As a current user of CircleCI, and as someone who set up Jenkins for general consumption at my last company, I have to echo your sentiment. With CircleCI, we have been left in the dark for more time than I care to think about due to completely oddworld (and sometimes sporadic) failures. Jenkins took me less than a day to set up (as someone who had never set it up before), and while it wasn't all smooth sailing, everyone was capable of diagnosing problems that we encountered.
To be fair to both Circle and Jenkins, between Github, Heroku and/or <insert other virtual services here>, there are a lot of 'black boxes' that have to work in concert (for us, and probably for many others out here). As the pin that ties the deployment cycle together, CI tends to draw on a lot of hate (warranted or not) from engineers trying to get their code out of the door.
I find that I am happier when I can get my hands dirty and help myself when things go awry. Software is all fun and games until a black box is standing between you and deployment.
To be fair to both Circle and Jenkins, between Github, Heroku and/or <insert other virtual services here>, there are a lot of 'black boxes' that have to work in concert (for us, and probably for many others out here). As the pin that ties the deployment cycle together, CI tends to draw on a lot of hate (warranted or not) from engineers trying to get their code out of the door.
I find that I am happier when I can get my hands dirty and help myself when things go awry. Software is all fun and games until a black box is standing between you and deployment.