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Heroku - Bamboo Routing Performance

blog.heroku.com

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Re: Heroku - Bamboo Routing Performance

#141

Post by RaphiePS »

callum85 wrote: post #134
gojomo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not fair. What do you think "tools to understand and improve the performance of your apps" and "develop long-term solutions" from his bullets mean? But, I'm surprised they didn't wait until the "in-depth technical review" was available to apologize. And the idea that they were informed of a problem "yesterday" doesn't quite match the impression RapGenius gave, that they'd been discussing this with Heroku suppo…

I think RaphiePS's comment is fair. "tools to understand and improve the performance of your apps" only commits them to updating their docs and tools to reflect how their system really works. It doesn't indicate any intention to fix the actual problem (the fact that requests can be routed to busy dynos), nor that they will make any kind of reimbursement to people who made business decisions based on incorrect docs. "…

Yeah, that phrase is a bit suspect. It could easily mean "teaching people how to effectively deal with our dumb routing."

Re: Heroku - Bamboo Routing Performance

#142

Post by quahada »

praptak wrote: post #111
nikcub wrote: post #75

There is a perverse conflict with platform service providers - the worse your scheduler performs the more profitable your service will be. You replace intelligent request scheduling with more hardware and instances, which you charge the user for. How much investment is there in platform service providers towards developing better schedulers that would reduce the number of instances required to serve an application? T…

> There is a perverse conflict with platform service providers - the worse your scheduler performs the more profitable your service will be. I think the practical significance of this kind of incentives is overrated. The company I work for does outsourcing work, paid by hour. Do they have incentives to make me produce less so that their customers pay for more hours? Theoretically. Do they act on it? Hell, no - there…

The business of government contracting shows these conflicts of interest are real and lead to Billions of $ of waste annually.

There is plenty of competition for government work, but there are many ways to game the system even in the rare truly open/fair competitive bids.

Re: Heroku - Bamboo Routing Performance

#143

Post by habosa »

So do the issues in the RapGenius post only affect those on the Bamboo stack? I'm procrastinating migrating to Cedar now but this could be a very good reason.

Also, I really love seeing a company take responsibility like this. I know the situations (and the stakes) are not comparable but this is a lot better than what Musk did when Tesla got a bad review. As a company just take the blame and say you can and will fix it, that's good enough for most people.

Re: Heroku - Bamboo Routing Performance

#144

Post by krutulis »

redguava wrote: post #62

I don't understand why people think this is a great response. They know how their routing works, just say so. It can't be that hard to give a basic overview of it before they release a more comprehensive post. As for the comment "Improving our documentation and website to accurately reflect our product". That is a very round about way of saying "our website indicates our service does things that it does not" which is…

One might charitably speculate that these are organizational challenges related to growing and being part of Salesforce.com. Things that were simple for a small, dynamic company can become shockingly complicated as the number of interests and priorities increases.

We might also consider the potential for a clash of cultures: Heroku has been relatively open about implementation details. Salesforce, on the other hand, has shown an extreme reluctance to share this kind of information.

I confess I can't help but wonder if the new willingness to make this kind of surreptitious change might in any way be connected to Byron Sebastian's sudden resignation last September. Is that nutty of me?

http://gigaom.com/2012/09/05/heroku-loses-a-star-as-ceo-and-...

Re: Heroku - Bamboo Routing Performance

#145

Post by redguava »

saraid216 wrote: post #136
redguava wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@bitcartel (not sure why I couldn't reply to your comment)... I believe from my discussions with Heroku that the "random selection algorithm" is also not true.

> (not sure why I couldn't reply to your comment) FYI, this is probably because you saw his comment at around 0-1 minutes. If you click on "link", you'll get the Reply form... or refresh after a minute or two and the "reply" link will be available.

Thanks! Always wondered about that.

Re: Heroku - Bamboo Routing Performance

#146

Post by white_devil »

kami8845 wrote: post #132
antoko wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your response doesn't really seem to be directed at my comment. In your first sentence you're using "this" as if you're talking about the blog post which is what I praise in my comment(the tone of it), but then in your second sentence "this" refers to the routing issue raised by rapgenius, I wasn't commenting on that at all - I'm not a Heroku customer I was merely commenting on a GM's response to negative press.

Yeah, it's still not impressive. The only thing that I'd say is impressive in response to the situation would be: "Hi, CEO of Heroku here. Sorry. We've been misleading customers and only telling the truth when pressed-hard for years. We've created this financial model for all of our customers who have been overpaying on dynos because of our shitty routing and will be reimbursing them based on that. We've also rolled…

This is spot-on.

Of course they're going to post something, and of course they'll make it sound as good as possible. But it's baffling how so many people applaud such meaningless damage control drivel time after time.

Re: Heroku - Bamboo Routing Performance

#147

Post by antoko »

white_devil wrote: post #146
kami8845 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's still not impressive. The only thing that I'd say is impressive in response to the situation would be: "Hi, CEO of Heroku here. Sorry. We've been misleading customers and only telling the truth when pressed-hard for years. We've created this financial model for all of our customers who have been overpaying on dynos because of our shitty routing and will be reimbursing them based on that. We've also rolled…

This is spot-on. Of course they're going to post something , and of course they'll make it sound as good as possible. But it's baffling how so many people applaud such meaningless damage control drivel time after time.

Considering how many people/companies fail so spectacularly at it, why would it be baffling? I also think you underestimate the difficulty in making things "sound as good as possible" that one quality is the basis of the entire marketing and political industries - and a large component of many others. You're basically saying "It's obvious - just be perfect!" - it is not that easy.

All that being said - I'm really not "applauding" Heroku or their actions (which are what matter) I'm waiting to hear what they'll say. In the mean time I thought their messaging (which matters much less) was good.

Re: Heroku - Bamboo Routing Performance

#148

Post by austingunter »

I'm very curious to see what the technical review turns up tomorrow.

This feels like something that would have been connected to the Salesforce acquisition 3 years ago, and then making the service less efficient in order to increase profits or revenue targets on paid accounts. Not to mention saving money on the free ones.

It would be a little bit like Tesla not only selling you the Model S, but also selling you the electricity you charge the vehicle with. At some point, they make the car less efficient, forcing you to charge more often, and then claiming they didn't document this very well. Frankly, there are only so many people who will be a capable enough electrical engineer (or in Heroku's case, a sysadmin) to catch the difference and measure it.

The apology should be, "we misled you, and betrayed your trust. Here's how we're planning on resolving that, and working to rebuild our relationship with our customers over the next year. [Insert specific, sweeping measures...]

Re: Heroku - Bamboo Routing Performance

#149

Post by chc »

quahada wrote: post #142
praptak wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a perverse conflict with platform service providers - the worse your scheduler performs the more profitable your service will be. I think the practical significance of this kind of incentives is overrated. The company I work for does outsourcing work, paid by hour. Do they have incentives to make me produce less so that their customers pay for more hours? Theoretically. Do they act on it? Hell, no - there…

The business of government contracting shows these conflicts of interest are real and lead to Billions of $ of waste annually. There is plenty of competition for government work, but there are many ways to game the system even in the rare truly open/fair competitive bids.

That's because competition for government work is not really based on customer satisfaction in the same way it is in other industries AFAIK.

Re: Heroku - Bamboo Routing Performance

#150

Post by kami8845 »

antoko wrote: post #147
white_devil wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is spot-on. Of course they're going to post something , and of course they'll make it sound as good as possible. But it's baffling how so many people applaud such meaningless damage control drivel time after time.

Considering how many people/companies fail so spectacularly at it, why would it be baffling? I also think you underestimate the difficulty in making things "sound as good as possible" that one quality is the basis of the entire marketing and political industries - and a large component of many others. You're basically saying "It's obvious - just be perfect!" - it is not that easy. All that being said - I'm really not…

No worries antoko. We're not really banging up on you, just pissed off at heroku :) Their wording was good, better than usual when companies fuck up. But they're deeply embedded in the startup community so good PR with us is expected, betraying our trust like this, however is not.
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