By Zed A. Shaw

You may think this is a rant, but it's not what you think. It's some drama here and I'm a little bit mean, but read to the end please. This may seem like I'm bashing, but I'm actually telling the story in my way from my perspective.

When I think back to my time trying to get somewhere in Ruby, one company really stands out: PowerSet. I'm not sure if you remember, I'm sure none of you do, but they were going to take on Google. They were also that search engine that showed gay pornstars when you looked up politicians, so already they were actually satisfying an under-satisfied market. Namely toe-tapping Republicans.

What made PowerSet annoying is that they hired all these Ruby guys very early on and then that somehow made PowerSet and these Ruby guys awesome. These fairly nice gents became giant ego maniacs overnight and everyone had to deal with them all the damn time. You see, there was (is?) this channel a bunch of Ruby on Rails guys hung out in called caboose. Really caboose was this annoying slander factory where people could talk shit about DHH when he wasn't around or bitch about how they should be 54 on Working With Rails rather than that asshat zenspider (I was usually #1 mostly because I didn't care).

So here we were, and these asshats get jobs at a time when everyone was begging to use Ruby in a Java/.NET world. They were made men, on a level with the 2 or 3 other companies that were actually making shit with Ruby. And oh man did they start letting us know it. Day after day we'd hear about how boss the PowerSet stickers would look on their laptops. Yes, 'cause a guy with a dick on his chin looks so fucking boss.

I think I'd look confused if I had a dick on my chin too.

We'd hear about how they're doing so many cool things. How they're powering the damn company with their Rails and their Ruby. They would constantly pester me to go work there, and never listen when I said I couldn't. They would constantly bother me to help them fix their broke ass deployment setup. They just wouldn't shut the fuck up about getting jobs at PowerSet.

That's how it went, night after night, watching them rave and talk about how awesome things are and how they do so much, but we'd never see them publish anything. After a while I got really annoyed at them bragging so I did some digging and I found out the ugly truth:

They were just glorified system administration lackeys for the real programmers who worked on the actual search engine.

These asshats didn't do jack squat important there. Their entire purpose for being hired was so PowerSet would look cool and be able to hire somebody under 30 because young guys are idiots and cheaper and actually think stickers of their stupid ass startups on their laptops are cool.

But they kept on doing it. Man they were annoying. They'd bitch about how they posted patches to Rails and DHH didn't accept it, then you'd go look and it was a four line patch with no unit tests. They'd bitch about Mongrel not running right then you'd find out they're running everything with some batshit weird deployment setup. They never listened to a damn thing anyone else said, and were just really a bunch of bumbling idiots.

Except for a few of the guys, like Tom and some other ones who were nice, most of those guys needed to seriously chill out.

But of course they didn't so one night they were trying to deploy another polished turd and decided they're going to get free tech support from me yet again. I as usual try to help, but nobody's a saint, and I bluntly tell them their deployment is stupid. Thus starts the "fuck you zed" meme.

You see, PowerSet just all started telling me "fuck you" all the time. They said it that night when I wouldn't help them, then really pissed me off. Then they named a project fuzed. Then they would just tell me "fuck you" at random in IRC channels. I tried hard, but holy crap it's hard to be nice to a bunch of jackasses that beg you for free help and then constantly call you names, insult you, rant about you, and cap it all off with a stream of "fuck you".

I don't know how it works where you're from, but a man says "fuck you" often enough he gets punched in the mouth. Sure, the puncher would go to jail, but holy crap would it be satisfying to do. I really wanted to beat those little punk's asses.

But, I had to behave so I was a good boy. People talked me down, pointed out they're young and stupid, and I tried to be nice. Me and a couple other guys who were really sick of PowerSet thought of fucking with their logos, but we didn't do it. Honestly, we really didn't need to because their logo was really bad. I mean, I couldn't have made it worse.

Dropping The P Adding A V

I then go to Rails Conf in Portland, which was the first one where they started charging a king's ransom to go hear Thoughtworks sell their shitty Ruby on Rails practice. I heard through the grapevine that Dave was going to announce his awesome web server "F U Zed".

"Jesus not this shit again." I thought. I agreed not to beat the crap out of their douchebag friend who kept yelling fuck you at me every chance he got. I hadn't said two words to them, and here we are, an entire project named Fuck You Zed.

Yay! Fuck You Me!

I was really pissed off about it, and actually a little sad. I mean think about it this way: I was just some lone guy trying to get by with some software that these guys used for their business. I was generous and helped them when I could and the one time I got sick of their constant pestering they decide to wage a war on me. An entire company with millions in the bank decided that I needed to be treated like crap.

It really sucked. I didn't name my projects after them in such a fucked up way. If I did that, I'd apologize, but they just laughed it off and tried to say it was a joke. A joke? Tons of "fuck you" to my face and a project named that? What kind of joke is that?

I was standing there at the conference, really not interested, and realizing that I needed to get out of this pyramid scheme when Obie comes over and says, "Hey you seen PowerSet's demo?"

Right then I realized how I could get my revenge. I'm good at coining phrases that stick, so I turn to Obie and say:

"VaporSet? They actually released something?"

That was it. I don't know if it's true, but apparently that name stuck and sort of fucked them up. I know Tom devoted a portion of his talk at RubyFringe to saying how much it sucked that I did that (well "someone", Tom's too nice to name name's). But the end result is I called them out on their total bullshit with one very clever name.

Apparently, I should be in marketing.

After this I heard that the PowerSet guys went into revenge overdrive. I'd hear rumors they were talking shit to this company about me, or saying to that company my software sucked. Their word meant quite a lot because they were actually running what I wrote. If they said Mongrel was crap, well they obviously know what they're talking about.

After years of hearing this, I decided to write that one giant rant and out them for the assholes they really were, and the rest is history.

Now They Have Their Revenge

Many times you'll see @moonpolysoft, @KirinDave or other guys who still say they work at PowerSet try to troll me. It's annoying but now I just fight back and tear them down. Their usual M.O. is to say some underhanded compliment then when I tell them to fuck off or point out their history with me, they'll claim it's "ad hominem". As if they deserve some kind of respect.

Awesome. Years and years later I'm still dealing with former employees of a random company who feel I deserve to be beat into the earth for what? 'Cause I called out their inability to produce a product? 'Cause I got pissed that they kept yelling "fuck you" at me? Years later and they can't let shit go, so I have to deal with it.

Then today I find out, ho ho ho, some of them are going to work on Bank Simple and my first reaction is to continue to play the game. Time to bash in some trolls.

....

Ah fuck it. You know, I've tried apologizing to these people in the past and it obviously doesn't work. For the most part, the fact that years and years later former PowerSet employees are still slandering me, insulting me, and trying to knock me down says a lot about them. I could give a rat's ass what they do. I'm sure they'll keep on going after me decades from now but I'm going to move on.

Rant Mode Off

So here's the first step. Rant mode off my friends:

I apologize to all of PowerSet for calling you VaporSet and anything I did to you or anyone that works there. I wish I had been able to talk to you all rationally then and explain how I felt, instead of being an obnoxious dick. I also don't care if you accept the apology or not, and understand that you probably will continue to do what you do. I'm cool with that, do your worst, get it out of your system. I truly hope that you can forgive a man for mistakes he made years ago. I also don't expect an apology back, since I know none of you will actually mean it.

If you read this far, and you know them, pass this on. I'll actually buy them a drink and say this to them directly. Not because I'm afraid they'll kill my project or anything like that, but because it's the right thing to do.

The world is full of suffering, I'd like to reduce it a little, and it seems these guys still feel hurt about what I did. It also seems they can't see how they hurt me quite a lot with their behavior too, so hopefully I've explained my viewpoint. If not then oh well, I tried.

Have a good one. Sorry for the drama.