

Joel Spolsky On Why He Is Quitting Blogging - Jim_Neath
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100301/lets-take-this-offline.html

======
j_baker
To me, this sounds a lot like cognitive dissonance. It seems like Joel
believes that his blog has primarily served to further Fog Creek and that he
does his blog because he enjoys it. To cope with these two competing ideas, he
comes up with a new one: he likes his blog because it promotes Fog Creek.
Therefore, when the blog quits being beneficial to Fog Creek, he quits.

I actually find this sad. In hindsight, some of Joel's writings might not seem
terribly radical, mostly because they've since been accepted. But most of them
were when he actually wrote them. I think we underestimate the effect that
Joel has had on the software industry.

~~~
jrockway
What are Joel's contributions, exactly? Write your own programming language
and quit your job if you don't have an Aeron chair in your own private office?

~~~
rglullis
Oh, much more than that: his Strategy Letters are full of insights. He was one
of the first to speak against being too focused on looking for VC. He has
always been a proponent of BDUF but rejected any kind of "software engineering
certification" as a measure of code quality.

~~~
barredo
I'm sorry but you lost me at 'BDUF', what does it mean? (Google results seems
to agree on "Big Design Up Front" but I still do not understand)

~~~
goof
Yeah, he's referring to Big Design Up Front. It just means doing specs and
schedules instead of PG style exploratory programming.

e.g. <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000036.html>

------
stevoski
I've always enjoyed Joel's blog and will miss it. I wonder if the almost-
immediate criticisms in places like Hacker News of anything he writes is an
unstated part of the reason he's giving up blogging.

Over the years most of what Joel has written has been for me both illuminating
and entertaining. I've only disagreed vehemently a couple of times with what
he has written (his stance on exceptions, for example).

Back in 2001 I even used his Joel test to dramatically improve the quality of
the software produced by the team I was leading at the time.

~~~
lucifer
Joel is a sharp cookie. Perhaps he has come to realize that there is a point
of diminishing returns in excessive software punditry.

"Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and
remove all doubt".

------
greyman
Maybe I am a minority, but if I discover some new online company, I tend to
check their blog to have a glimpse about what they are up to, how their
thinking is in general and whether they are able to communicate in an
intelligent way. To sum it up, I personally like it when company has a blog,
and I see it as a bonus, even if they speak only about themselves.

~~~
raganwald
Alas, we are the 5-10% of programmers he talks about :-)

~~~
mattmaroon
Yeah, I don't think Joel is saying you shouldn't blog about yourself. You
should, for just that reason. He's just saying it's not an ideal lead
generation tool for most people, and I think he's correct.

------
_delirium
This seems like an oddly backwards take on blogging. Do you really start a
blog solely because it's a way to flog your product? Not because you have
things you want to say and want an outlet to say them in, without having to
deal with finding a way to get yourself published in a magazine column or
something?

I can imagine sometimes it's a good choice even if your _only_ goal is the
sales/exposure your blog brings in, but it's not surprising to me that it
would often not be. There are plenty of people, including quite a few smart
ones, blogging just to say things that they want to say, so it's a fairly
competitive market in which you're up against people who are willing to work
for free, because they categorize blogging as something other than work.

In fact, I'm not sure I _really_ believe even he originally did it for that
reason. Did he really start Joel on Software solely to be "a blog that
actually generates leads, sales, and business success"? Or was it because in
2000 blogging was still relatively new, it seemed interesting, and he had a
lot of things to say about software? I can't believe it wasn't at least a
mixture of those.

------
ghshephard
I have to believe that what we're seeing is fallout from his posting on Inc.
where he (publicly) lamented about how distressed he was by Atlassian's
performance, and started demonstrating doubt that his company would survive.
He compared Atlassian to Oracle, and Fog Creek to Informix. Even if he had
those thoughts privately, to so openly admit to the competition, (and his
customers) that he believed that Atlassian's approach might be more effective,
and they would end up being the winning team, was unwise to say the least.
(And violated several dictums of Art Of War)

I've used both Jira and FogBugz, so I take a little bit of exception at his
statement "we have the undisputed No. 1 product among the 5 percent to 10
percent of programmers who regularly read blogs about programming."

I'd like to see the the numbers behind that claim. Perhaps they No. 1 product
among people who read joelonsoftware - but "blogs about programming" in
general? I'm willing to bet money that Jira has far surpassed FogBugz in that
space, if only because every single company I know ends up using Jira for so
much more than bug tracking.

You can be certain Atlassian is aware of every step Joel takes:

<http://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRA-19746>

------
shin_lao
I think he just tries to rationalize the fact that he's done blogging for 10
years and now he's just bored with it.

~~~
Tichy
Yeah, his argument "nobody else really was successful with blogging for their
company" seems weird - so what, what matters is that he is successful.

~~~
michael_dorfman
"Successful" in what sense?

He says that it is taking away time that he'd rather be spending on his
products, and that spending his time elsewhere would better maximize profits.

I think he's thought this through, and I salute his decision (although I'll
miss reading JOS.)

------
mattmaroon
He's right on just about every account. For most web-based businesses, there
are better ways to get users than blogging. (I say this as someone who built a
pretty solid one off of a blog in the past as well.)

There's too much competition. It takes too much effort to write high-quality
content frequently enough to attract lots of attention. The conversion rate is
low, and the price is high.

Sure it works for some people. It worked for Joel and 37 Signals. It worked
for me once upon a time. All of us started before the word "blog" had entered
the popular lexicon, but it could probably work now with the right niche and
enough effort.

But if you're a small startup, you'd be better off programming some viral
hooks, maybe doing some basic SEO, testing out Ad Words, a/b testing landing
pages and every other point in your sales funnel, etc. Blogs, Facebook Pages,
and Twitter just won't give you the ROI those will when developer hours are a
big factor.

------
patio11
While I realize we typically tend to let titles stand at HN, I really think
this one would benefit from "Joel Spolsky On Why He Is Quitting Blogging."

~~~
Jim_Neath
Agreed. Changed.

------
abalashov
He has hardly been writing anything new lately anyhow. For the last year or
two, the overwhelming bulk of the new content is links to Inc. columns.

Not that that's bad. Just saying.

~~~
brown9-2
I think the article addresses this directly: his company has grown so much
that he barely has time for this sort of thing anymore.

------
whyleym
For me there's a big area around corporate blogs vs personal blogs. With our
startup we've always erred on the side of corporate, keep it very much about
releases and other important pieces of information we feel our users need to
know about our product.

Recently we've wondered whether our next startup should have a much more
personal feel - much the same way that say Peldi over at Balsamiq has
developed his product and blog (<http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/>) and in a
similar way to what Joel has as well. Peldi in particular has been completely
transparent with his numbers and you do feel a genuine personal connection
with him when you read his blog - I think this has helped him to connect with
his audience (as with Joel) and you can relate to them both much more in a
personal capacity.

For me I think it's important to have a blog (even just a coporate blog) - but
I do wonder whether you can gain more traction by adding a personal touch to
it.

Not sure what other YC'ers think ?

~~~
michael_dorfman
I think it's important to remember that Joel did it the other way around-- the
blog preceded the business.

Joel built up an audience, and simultaneously built a product that would
appeal to this audience. But even that makes it sound too calculated, as Fog
Creek's first product wasn't really aimed at Joel's readership at all.

Joel wrote about something he was passionate about, and wrote well. He also
made a product that resonated with decent chunk of his readership.

Here's a good test: would people who have no interest whatsoever in your
product be interested in your blog? If so, it's a personal blog. Cool. (Just
remember that your readers are not necessarily your customers, and vice
versa.) If not, it's a marketing tool. Which may also be cool, if that's what
you're after.

~~~
whyleym
Yep - good point.

I think in a roundabout way what I want to say is that I wonder if you should
give your company blog (to market your product) a more personal feel would
this generate more custom ?

~~~
michael_dorfman
I think that it would probably be pretty transparent to the reader that's what
you are trying to do.

If you're trying to do marketing, "a more personal feel" can quickly cross
over into a faux-folksy style that comes across as really insincere.

~~~
whyleym
What about if what you were providing was great, unique content that wasn't
all about making a sale but actually giving something of purpose in a non-
corporate, more personal manner ?

~~~
michael_dorfman
That gets back to the question I was asking before: would your readers be
interested in the content, even if they were not at all interested in your
product? If so, it's a personal blog. If not, it's a marketing blog.

------
javery
Is relying on blogging really the reason Fog Creek hasn't crossed over or is
it because they write tools that only 5-10% of the programmer audience are
interested in?

~~~
nickelplate
He is saying that blogging has had a significant opportunity cost and that his
blogging time could have been spent on something else that would have led to
Fog Creek crossing over.

------
ananthrk
_The audience was so precisely defined that products we tried to make that
weren't specifically for programmers pretty much flopped._

Any idea what products he is referring to? CityDesk or Aadvark (or something
else)?

~~~
gecko
CityDesk, which was originally supposed to be "the" Fog Creek product, but had
the misfortune of being most applicable to an audience Joel couldn't reach.

Copilot (née Aardvark) is doing just fine. Indie shops love it for taking a
look at problems on their customer's computers. Not really the market we
thought we'd nail when we first launched it, but, again, it ends up
reinforcing Joel's statement.

~~~
ananthrk
Thanks. As for Copilot, I believe it reinforces what Joel is talking about
using his blog to reach out to target customers. In the case of Copilot, the
whole "summer interns at Fog Creek" series and the movie acted as the core
message with the actual product in the background.

------
bjplink
Isn't it a little strange that he announces his "blogging retirement" on a
magazine's website inside an article hidden behind an interstitial ad?
Shouldn't this have gone front and center on Joel on Software?

~~~
phsr
He mentioned it in the Stackoverflow podcast either last week or the week
before as well.

------
richardw
I've read JOS since...well, I think the beginning, or dang close. Joel's
articles are some of my most-forwarded. The earliest were phenomenal.

Now, though...most of the time I figure he's going to try sell me something.
Each post is about a new feature. The Inc articles give me the idea that
coders just aren't where he's at anymore. Bigger fish to fry.

------
akshat
"What's more, I have trouble pointing to other successful entrepreneurs who
have used the same formula and reaped the same dividends I have."

The first bit of advice given by anyone is to start building content, so that
SEO can help your webapp be discovered. While this is good advice, in a way
Joel is contradicting this. He is effectively saying that SEO will only take
you so far. This has further impact when it is coming from probably one of the
most linked to blogs.

The question to ask here is whether this building content stuff so very
important? I agree with the thought about building an audience, which is
priceless, but what about plain old content found through google?

~~~
michael_dorfman
I don't think he's contradicting it at all.

"Building content so that SEO can help your webapp be discovered" is a great
first step. But it will indeed only take you so far.

Joel's interested in selling his products to people who have no interest in
reading JOS. And, starting another blog with alternate content is not the best
way to reach these people, either.

~~~
akshat
"great first step" is not necessarily accurate. It normally takes a lot of
time before content gets traction in Search Engines.

SEO is more like one of the arrows in the quiver, which is extremely
efficient(profitable).

------
thunk
The latest in a series of internet retirements and disappearances. Private
forums are on the uptick.

------
rudd
On the StackOverflow podcast, I believe he mentioned something about not
wanting to dominate the blogging world anymore. Someone says "Joel" and
everyone else thinks "Spolsky." Yet, he doesn't mention that at all here. I
wonder what's up with that?

Also, he says he's going to quit "for the most part" podcasting and public
speaking. Is this also the end of the StackOverflow podcast? Seems unlikely
that he'd force that onto Jeff, who seems to like it a lot.

~~~
rayvega
_> > Is this also the end of the StackOverflow podcast?_

[http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/40602/joel-to-
quit-t...](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/40602/joel-to-quit-the-
podcast/40716#40716)

He might have meant no longer doing other people's podcasts.

------
zavulon
He'll be back

~~~
noarchy
In some form, yes, I agree. There's too much ego in what he does for it to be
otherwise.

------
10ren
FogBugz has competitors, I think especially Jira, but it's hard to dominate
the market if you only target 5-10%.

Isn't pg an entrepreneur who has reaped similar dividends from a similar
formula of "blogging"? i.e. a book/essays addressing bigger issues, has
indirectly promoted YC.

~~~
ekanes
An oversimplification:

pg's "job" is to reach smart geeks living anywhere, convince them he knows
what he's talking about and then fund the best among them.

Blogging = high return on effort. He's reaching many geeks and selling them on
his qualifications all at once.

Joel's "day job" is managing and encouraging the growth of his (NYC-only)
company. Blogging has a lower return on effort because only a small percent
would be able/interested in moving to NYC to work for him. Local advertising
in NYC would probably provide a better return on his time/money.

------
staunch
1) I bet he could sell the same audience on new products as many times as he
could make new useful products. He could scale his company horizontally
instead of vertically.

2) Something is off if you have the attention of the hardcore programmers in
the world, and can't make your programming tool spread. Why aren't these
programmers falling over themselves to use and recommend FogBugz?

~~~
DougWebb
Just a guess about #2: the programmers might be recommending FogBugz to their
bosses with the pursestrings, but the bosses may not like it enough. FogBugz's
approach to project planning might be "the only approach that actually works
well" (which I believe) but it's definitely non-traditional and takes control
of the schedule away from the people who usually like to have that control. So
I think there's typically a lot of resistance from outside the development
group to adopting FogBugz.

------
webwright
Why would he shut down an major marketing/awareness channel so he can
concentrate on stuff that he's not good at? I guess maybe because he wants to
improve.

But I'd guess Fog Creek would be more successful if Joel focused entirely on
being a spokesmodel and internal product leader and hired an operations person
who was smart about sales, marketing, and channel distribution.

------
amilr
in the meantime, i'm still waiting for stevey's promised last three posts ...

~~~
jrockway
Indeed. In addition to writing extremely interesting posts, he was the one
"celebrity blogger" that actually proved he had any programming ability (by
releasing open-source software). So many bloggers write about programming
techniques, but very few of them have ever written any code that the readers
can take a look at.

------
Aleran
Joel slams Twitter's blog as boring, saying it's essentially rewritten press
releases but Twitter does have an engineering focused blog that has much more
interesting content (for Programmers anyways).

<http://engineering.twitter.com/>

------
rayvega
First Steve Yegge and now Joel.

------
eande
usually first article in Inc magazine I read was from Joel. His overall
comprehensive thinking was a great resource and inspiration to me. I will miss
his well written articles and often good topics.

------
pw0ncakes
In July 2008, I had recently been laid off and it was the midst of the Worst
Recession Ever.

I applied to Fog Creek. I didn't get to the in-office interview. Now, I'd
totally understand if they chose not to hire me after an interview. I'm pretty
particular about what kind of work I want to be doing, and that makes me a
poor fit for most jobs. Also, knowing more about the company, I wouldn't have
been a great fit (no fan of Microsoft, and they use Wasabi, which I understand
to be a VB dialect). So I hold no grudge that I didn't get hired-- just
business, and very likely the right decision-- but I was pretty damn
_surprised_ not to get an office interview. I'm reasonably smart (top 100
Putnam) and I made it to the final round of DE Shaw's process shortly out of
school, and had plenty of opportunities (even then, in 2008) to move back into
finance. So it's pretty shocking that they didn't at least bring me into the
office. Ok, but that's their decision and within their rights; they haven't
done anything wrong, unprofessional, or embarrassing. Not yet, anyway...

Here's where Fog Creek begins to look bad: remember what I said about being
laid off in the midst of the worst recession ever? After getting turned down
for the interview, I called Fog Creek to ask why I didn't get it, wanting to
make future applications, to other companies, more successful. No explanation.
No tips or advice. Nothing. "We'll call you if we can release that
information." No call. I tried again, 2 weeks later. Nothing. I'm sorry, but
if you can't take 5 minutes out of your day to explain to someone who is down
on his luck why he didn't get an interview, then you've checked your humanity
at the door and crossed the line into sleazy corporate "neither confirm nor
deny" territory.

To make it worse, I know that Joel is friends with my ex-boss. So Fog Creek's
decision not to explain the rationale to me casts aspersion onto him. Not very
professional. (Of course, I have no idea if Joel had anything whatsoever to do
with this matter. Still, it makes the company look bad.)

Anyway, I rebounded, I've moved on and I'm doing well. In 10 years when I have
a bit of success to my name and I'm hiring, I won't hold it against someone to
have worked there. Even if that person worked in their HR department in the
summer of 2008. But this is why I think Fog Creek is overrated. I'm sure
they're a great company, and they have some impressive people, but they still
have a touch of the old regime in them... or at least in one subsection of the
HR department as of two years ago.

(TL;DR version: The "cool company" image of Fog Creek is overstated, as my
experience attests. Still, their programmers are impressive.)

~~~
mattmanser
No, just because they didn't tell you why they rejected your application does
not mean they are uncool.

It just means you have rather unreasonable expectations of what other people
should do for you.

~~~
pw0ncakes
_No, just because they didn't tell you why they rejected your application does
not mean they are uncool._

It's different from how Joel presents his philosophy of business. For a
person, it would be hypocrisy. For a company, it's more accurately described
as inconsistency (because there's no evidence whatsoever that Joel had
anything to do with HR's decision not to inform me). Which is probably
inevitable when a large number of people are involved (moving parts ->
inconsistency). I wouldn't hold this against any specific individual. I'm sure
most of the individual people at FC are great.

~~~
brandon272
How does your experience "differ" from how Joel presents his "philosophy of
business"? Please be specific. Joel has touched on this specific topic in
podcasts before (i.e. why he wouldn't provide feedback to a job applicant), so
I don't see how this differs from what he has preached before. If anything,
your experience fits in rather perfectly with how he claims to run his
business.

~~~
pw0ncakes
He presents himself as some sort of enlightened manager. Yet when he's on the
spot with a chance to prove it, he slinks back into the traditional "neither
confirm nor deny" stance of old-style corporations.

He was within his rights not to give a reason. Not saying otherwise. I'm just
saying I'll never work with him or his company in the future. Although he'll
probably never have any use of this "bridge", he gained nothing by burning it.

~~~
brandon272
Who says that an "enlightened manager" is one who opens his company up to
potential litigation by providing honest feedback to any rejected job
applicant that wants it?

There's not a whole lot of people who are going to like what a potential
employer has to say about them if they have been rejected. They have no way of
gauging how someone will react and there is virtually zero benefit to
providing any feedback whatsoever. This has nothing to do with management
style; it's just common sense.

~~~
pw0ncakes
_Who says that an "enlightened manager" is one who opens his company up to
potential litigation by providing honest feedback to any rejected job
applicant that wants it?_

Potential litigation? Given that (1) I would have absolutely no legal leg to
stand on, and (2) I'd rather get another job and advance my career than spend
a year suing someone, blackballing myself in the process: why would I possibly
do that? If that thought even went through anyone's mind, I'm insulted,
because I'd have to be an idiot to try to pull that off.

If your legal strategy, regarding someone who has absolutely no incentive (and
plenty of counterincentives) to sue you, comes before your humanity, there's
something wrong.

 _They have no way of gauging how someone will react and there is virtually
zero benefit to providing any feedback whatsoever._

There's no benefit to helping out someone who applied to work at your company
and might be doing something of interest to you in the future? Really?

~~~
brandon272
_Potential litigation? Given that (1) I would have absolutely no legal leg to
stand on, and (2) I'd rather get another job and advance my career than spend
a year suing someone, blackballing myself in the process: why would I possibly
do that? If that thought even went through anyone's mind, I'm insulted,
because I'd have to be an idiot to try to pull that off._

All of your suppositions assume that the potential employer knows and
understands all of your motivations! They don't. Maybe you're a wonderful,
stand-up guy. But maybe you're not. They have no way of knowing for sure. So
it's only natural for them to assume that some applicants may give them grief
if they provide an "honest answer" as to why that particular applicant was not
hired. Whether or not _you_ , specifically would cause them grief is totally
and completely irrelevant unless, perhaps, they have an explicit reason to
believe that _you_ , specifically wouldn't cause them grief. Can you provide
any reason that _you_ , specifically should be treated differently than all
other applicants who they interview, including the ones who would cause them
grief if they were told exactly why they were not hired?

On the topic of litigation, even if you didn't have a leg to stand on legally
(which may or may not be true), even launching a frivolous legal claim against
them can be annoying and costly to them. They _still_ have to grab a lawyer to
advise them on the matter and they _still_ have to defend themselves against
anything you may or may not bring forward, frivolous or not.

 _There's no benefit to helping out someone who applied to work at your
company and might be doing something of interest to you in the future?
Really?_

Really! Fog Creek undoubtedly receives a veritable plethora of job
applications. The chances that you specifically will be of great interest to
them in the future outside the scope of being employed with their company is
slim as a matter of probability, assuming that you don't already have some
kind of working relationship with their company. If you do already have a
working relationship with Fog Creek, you should take this issue up with them
directly instead of on Hacker News.

