Why Devs Are FLEEING Vercel

This is not a political podcast. Yeah. This is just an interesting observation on the tech industry at the moment. Well, this is something that happened. Yeah. And it got super viral on Twitter. CEO Versel was here photographing himself with the prime minister of Israel. You might support, you might be pro- Israel, you might be pro Palestine. That's not the point here. that the onslaught, the the exodus of Versel from this tweet was wild. I mean, Jesus Christ. If you scroll up a little bit, you see Yeah, this one. Yeah. So, he's replying saying, "Not the flex that you think it is." How could you not know? I don't know because the CEO of um I'm sure he knew that. Yeah, this is going to be controversial. I'm like, you cannot tell me otherwise. He knew that. But why did he do it? You see there, Lionus, we have uh he's also kind of like an I know I I follow him. He's like, "Yeah, so people are not happy." So basically, here's what happened. C of Versal takes a picture uh with Netanyahu and people are not happy with it. So what do they start doing? they start cancelling Versal uh subscriptions and Versel is known for being quite expensive by the way. Um like when you get in it can get really expensive but anyway people are cancelling subscription and I'm sure he saw that coming. You cannot do this and not see it coming. Yeah. Uh we don't know how many people are unsubscribing. Yeah. you know uh it's one thing to say that you are another thing to be like well Vale is a very very simple platform which is why it got so popular so but a lot of people are moving on to replet though here's the thing you know for some reason replet I don't I think it's because to be honest I think it's because Amjad is very vocal about his political views and he's very pro Palestine I think and so Yes. You know, where one is there, the other's there, and so a lot of people and and he's making tweets on how to move next year's projects onto Replet and making it easier for those people. So, he's he's definitely fighting the Palestine corner here. Like why would you do this as a company owner if you try to I don't know like it's it's kind of like mixing the your company with uh with these with politics especially this one is very sensitive at this time and it's not just customers moving away I bet there are some resignations happening as well people might not continue working in the company and people might not want to join the company and this is something you don't want to do especially like there we know we know of Microsoft for example they had deals with the the US military right that caused some people not wanting to work there or you know with Facebook with everything that Facebook Meta does some people might not want to work there but when you look at basics if you are a top engineer and I know Elon Musket he also became very polarizing recently uh well in the past year or so. Um but regardless of Elon Musk, if you look at what SpaceX is doing and what you know, you could be working at SpaceX or I don't know like in a finance company as an engineer, you'd probably choose SpaceX because of the cool things that they are doing and the cool brand that they are doing. So the my point being the branding of the company really matters for the people who will support it including people who want to work at your company and this is a net negative for Bristol I believe I mean you know it's funny you mentioned Elon Musk because and I know he's not quite tech but he is tech like and his chumminess with uh Donald Trump right and again love or love Donald Trump doesn't matter. point is when did when did tech merge or get so political or obviously everyone a lot of people going to have their own thoughts and feelings on this but you know I think of artists I think of musicians and things like that where you you know you take John Lennon you know or or Paul McCartney being wife beaters and things like they're they've been horrendous people maybe not so much now because John Lennon is dead But they you separate the art the artist from the person in some ways. I don't know. I I guess I'm just saying it's interesting how um Ghee felt the need to merge his political beliefs with with his work. It's it's messy because you could get into social media, you know, revealing too much about people's lives. You could get into I don't know. There's just so many avenues you can go down. But long story short is that it's it's left him in a bit of a mess. And I wonder if he's there thinking was it was it worth it? Because people feel very passionate about their political beliefs. So maybe he's like, you know what, I don't want these people on my platform if they're anti-Israel or whatever it is. Because it's something to do with Argentina there as well. I think he had an Argentina flag. Um just at the top there. I think that's Argentina, isn't it? Yeah, it is. I don't know what's up. I don't know. Either way, I mean, yeah, we I'm not not too well verssed on this sort of stuff, but yeah, like you should let us know what you think in the comments below if it's fine for a company to to do this. This is like what I'm interested in, not what side you are in um on. That's a different discussion. But yeah, I don't get it why a company CEO would do that. This is part of a larger conversation on my show, Command AI, which we stream live every single week. We discuss the news and all things related to AI in the world of design and web.