,
most with degrees, some without. To me, a degree isn't a positive nor a
negative signal for anything. You can talk about value of the intangibles
outside the education component, but in my experience, a degree doesn't
necessarily confer this either.

EDIT: Actually, thinking about it further, I haven't come across many bad
developers without a degree. This is surely selection bias: bad devs with a
degree can hide in the bowels of BigCo with HR departments who don't actually
know how to hire good people, but absolutely require a degree. The bad devs
without a degree can't get these cushy, hard to be fired from positions, and
therefore don't last very long and probably find another line of work.

~~~
beffbernard
In my experience there is no direct correlation between a developer being good
or bad based on whether they had a degree or not. However, what I did find was
that someone who had completed their undergrad is generally capable of
thinking at a higher level and can work through harder problems. IMHO, a
University shouldn't be about training students to go into the workforce but
to teach them how to effectively think and solve problems, regardless of
discipline.

~~~
alex_stoddard
I would argue the presumption that college is critical to developing higher
critical thinking is a damning indictment of pre-college schooling.

~~~
ojbyrne
Why? It's a pretty simple system - elementary, middle school, and high school
are about laying the knowledge foundation for critical thinking. University
(grad school really) is about actually practicing that.

You need a body of generally accepted knowledge to actually be a critical
thinker. Most people I meet don't lack the critical thinking, they lack the
body of knowledge.

------
run4yourlives
_Now is the time for me to focus on spending as much time with my son and
family as I can and I can no longer commit to 100 hour weeks at Engine Yard. I
also wanted to move to Portland where my folks live so my son can grow up near
his grandparents and my wife and I can have trustworthy babysitters so we can
have a social live of our own(even if it’s just a little bit;)_

This is a man with his head on his shoulders. My only comment is I wish that
more people had this level of dedication to their families.

~~~
coffeemug
I don't understand the whole 100 hour week business (unless it's an
exaggeration). Even at 7 days per week, that works out to 14 hours a day, or
9am - 11pm. I could pull off those hours for a few days (and sometimes I do),
may be a few weeks if really necessary, but no human being can do this
consistently and do even remotely creative work. We run a startup and meet
fairly aggressive schedules at half the hours. Why could they possibly need to
work 100 hour weeks?

Yes, sometimes it's necessary. Yes, sometimes team spirit takes over and
spending fourteen hours a day at work feels like fun. Yes, sometimes there's a
creative burst and one could easily pull of a fourteen hour session. But I
cannot believe someone could consistently put in an honest day's work and pull
off those hours for more than a few months.

~~~
smanek
FWIW, I've done 100 hours a week for several weeks in a row.

I felt pretty productive since I could intermix the kind of work I was doing.
11AM-6PM would be meetings, interviews/recruiting, etc. Dinner break w/ hulu
from 6-7. Then program myself for basically a full day (~7PM-2AM).

------
jvdh
You might as well just link to the blog entry directly:
[http://brainspl.at/articles/2010/08/13/4-years-at-engine-
yar...](http://brainspl.at/articles/2010/08/13/4-years-at-engine-yard-what-a-
long-strange-trip-its-been)

~~~
ezmobius
I meant to but I pasted the wrong link. Can I edit the link to change it to
the direct link? Or can a moderator please do that?

[edit] looks like I cannot change the url myself. if a moderator can change
irt I'd appreciate it.

------
dabeeeenster
"We just were victims of our own success and could not deploy customers fast
enough to get free time to build the automated system that AppCloud is today."

This is a _really_ hard problem IMHO. Obviously it depends on your business
model, but I've found it at times an unsolvable problem...

~~~
bl4k
hire contractors (or setup a team) and isolate them from the rest of the
business. happens in both small and large companies all the time.

------
davidw
I still don't entirely get their model. They have all this rails deployment
expertise, but you pay a more less flat fee every month, whether you're
drawing on their knowledge a lot or a little.

I think I'd prefer to pay less for hosting, and have some experts on retainer
for when they're really needed.

They're cool people in any case, and I wish them good luck.

~~~
mechanical_fish
A. If you are paying a monthly fee, what difference does it make if that fee
is called a _hosting cost_ or a _retainer_?

B. You will ultimately either pay more, or get less value, if you decouple
your expert support from the specific hardware platform that your expert
support understands best and lives with every day.

C. If you only pay your experts when there is an emergency, there is no
incentive for anyone to help you avoid having emergencies. Nor will there be
anyone but you to look out for emergencies before they happen, or prevent
emergencies by doing routine work like testing and applying patches. And you
will have to get really good at finding freelance experts and convincing them
to drop everything, reorient to your system, and fix your problem in a matter
of minutes _as your server is in flames_ ; you may have to pay premium prices
for that. It might be cheaper to just pay the insurance bill.

Disclaimer: I work at Acquia on Acquia Hosting, a product which is like an
EngineYard for Drupal.

~~~
davidw
> A. If you are paying a monthly fee, what difference does it make if that fee
> is called a hosting cost or a retainer?

I have more latitude when I put the pieces together: hosting here, retainer
there.

> C. If you only pay your experts when there is an emergency, there is no
> incentive for anyone to help you avoid having emergencies

That's a fair point, but on the other hand, it also seems that if you're
paying an 'expert surcharge' on your hosting, your incentive is to get as much
out of that as possible, whereas the experts, getting a flat fee, can't act as
de-facto consultants without eating up all their margins that way. There's
something of a conflict there. How do you guys define exactly what your role
is?

Also, presumably someone is developing the code to be hosted there. The better
they are, the more likely it is that they'll be able to do a good deployment
and monitor it on an ongoing basis.

------
jasonkester
Well written. I had never heard of the author or his company, yet unlike so
many of the articles that come through here, it had enough context baked in
that you could follow it without a Google search.

I found it surprising that Rails needs this level of hand-holding to keep it
running though. Rails devs, is this really the experience you have deploying
your applications?

~~~
keeran
Rails doesn't need any hand-holding any more. Apache+Passenger take care of
most cases, Nginx+unicorn/mongrel take care of the rest.

Big, heavy traffic apps require special attention, but then that's the same
for all big/heavy apps.

~~~
rossedwards
The only issue so far ive seen is that there arent any rails/ruby sites that
have complex interfaces. Twitter is barebones. ONce theres a site that has
heavy traffic and a more complicated interface its possible the perspetion of
the technology will change.

~~~
cullenking
justin.tv, check their traffic/interface lately? scribd.com, though maybe that
doesn't qualify on interface. shopify.com, basecamp.com

~~~
rossedwards
None of those have interfaces on par with say amazon or ebay or even facebook.
ALthough i know facebook uses mostly ajax anyway. IN fact justin.tv and scribd
really are just a cms that pushes the video rather then the site being based
around the interface as it is with facebook.

Its not really that important just something that ive noticed. THen again
there arent really any java sites that i can think of that are high load sites
that have complex interfaces either. Meaning newer sites. MAybe they just
arent in fashion anymore. Or everybody is just moving to ajax front ends.

------
subbu
You created Merb in the first place. Didn't you? Its missing from the story!

~~~
scotje
Are you thinking of Yehuda Katz who works at EngineYard?

<http://yehudakatz.com/>

~~~
jackowayed
No, he's not. Ezra first wrote Merb. Yehuda has been the lead developer for a
long time.

------
quellhorst
Ezra, thanks for all your help while at EngineYard. I recall many times where
you would help out when I was having problems with client sites. Looking
forward to hearing what your next project is.

~~~
jon_dahl
Ezra and team helped a client of mine accept HTTP chunked transfers back in
2007, for custom uploads from a mobile Java app. That might be simple today
(or more likely, unnecessary), but in 2007, virtually no one had done it.
Googling returned the HTTP spec and one (1) incomplete howto article. They
spent a ton of time getting this set up. Thanks, Ezra!

------
donw
Oh wow, memories... my first sysadmin job had our servers in the same
datacenter, in 2000. It was originally called Wavve, and had been built with
dot-com VC, so they had all the toys -- biometric identification, massive
stacks of batteries, Starbucks-inspired architecture, riot-proof glass...

------
smiler
Is there anything in this

"Oh the stories I could tell if only I could. But I feel that telling this
positive story of the history of EY is the classy way to go out and I wish
Engine Yard all the best in the world"

Any unrest?

~~~
mishmash
I don't think anyone would leave right before their stock was about vest,
without a solid reason. :) But the key term is classy.

True story: in the early days of Merb, before it had really gotten a lot of
attention, I once hit a show stopper - hopped on IRC, told him about my
problem, he found the bug, fixed the bug, pushed a new release in something
like 15 minutes IIRC, and stayed cool about it the entire time.

Best of luck to him!

~~~
jackowayed
> _I don't think anyone would leave right before their stock was about vest,
> without a solid reason._

I wouldn't assume that there's some hidden reason for him leaving. First of
all, leaving right before his stock is about to vest just means that he's
leaving a little bit of stock on the table. As he said, the vast majority of
his stock has already vested (as one would expect after 4 years), and he gets
to keep that. It's the 5%, or whatever, of his stock that hasn't vested that
he's losing.

I read this as "I've been working startup hours for way too long, and I'm
tired of it, especially now that I have a kid I want to spend time with".

~~~
guelo
I've seen startups handle the "all my options are vested" motivation problem
with what's called an evergreen program. An evergreen program keeps issuing
options such that your monthly vesting rate remains constant after the initial
4 years.

------
charlesju
We have been a loyal EY customer since Jan 2009, over 1.5 years now. I'm glad
that EY is still growing and doing well and it's sad to see a cofounder leave.
I hope Ezra the best.

