
Joel Inc., Stackoverflow Careers and Jumping Shark - fogus
http://www.cforcoding.com/2009/12/joel-inc-stackoverflow-careers-and.html
======
raganwald
I hope we are too busy finding good things to build, good ways to build them,
and good people to build them with (and for!) to sit around gossiping about
who's over the hill and who sucks.

The entire spirit of HN is to upvote what you like. We don't need to engage in
meta-discussion about which blogs are worth reading because we simply upvote
the specific posts that are worth reading. Prolific and consistently good
writers simply appear more often.

If you, I or anybody else doesn't like what Joel writes or Jeff writes or Reg
writes, the solution is definitely to write a blog post. But not this post.
Instead, write the kind of blog post you want people to read. Be a force for
positive change.

And if you don't feel like writing, don't get sucked into pointing fingers and
sneering at others. Spend your time reading the good stuff.

 _Once there was a horse tied up on the side of the street. Whenever someone
tried to pass, the horse would kick them. Soon a crowd gathered around the
horse until a wise man was seen coming close. The people said “This horse will
surely kill anyone who tries to pass. What are we going to do?” The wise man
looked at the horse, turned and walked down another street._

~~~
alecco
I beg to differ with you. It's highly articulate criticism coming from a
regular JS blog reader and with an incredibly high reputation on StackOverflow
(Cletus seems to be the 4th top ranked user.)

Cletus's post raises very valid points and expresses the feelings of betrayal
of many people who contributed to StackOverflow many hours of work for free.
And he shows several contradictions in what Spolsky preaches and what he
practices.

Ironically your comment doesn't add much to the discussion and criticizes
Cletus' blog post for being a negative post. Also you seem to confuse the
author of the post with the submitter in HN:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=fogus>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=cletus>

Finally, you say Cletus is telling people "which blogs are worth reading",
what makes me think you actually didn't read the whole piece.

~~~
raganwald
I did read the whole piece.

I don't care who Cletus is, I was responding to what he(?) wrote. If his post
was good but he had a low SO reputation, would I discount his opinion? And I
have no idea there is a cletus here as well as there. I wasn't paying any
attention to who he is for the same reason I was dismayed by how many words
he(?) used to discuss who Joel is.

Finally, I never said his post was not truthful. There is dreck in the world.
I know that and so do you.

p.s. But yeah, I hesitated before commenting on account of the irony. And then
I removed the first paragraph, which originally read:

 _Fuck. fuck. fuck. fuck. fuck. fuck. fuck. fuck._

Not my most articulate writing by a long shot...

~~~
aaronblohowiak
Cletus is a male name.

Stats & origin: <http://www.thinkbabynames.com/meaning/1/Cletus>

~~~
kylec
Cletus isn't his real name anyway - it's William Shields.

------
mcormier
Stackoverflow Careers deserves serious criticism. I think it was delivered too
soon. They should have waited until StackOverflow became more established.

I've used Stackoverlow on occasion but I don't think the point system means
much, and shouldn't be used for an associative career site. People that are
competent aren't on stackoverflow all day answering questions for people that
didn't read the documentation.

~~~
ErrantX
> People that are competent aren't on stackoverflow all day answering
> questions for people that didn't read the documentation.

Agreed. If I were hiring someone a super high SO score might put me off -
especially if they pushed that as a good thing about them.

~~~
raganwald
For the sake or discussion...

Should we apply the same thinking to blogging? Are competent programmers too
busy programming write blog posts?

~~~
nostrademons
I don't think that they're universally too busy to blog, but I do think that
the truly great programmers blog very infrequently because they have better
things to do. Paul Buchheit's blog shows about one entry per quarter while he
was working on Friendfeed, then it went up to about one per week after the
FaceBook acquisition. Marc Andreesen has gone dark since starting his venture
fund. I know many really awesome programmers at Google who have _zero_
Internet presence, because they're too busy coding. If you want to know what
Rob Pike thinks, you read his code, because he doesn't write much otherwise.

I've found that when I'm working on something really cool, I tend to go
relatively dark on the Internet too, and there's an inverse correlation
between my comments and my productivity. In other words, when I talk I don't
know what I'm talking about, and when I know what I'm talking about, I don't
talk. ;-) But I cycle through doing/talking phases several times a year, so
I'm continually refreshing my experience. Someone who's been doing nothing but
blogging for 3-4 years (which seems to be the time it takes to build a major
audience) is probably pretty rusty technically, which makes their advice
suspect.

~~~
azanar
_I do think that the truly great programmers blog very infrequently because
they have better things to do._

This is really presumptuous, and makes a leap from correlative to causal on
the back of a couple of blanket assumptions.

The first is that there are better things to do than blog: based on what? If
someone feels the itch to write about something they really care about, and
doesn't want to bother with more formal methods of publication, I think that
blogging is one of the best things they can do with their time. It is not like
they are producing nothing; they are producing something that will --
hopefully -- propagate ideas and critical thinking. This sounds like a very
good thing. Not all problems that are looking for an answer will have that
answer found in a block of code; sometimes the wetware needs to be refactored.

The second is that people who blog more than infrequently are apt to be
technically rusty, and should be subject of suspicion. This make me suspicious
of those who would assert that. Again, based on what assumption? I agree with
the claim that if they blog more they have less time for other things besides
blogging; rollover minutes only work on some cellphones. But to claim that
because they blog more they _know_ less; this is quite an extraordinary claim.
It wants to lump everyone who blogs a lot in with the blowhards. What if
someone has a lot to say, and thinks it is important to get those ideas out?
It sounds like you would tell that person to shut up and get back to work. I
worry about the consequences of this.

~~~
nostrademons
We're talking in the context of "truly great programmers". It makes sense that
truly great programmers get that way by programming. That doesn't mean
blogging is a useless activity, or that bloggers are bad programmers.
Actually, I think most bloggers are _good_ programmers, better than the
average non-blogging population. But by and large, they aren't _great_
programmers, because the jump from good to great takes that extra bit of
concentration and attention that's consumed by blogging.

Think of programming ability as a pyramid. There're a vast amount of
programmers that show up at work, put in their 8 hours, and never really think
about what they're doing. These people generally don't read or write blogs.
Then there're the people that are passionately involved in their craft. They
blog. Then there're the people at the very top of the field - the Guy Steeles,
Rob Pikes, Jeff Deans, etc. They usually don't blog, because they put all
their concentration into their code, and when they take a break, they do
things like photography or swing dancing that take them completely away from
programming so they can recharge.

The interesting thing about this distribution is that the average blogger is a
better programmer than the average non-blogger, but the average great
programmer does not blog.

FWIW, I consider myself a good programmer, but not a great programmer. And
I've suspected for a couple years that the reason I'm not a great programmer
is because I talk too much and code too little. So I dunno if I'd tell the
general blogger to shut up and get back to work, but I certainly tell _myself_
to shut up and get back to work, usually with lukewarm results.

~~~
sshumaker
I agree that great programmers tend to be focused on programming, to the
exclusion of most other productive intellectual activities.

It's ironic - I feel exactly the opposite of the above poster. I just find it
too easy to slip back into programming, instead of blogging about my work or
spending the time to open-source any of my projects. I wish I was blogging
more (or at all, for that matter).

------
michael_dorfman
There are two issues here: the business idea (of the jobs site), and Joel's
puffery.

I'll make no comment on the latter point, but I have to wonder about the
former-- if the hiring process is broken (and I accept the argument that it
is), what's a better angle for a start-up than what Jeff and Joel have done?

~~~
raganwald
With respect to programming jobs startups, it seems like there are at least
two ways forward. One is to find a new way to match programmers with existing
jobs. The other is to find new kinds of jobs entirely.

YCombinator has funded at least one company finding new ways to match
programmers with jobs. And I think YCombinator itself is a new kind of job for
programmers :-)

------
kylec
I think the main issue here is that Cletus is in Australia. Assuming things
haven't changed since January, Australia accounts for only 3% of the traffic
to Stack Overflow[1]. It's hard to expect a critical mass of employers less
than a month after the employer beta started[2], especially given how few
potential candidates are in the area. Jeff has already floated the idea of
offering a coupon[3] to interested employers, demonstrating that he's aware of
and working to correct the issue.

Besides, it's _way_ too early to say that Careers has "jumped the shark",
considering that the public wasn't even aware of its _existence_ two months
ago.

1: [http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/01/where-in-the-world-
do-...](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/01/where-in-the-world-do-stack-
overflow-users-come-from)

2: [http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/11/careers-employer-
beta-...](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/11/careers-employer-beta-
underway/)

3: [http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/31649/whats-your-
cv-...](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/31649/whats-your-cv-hit-rate-
on-careers/31650#31650)

~~~
johns
Offtopic: I went clicking through your profile then your Careers CV and see
that you did the modos rep tracker. I'm addicted to that thing, so thank you
very much. It would be interesting if you added # of visits by user ID then
told me that I was visiting way too often because I was a top X% user of the
tracker :) Great tool, it has a permanent spot on my bookmarks bar. Thanks
again.

~~~
kylec
Thanks! Sorry it's been broken for the past day or two, the profile page had
some major markup changes. As soon as I get some time I'll get it working
again (hopefully today) and I'll incorporate a little stat that tells you how
many times you've hit the tracker in the past day/week/month/lifetime. And,
um, if you know anyone that's hiring, feel free to pass on the link to my CV.
Thanks. :-)

------
thafman
Does anyone else think that while Fogcreek and 37signals have done something
cool, a whole generation has tried to imitate them with little success and the
constant posting of Joel + Jason does this site little/no good?

~~~
gruseom
I tend to agree, with one caveat: Joel is a good writer and I am almost always
entertained by reading him, even when I disagree.

------
mistermann
Always interesting how blog posts critical of Spolsky always create so much
chatter here....or, almost always. If you happen to include Paul Graham as a
target in the same blog post as Spolsky (Blogs Are Godless Communist
Bullshit), it seems people here aren't as interested in the article for some
reason. Funny that.

~~~
allenbrunson
You seem to be implying that, on news.yc, it's okay to criticize Joel Spolsky,
but not Paul Graham. I think it's that you don't have enough controls in your
experiment.

I read this longish blog post in its entirety. I don't agree with all of it,
but I think the author made some valid points, and that he's making a good-
faith effort to be constructive. I also read the longish Giles Bowkett blog
post you're talking about. It was very much _not_ constructive, and in fact
was all the way across the scale to conspiracy-theory, tinfoil-hat-style
nutbar-ism. I'm not surprised it didn't score very well when it was posted
here.

Have you noticed how Paul usually reacts to criticism? Say somebody posts a
comment here that is vaguely critical of something he wrote. Paul's usual
response is along the lines of: "Are there specific things you can point out
that I was wrong about?" That doesn't sound to me like a guy who considers
himself beyond criticism.

~~~
mistermann
I'm not saying Paul considers himself beyond criticism, I am saying that the
community here jumps at the chance to heap criticism on Joel (there are many
historical examples of that here)....the only exception I am aware of is the
article in which Paul was also mentioned...for that article, hardly a peep.

------
leelin
The second half was a very verbose way to say "it's hard to start a
marketplace."

Fair enough. It's hard, but there are success stories all the time.

Karma + pay-to-be-seen + leverage-blog-fame is one set of infinitely many
jump-starting gimmicks. Many potential job hunters won't bite, but the subset
that remains might be exactly what certain employers want.

------
pwnstigator
I've met Joel in person, and he's bright, but not visionary. Some of his
writing his interesting, but I'm generally unimpressed.

Disclaimer: I'm not impartial. I interviewed with Fog Creek in the summer of
2008. I was rejected, which didn't upset or surprise me. However, when I
called to ask why, I got a non-answer (HR: "we'll call if we can release this
information"). I'd been unemployed for 4 months due to health problems, the
economy was falling apart, and they wouldn't even help me out a little bit by
telling me why they said "no". Amazing. If he'd had the courage to tell me why
I was turned down, my opinion of him would probably be neutral-to-positive.

~~~
gecko
Almost no company will tell you why you weren't hired. In the US, as soon as a
company gives you a reason for why you were not hired, you can sue and argue
that the grounds for rejecting you were frivolous. Worse, if the exact
phrasing used in any way possibly implies that you might have been rejected
for a protected class (even if that's not actually the case in reality) then
you can sue for truly ludicrous amounts of money.

Neither of these are hypotheticals; one company I worked for had had a couple
of lawsuits due to the former, and last I heard, a friend's company was
halfway through a lawsuit due to the latter.

This is another area where you can thank the lawyers for making it a mess for
everyone.

------
ilovecheese
I feel sorry for anyone in this industry who looks toward people like Joel
Spolsky for guidance.

~~~
Splines
Care to elaborate? His guidance seems to be reasonable and consistent - while
it should be taken with a grain of salt (some of it feels anecdotal rather
than factual), I don't find it unhelpful, as you posit.

~~~
sshumaker
Joel isn't outright dishonest, but when he presents his views he usually does
it with the intent of improving his business, or rationalization for his
business decisions - so there's a strong slant to his talks. You can see this
in a lot of places - Everything from his talk about 'great work environment' -
"and that's why every programmer at Fog Creek has two monitors and their own
office!" to his suggestions of how to hire the best programmers concluding
with "That's why you should use StackOverflow Careers". When he's not outright
pitching his company or products, he's rationalizing decisions. Clearly, Ruby
on Rails was too immature for FogBugz - that's why his team developed a custom
programming language to power BUG TRACKING software.

