I’ve been familiar with who DHH, David Heinemeier Hansson, is for well over a decade, or even 15 years. We don’t know each other, but I know him from his internet blogs, and whatnot. Also, in a similar fashion, I know his boss and/or colleague/partner/whomever Jason Fried. They both influenced my world view, profession-wise, quite a bit. In an interesting way, though. They simply provided me just another set of sane people with sane approach to work. I was reassured that I’m not alone in how I perceive work, projects, business, all that. Many things they say publicly, I do agree with them. They resonate.
Due to my background of spending all my childhood in Russian-speaking community, I grew a set of skills, one of which some strong critical thinking. I’d love it to be somewhat less extreme, actually, but there’s little I can do now. I’m open-minded person who’s open to other new people, but I’m always moderating and patching in real time what I hear from the people, all the people. Including the closest family members. Russians lie about everything, and so I was somewhat trained to actually see when people lie. And people do lie quite a lot, obviously.
I’m not telling these two lie about something, I’m telling I developed some critical thinking skills that allow not to be in awe of them. Since I have the impression they have some followers, as in… fans? I guess, ‘fans’ is a good word in here.
I tried to apply for their recent (this year) job posting, but I lacked on skills, obviously. (They did hire a pretty good designer, by the way. I explored the guy when they announced the new hire, and he’s good.)
And while I do think we (me and DHH, and Jason, in lesser degree), have many things in common, I cannot say I somehow adore them. They’re just regulars to me, a normal people, so to say. Weird is that they’re treated as some weirdos by their non-fans. I mean, I believe I clearly see when they’re bullshitting others about some things here and there. You just need to patch what they say, by adding some context, probably.
… to be continued