5 ms·

Things I learned from 5 years at Vercel

132 points by gk1 1y ago

anupj 1y ago
[flagged]
- purple_ferret 1y ago
  Sort of conflicts with the other points though, which basically sum up to "Be a 10X developer or die trying"
  - scrubs 1y ago
    The whole thing is affirmational in the jacket of happy warrior. Self consistency was never the point.
  - layer8 1y ago
    The conflict is resolved by realizing that points 2 and 3 aren’t valid.
- srhtftw 1y ago
  Seek patience and passion in equal amounts. Patience alone will not build the temple. Passion alone will destroy its walls. - Maya Angelou
  - moralestapia 1y ago
    P O W E R F V L
300hoogen 1y ago
[flagged]
- nartho 1y ago
  [flagged]
- pixelatedindex 1y ago
  > thanks for contributing to the slopification of the web what was the demographic of the users of vercel (its 90% indian no?) The enshittification isn’t because of a particular tool or technology. It stems from the way it’s used. As for the demographic comment, shame on you. Don’t be so pea brained.
  - 300hoogen 1y ago
    [flagged]
- Xunjin 1y ago
  What is even the point of your first sentence? The second one you could word better, I feel the intention is to be “phobic”, but I will assume your point is to really understand the demographics, so probably Vercel is more startup and small projects side?
- tomhow 1y ago
  You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter who or what you're replying to. Please take a moment to read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - 300hoogen 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - afavour 1y ago
      A racist one? No, you can't
    - tomhow 1y ago
      > thanks for contributing to the slopification of the web This is against the guidelines, and the other sentence I won't repeat is also. Please only comment here if you want to make an effort to observe the guidelines.
  - anonzzzies 1y ago
    You are right but it is hard to not go overboard when talking about nextjs/vercel. I am in IT 50 years now and so terrible 'tech', I could not have predicted. With so many critical security issues that 'do not affect vercel users', you have to wonder what fresh hell this is.
fizk 1y ago
One of the best, or maybe the best, coding presenter I've ever come across on youtube.
- leerob 1y ago
  Thank you!
TimMeade 1y ago
Well written Lee; and 100% on point. So very true. Much thanks for moving the needle and good luck on what's next.
nilirl 1y ago
I've never worked at a startup that hit it big, so I came in wanting to disagree with whatever was in this post. But I liked it. Now I'm mad.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
huksley 1y ago
Leerob, thank you for your patience and help on Reddit community! The NextJS gets a lot of criticism these days but you helped a lot of people, with self-hosting NextJs and other tricky questions.
- CharlieDigital 1y ago
  Jumping onto a Next.js project right now that has no reason to have SSR. The code is now excessively complex, difficult to detangle, and I can't believe how bad the local DX is on a cold start on an M1 MBP. It's so slow; every nav is agonizing. Maybe it's how this is configured, maybe it's some other issue, but I definitely didn't encounter this with OOB stock Nuxt.js and of course, this project is an app that has no reason nor benefit for using Next.js. No idea how Vercel scammed so many people. Founder paid an annual contract of $##,### to Vercel for what should be a freely hosted static web app + freely hosted (within credit boundaries) backend in a serverless container (e.g. Google Cloud Run, Azure Container Apps, etc.) A complete scam.
  - miyuru 1y ago
    I guess the branding and marketing worked. Last time I checked Vercel was just reselling services of AWS.
    - CharlieDigital 1y ago
      > I guess the branding and marketing worked. Indeed; I remember watching one of their tech sessions around the Next.js 12 to 13 release and then watching a Microsoft one. One was very clearly a marketing ad. We shortly ditched Next.js afterwards because of how janky the whole DX was the entire time and how much worse it was during the transition. Now I'm back in a Next.js 15 project and it's amazing that the DX somehow feels even worse!
      - sunaookami 1y ago
        They introduce a lot of shiny half-baked features while abandoning old ones.
zappodobbo 1y ago
Vercel raised $563M so far. Where do you think you guys would have been if you had bootstrapped?
- alberth 1y ago
  Especially given that it's hosted on AWS. (Reminds me of Heroku back in the day as being another "hosting" sold & layered on top of AWS)
cyanf 1y ago
leerob is so active in the space that I didn't realize until reading this that he isn't Vercel's founder.
gdbsjjdn 1y ago
Plane with holes in wings returns to base, encourages engineers to reinforce wings to prevent holes.
ashwinsundar 1y ago
I am not impressed with Next.js or Lee's evangelism (yes, in the religious sense) of their platform. Being forced to develop in Next.js for a major project was the last straw, and convinced me to abandon the Javascript/Typescript/Node.js ecosystem entirely for future web projects (where I have the choice). Dev-fluencers and Next.js evangelists who gish-gallop and provide (non)-responses to serious developer problems with Next.js convinced me that Vercel is building an elaborate cash grab, on the enterprise scale, and securing vendor lock-in for many years to come. Don't tell me that Next.js is easy to deploy in Docker either - it's not, I wrestled with that implementation for months and it was fragile/broken in a way that I suspect a native Vercel-deployment is not. The current stack I'm using is Django/Python, HTMX, Alpine.js, and TailwindCSS. Yes I know the middle two use Javascript under the hood, there is no way around that for client interactivity. But they do support the HATEOAS principal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HATEOAS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HATEOAS) which has been a breath of fresh air imo. The book "Hypermedia Systems" is also a great way to achieve the mental reset needed to abandon modern web frameworks and go back to things that actually work, in terms of web development.
- tonyhart7 1y ago
  I like hateoas as a concept but how can you maintain that in production scale??? we need to maintain access control and output that in client which is good but that move bulk of engineering into backend that would harder and harder given many scenario noo???
- 0xblinq 1y ago
  I agree with your opinion on vercel and next. But if HTMX is enough for your project, then your problem was picking the wrong tools from the get go. You didn’t even need react. They’re very different tools for very different kinds of UIs and frontend complexity.
- vevoe 1y ago
  I'm not saying that Next.js is good or bad but we deploy our Next.js app in a docker container and it's never been an issue. I'm curious what issues you had?
daxfohl 1y ago
I'd add, if feature A can't be shipped 10x faster, ask the same question about features B, C, and D and then redo your ROI calculations, before deciding to invest in feature A. That keeps the team consistently delivering and motivated, and gives you more time to think about feature A. Some features are really important to get right and take the appropriate time, and some are just important to ship. Having that distinction explicit allows the team to maintain good shipping velocity without accruing "high interest" tech debt. Also there's obviously no single correct ratio here. Newer companies, services, teams, products will probably lean toward shipping fast since architecture is still being defined (and too much architecture could be more detrimental than tech debt / too little architecture, if it doesn't match future requirements), whereas more mature ones will be more willing to sacrifice shipping velocity for better fit with the existing domain model.
sm00thbr41n 1y ago
> radical deadline compression lol
udkl 1y ago
This is a good writeup, but the VP learnings/mistakes (#3, 4 and 5) honestly felt pretty amateur mistakes for any leadership position ... even for just a junior managerial role. It's a good thing they were able to learn on the job, but the team could have used a more seasoned leader - or the author could have had more pre-training/coaching.
terminatornet 1y ago
Only been on a handful of react projects at this point: gatsby, next.js, and remix, in that order. Gatsby was fine for the time for our static marketing site. Not really good but not painful. Then we started converting our SPA to next.js and a deep seated rage for react began to fester in me. After being forced to use react at my current job and convincing leadership to go with remix, it turns out I don't hate react THAT much, mostly just next.js. As far as I'm concerned, next.js and vercel are the same and they're both not great.

132 points by gk1 1y ago

anupj 1y ago

[flagged]

purple_ferret 1y ago
Sort of conflicts with the other points though, which basically sum up to "Be a 10X developer or die trying"
- scrubs 1y ago
  The whole thing is affirmational in the jacket of happy warrior. Self consistency was never the point.
- layer8 1y ago
  The conflict is resolved by realizing that points 2 and 3 aren’t valid.
srhtftw 1y ago
Seek patience and passion in equal amounts. Patience alone will not build the temple. Passion alone will destroy its walls. - Maya Angelou
- moralestapia 1y ago
  P O W E R F V L

300hoogen 1y ago

[flagged]

nartho 1y ago
[flagged]
pixelatedindex 1y ago
> thanks for contributing to the slopification of the web what was the demographic of the users of vercel (its 90% indian no?) The enshittification isn’t because of a particular tool or technology. It stems from the way it’s used. As for the demographic comment, shame on you. Don’t be so pea brained.
- 300hoogen 1y ago
  [flagged]
Xunjin 1y ago
What is even the point of your first sentence? The second one you could word better, I feel the intention is to be “phobic”, but I will assume your point is to really understand the demographics, so probably Vercel is more startup and small projects side?
tomhow 1y ago
You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter who or what you're replying to. Please take a moment to read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- 300hoogen 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - afavour 1y ago
    A racist one? No, you can't
  - tomhow 1y ago
    > thanks for contributing to the slopification of the web This is against the guidelines, and the other sentence I won't repeat is also. Please only comment here if you want to make an effort to observe the guidelines.
- anonzzzies 1y ago
  You are right but it is hard to not go overboard when talking about nextjs/vercel. I am in IT 50 years now and so terrible 'tech', I could not have predicted. With so many critical security issues that 'do not affect vercel users', you have to wonder what fresh hell this is.

fizk 1y ago

One of the best, or maybe the best, coding presenter I've ever come across on youtube.

leerob 1y ago
Thank you!

TimMeade 1y ago

Well written Lee; and 100% on point. So very true. Much thanks for moving the needle and good luck on what's next.

nilirl 1y ago

I've never worked at a startup that hit it big, so I came in wanting to disagree with whatever was in this post. But I liked it. Now I'm mad.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

huksley 1y ago

Leerob, thank you for your patience and help on Reddit community! The NextJS gets a lot of criticism these days but you helped a lot of people, with self-hosting NextJs and other tricky questions.

CharlieDigital 1y ago
Jumping onto a Next.js project right now that has no reason to have SSR. The code is now excessively complex, difficult to detangle, and I can't believe how bad the local DX is on a cold start on an M1 MBP. It's so slow; every nav is agonizing. Maybe it's how this is configured, maybe it's some other issue, but I definitely didn't encounter this with OOB stock Nuxt.js and of course, this project is an app that has no reason nor benefit for using Next.js. No idea how Vercel scammed so many people. Founder paid an annual contract of $##,### to Vercel for what should be a freely hosted static web app + freely hosted (within credit boundaries) backend in a serverless container (e.g. Google Cloud Run, Azure Container Apps, etc.) A complete scam.
- miyuru 1y ago
  I guess the branding and marketing worked. Last time I checked Vercel was just reselling services of AWS.
  - CharlieDigital 1y ago
    > I guess the branding and marketing worked. Indeed; I remember watching one of their tech sessions around the Next.js 12 to 13 release and then watching a Microsoft one. One was very clearly a marketing ad. We shortly ditched Next.js afterwards because of how janky the whole DX was the entire time and how much worse it was during the transition. Now I'm back in a Next.js 15 project and it's amazing that the DX somehow feels even worse!
    - sunaookami 1y ago
      They introduce a lot of shiny half-baked features while abandoning old ones.

zappodobbo 1y ago

Vercel raised $563M so far. Where do you think you guys would have been if you had bootstrapped?

alberth 1y ago
Especially given that it's hosted on AWS. (Reminds me of Heroku back in the day as being another "hosting" sold & layered on top of AWS)

cyanf 1y ago

leerob is so active in the space that I didn't realize until reading this that he isn't Vercel's founder.

gdbsjjdn 1y ago

Plane with holes in wings returns to base, encourages engineers to reinforce wings to prevent holes.

ashwinsundar 1y ago

I am not impressed with Next.js or Lee's evangelism (yes, in the religious sense) of their platform. Being forced to develop in Next.js for a major project was the last straw, and convinced me to abandon the Javascript/Typescript/Node.js ecosystem entirely for future web projects (where I have the choice). Dev-fluencers and Next.js evangelists who gish-gallop and provide (non)-responses to serious developer problems with Next.js convinced me that Vercel is building an elaborate cash grab, on the enterprise scale, and securing vendor lock-in for many years to come. Don't tell me that Next.js is easy to deploy in Docker either - it's not, I wrestled with that implementation for months and it was fragile/broken in a way that I suspect a native Vercel-deployment is not. The current stack I'm using is Django/Python, HTMX, Alpine.js, and TailwindCSS. Yes I know the middle two use Javascript under the hood, there is no way around that for client interactivity. But they do support the HATEOAS principal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HATEOAS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HATEOAS) which has been a breath of fresh air imo. The book "Hypermedia Systems" is also a great way to achieve the mental reset needed to abandon modern web frameworks and go back to things that actually work, in terms of web development.

tonyhart7 1y ago
I like hateoas as a concept but how can you maintain that in production scale??? we need to maintain access control and output that in client which is good but that move bulk of engineering into backend that would harder and harder given many scenario noo???
0xblinq 1y ago
I agree with your opinion on vercel and next. But if HTMX is enough for your project, then your problem was picking the wrong tools from the get go. You didn’t even need react. They’re very different tools for very different kinds of UIs and frontend complexity.
vevoe 1y ago
I'm not saying that Next.js is good or bad but we deploy our Next.js app in a docker container and it's never been an issue. I'm curious what issues you had?

daxfohl 1y ago

I'd add, if feature A can't be shipped 10x faster, ask the same question about features B, C, and D and then redo your ROI calculations, before deciding to invest in feature A. That keeps the team consistently delivering and motivated, and gives you more time to think about feature A. Some features are really important to get right and take the appropriate time, and some are just important to ship. Having that distinction explicit allows the team to maintain good shipping velocity without accruing "high interest" tech debt. Also there's obviously no single correct ratio here. Newer companies, services, teams, products will probably lean toward shipping fast since architecture is still being defined (and too much architecture could be more detrimental than tech debt / too little architecture, if it doesn't match future requirements), whereas more mature ones will be more willing to sacrifice shipping velocity for better fit with the existing domain model.

sm00thbr41n 1y ago

> radical deadline compression lol

udkl 1y ago

This is a good writeup, but the VP learnings/mistakes (#3, 4 and 5) honestly felt pretty amateur mistakes for any leadership position ... even for just a junior managerial role. It's a good thing they were able to learn on the job, but the team could have used a more seasoned leader - or the author could have had more pre-training/coaching.

terminatornet 1y ago

Only been on a handful of react projects at this point: gatsby, next.js, and remix, in that order. Gatsby was fine for the time for our static marketing site. Not really good but not painful. Then we started converting our SPA to next.js and a deep seated rage for react began to fester in me. After being forced to use react at my current job and convincing leadership to go with remix, it turns out I don't hate react THAT much, mostly just next.js. As far as I'm concerned, next.js and vercel are the same and they're both not great.