
Farewell Stack Exchange - dko
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/02/farewell-stack-exchange.html
======
sriramk
I feel like all of us owe a big thanks to Jeff. It's hard to imagine writing
any code these days without Stackoverflow. It definitely made the web better
for me, and I suspect, any other developer out there.

~~~
danneu
Seriously. The best case scenario when I google an error is that a Stack
Overflow link pops up. I wasn't big into coding when Experts Exchange was
consistently #1, but I somehow stumbled into it regardless. I also can't stand
mailing lists.

Anyone involved in Stack Overflow should rest assured that they made the world
a better place for a lot of people.

~~~
jtchang
The worse case scenario is when you see an experts exchange link. That's when
I truly cringe and brace myself for the popups.

~~~
eru
You should get an adblocker and popup blocker. Unless that was hyperbole.

~~~
gravitronic
Have you ever visited expert's exchange? It's like the predecessor to
StackExchange but you had to pay to get answers. Not even an adblocker and
popup blocker would solve that problem.

~~~
bryanlarsen
For the last few years now you can just scrawl to the bottom to read the
answer. They had to put that in otherwise Google wouldn't index them.

~~~
Spoom
Yes, but only if your referer indicates that you're coming from Google,
otherwise you _only_ get the offer to buy the answer, with no indication that
it's available for free. Slimy. This is why I avoid ever linking to them,
because anyone who is unfortunate enough to follow a link to EE gets a
question with no answers.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Scrolling to the bottom works from anywhere and has for many years. There was
a short period of time where it only worked from Google, until Google nailed
them for that.

------
martincmartin
One day when I worked at Rockstar Games I was walking through the lobby and
bumped into the technical director's wife and kid. I said "hi," and the wife
was very apologetic, explaining that she knew their daughter couldn't see her
father for yet another night in a row, but just wanted to spend 15 minutes
with him. I just remember walking away thinking "I'll never be that kind of
father." I left a few months later.

Outside the games industry, though, the usual response when a company grows,
and you can't give significant equity to new hires to justify crazy hours, is
to change the company culture to have closer to 40 hours a week. Both ITA
software (which PG mentioned in Great Hackers) and Endeca, two successful pre-
liquidity-event companies when I joined, had normal working hours. Is that
only true in Boston, or in SF too?

~~~
stuff4ben
>explaining that she knew their daughter couldn't see her father for yet
another night in a row, but just wanted to spend 15 minutes with him.

Dude, reading that just makes me want to cry. I may be an IT enterprise
schmuck doing java development for the man, but at least I have a life outside
of the 8-5. Man I have so much to be thankful for: a job that's 5 minutes away
from where I live, pays me very well, and I can be home for lunch with my
girls every day and home for dinner before 5:30. I'd love to have my own
startup (hence the HN trolling) but not at the expense of my family. I guess
the lifestyle-business/startup is where I'll end up eventually.

~~~
ams6110
Frankly, some of this "family time" stuff can be taken too far by fathers.
What are you going to do, sit around the house reading Dr. Seuss and playing
Lego? That's fine to a point, but you also need to be setting an example as a
provider and you do that by spending a reasonable amount of time at work. Kids
absorb and internalize their experiences as they grow, and when they are
adults (past the turbulence of adolescence) those internalized behaviors are
how they live. If they have not had the experience of growing up with a parent
who displays the discipline to sacrifice, work hard, and succeed, they won't
tend to have that either.

This is NOT a critique of Atwood's (or anyone else's) decision specifically;
he has clearly been a success and maybe the work/home ratio in his life _was_
out of balance. Like many good things, time spent at work can become a
negative. But on the whole I don't think a parent, particularly a father,
needs to feel guilty about spending a reasonable amount of time at work. You
are teaching your kids how to be a provider, even if you are not physically
"there" 24/7.

~~~
eliam
I came to this same conclusion recently. It's great to spend time with the
kids but there's a lot to be said for setting an example. I changed jobs to be
closer to home after my second child was born. It's been over a year now and
I'm realizing that being a good father is not just about spending quality time
with your kids. It's also about teaching our kids to follow their dreams and
find work that they truly enjoy. What better way to teach them this? This is
why I'm making an effort to change my situation ASAP.

~~~
mikecaron
Jonathan Coulton comes to mind. He left his boring job as a programmer to
pursue music as a way to make a living. He does not sacrifice family time for
his "dream", but provides an example of a dad doing something he enjoys to
make money for the family while having fun with the family.

~~~
eliam
My situation is a little different. I actually enjoy programming. What I miss
is the satisfaction of building solutions to real problems and working with
other developers who are as passionate and dedicated their work as I am. We
put a lot of effort into becoming the best we can. It's nice to have the
opportunity to put those skills to good use.

------
staunch
> _It's been almost exactly 4 years_

Funny how often you read that in resignation posts. Four years is typically
when one's shares become fully vested. At this point there's no way for him to
make significantly more money from working at Stack Exchange.

It's perfectly logical to quit now, to either 1. Relax (maximizing family
happiness) or 2. Start a new company (maximizing economic opportunity).

Considering how recently they pivoted into a VC-backed company it seems rather
too soon for a co-founder to be jetting though. Wonder if Spolsky regrets
backdating their vesting schedule (if that's what they did). Might be a bit of
a cautionary tale for founders.

~~~
finnw
I've always been slightly surprised that founders accept vesting at all.

What is to stop the VC from firing you the day before your options mature?

Then you would effectively have worked for them for free for 2 years, and for
a low salary for a year and 51 weeks after that, all at 70 hours a week.

I would never give anyone the opportunity to do that to me.

~~~
mhartl
The stock vests over time. Four years isn't the typical time for stock to
vest; it's the typical time to be _fully_ vested. Usually it's 1/4 per year
for 4 years.

Vesting doesn't just protect investors. It also protects cofounders. Suppose
you start a venture 50/50 with a buddy. After a year, he leaves, and three
years later you've bootstrapped the company into a $100m business. Without
vesting, your cofounder would still be entitled to 50%. With vesting, he would
get 25% of 50%, or only 12.5%.

~~~
pmjordan
Sorry to be nit-picking, but the percentage of shares _issued_ that the
departed cofounder holds after 4 years would be 20%. It's not helpful to look
at percentages during the calculation: look at absolute number of shares. If 1
share vests each month, the remaining founder has 48 after 4 years, the
departed one retains 12, hence 20%.

Of course, this ignores any further shares the remainin founder might issue to
himself by investing his own money or assets (he holds a majority stake, so
that shouldn't be too difficult)

------
jxcole
I deeply respect Jeff's decision to put his family first. I have a general
question though. I am an ordinary programmer at an ordinary job working
ordinary hours. From those of you who have started their own project full
time, is it impossible to run a start up and work ordinary hours? Or is it
really necessary to sacrifice all other aspects of your life to be successful?

~~~
ahoyhere
That depends on what you qualify a "startup."

My husband and I run a SaaS/infoproduct business which grossed right around
$600k last year and we do not work long hours (or even 40 hours/wk). In 2011,
we invested heavily in our next product, a new office, a lot of lawyering &
tax accountanting (and made a couple rather big (hiring) mistakes with money),
so our take-home wasn't glorious, but next year it will be.

We:

* built the product in a hack day a week or so for 3 mos * worked pretty hard the first year, since we were doing it alongside consulting; but literally there were weeks, and months, where we did nothing, and our business survived & even grew for a time * quit consulting in 2010 (me in Jan, my husband later)

To put this in perspective:

In late 2009, I had mono, which knocked me out for a few mos. I got better for
a while, but then a series of viral infections landed me with chronic fatigue
syndrome. Several times since then, I've been incapacitated for 1-3 mos.

Now I'm mostly better, but every time I get sick, I'm unable to work for a
week or two. I don't make it up by working long hours when I'm well, either.
We're talking 20-30 hours a week for me, max. We haven't worked more than a
40-hour work week for more than two weeks at a time in nearly 2 years, and our
biz is 3 years old.

In short: it's totally doable.

Focus on solving a pain people will pay for. Build something simple, which
doesn't require a lot of maintenance. Choose customers who aren't needy
fuckers. Pick your hours.

Example: Our 1st product is a time tracking tool. Unsexy but it's got a run
rate of just over $300k/yr now, just over 3 years old. We had 8% growth in
revenue month over month from Dec to Jan. Which is totally sexy.

And… right now we're on a month-long trip to NZ. I've been working an average
of an hour a day because I'm running a course to teach people how to build
this kind of biz. (That's in 2-4 hour stretches, not actually 1 hour a day,
which would be useless.) My husband hasn't worked at all on this trip except
yesterday he had to reset one of our (redundant) servers because of an
apparent hardware failure. That'll probably take a couple more hours of his
time this week.

Sure, we could work more, hit it harder, and probably earn more money. But
we're nicely on track for $1.5m in yearly revenue inside of ~2 more years
(when I turn 30!) so I figure, why bother? What could we NOT have with
$750k/yr of sustainable _household income_ , even if we spent _half_ the gross
revenue on overhead (which is ridiculously unlikely)? We already get to touch
thousands of people's lives every day. We can already invest in charities and
nice things.

As Felix Dennis, who's ludicrously rich (in my mind), wrote in his very
excellent How To Get Rich:

"Ask me what I will give you if you could wave a magic wand and give me my
youth back. The answer would be everything I own and everything I will ever
own."

He says no less than 3 times in his book that if he could go back to his youth
and live a different life, he would have spent way, way, way less time
accumulating his obscene (hundreds of $mils) riches and more time living. I
take him at his word.

In short, it's totally possible. You won't believe it if you spend too much
time reading HN, however. Or people will tell you that your ambition is too
small… and sneer that you run a "lifestyle business." But then, you will have
a life, so you can laugh all the way to the bank.

NB: I blog about this stuff at <http://unicornfree.com> in case you're
interested.

~~~
PonyGumbo
Hey Amy - I just read your travel post. How do you guys handle support while
you're both on the road? Do you just make it clear to customers that there's a
multi-day response time, or do you hire temporary support staff?

~~~
WadeF
I'm interested in hearing about this too. Support can be one of the most time
consuming parts of a web app. Maybe because your apps are simple they have
less support requirements?

~~~
ahoyhere
Ah! Good question. So, previously, we'd do support ourselves. It doesn't take
more than 45 min - hour a day total, most days less. Part of why it's fast is
we use our own custom-rolled tool (coming soon to a public launch near you:
<http://charmhq.com>).

This time, we have part-time help in the form of an international business
major at a local university. She's not an expert on our app, BUT for hard q's,
she'll just let the folks know we'll get back soon.

Last summer, we had hired 2 full-time staff to do this and a variety of other
things, but that was a major mistake for many reasons and we had to let them
both go this fall (soooo stressful; now I am anti-hiring).

The other reasons our support load is so fast/light:

It's a mature product, without many bugs.

If things do go wrong, it's a time tracking tool, not the end of the world.

The UI of the product is really quite amazing, if I do say so myself; and that
creates less confusion.

The look & feel of the app, our name, our marketing materials, our philosophy,
our feature set attract and groom a certain kind of customer who is much more
friendly and laid-back than the average SaaS customer. We get a tenth of the
angry emails of friends who have a similar number of customers.

Finally, we ourselves are chill. Lots of folks with a business act as if the
customer is a gunslinger shooting at their feet to make them dance. We do not.
Early on in Freckle's life, we totally abandoned it for a month or two at a
time, support included. Nothing terrible happened. I wouldn't do it again, but
it puts it in perspective.

------
MrFoof
Jeff's presence will be missed, but the man can't be faulted. His priority is
his family, and he's sticking to his guns. Good for him -- seriously!

Honestly I had been on the fence about changing jobs until recently. I'm
single and I realized that I haven't been on a date in a long time. Wolfram
Alpha places it at about 3300 days (just over 9 years). I've made a good chunk
of money, but all in all it's not worth the sacrifice of everything else I
care about. I'd rather be at home trying to make video games and start dating
again while I'm still (barely) in my 20s, so that's what I intend to do.

~~~
jc123
Your sacrifice may be worth it. I only have a tiny glimpse into your
situation, but you may want to reflect more on what you'd like medium and
long-term, to avoid short term decisions that might not help. Life involves
tradeoffs and sacrifices, and the best time for some of them is before
relationships, children, family. The money you've made could very well help
you spend time with your relationships and family.

------
bryanh
Very few things have changed the face of programming as much as Stack Overflow
did. I'm not sure that the Exchanges foray into other subjects will yield as
successful products, but one can dream.

For fun, I even did a quick look at my Chrome history for last month: only 2
days had my not visiting StackOverflow.com.

~~~
estel
Stack Overflow are even kind (cheeky) enough to provide a calendar on a user's
profile showing the day they've visited (or not).

~~~
hopeless
Thanks, I never knew the calendar appeared by clicking on the visited value!

------
ThomPete
There is much to be said about this. Personally the story is extra important
as I am about to do probably the exact opposite.

I am 38, have a son at 2 and a girlfriend. Co-founded a company in 2005 here
in copenhagen and grew it to 60 people in 2008 and now around 30.

March 1st I am out of there. I sold my shares in stable company and is going
to New York and work with another company there.

I will leave my son and GF back in cph and hopefully convince them to move
with me later on. Until then its going to be 3 weeks out of every month in NY.

It's not a rational choice it's certainly not a 100% a popular choice.

But my take on this is a little different than Jeffs and that is perhaps
because I still feel I have something to prove :)

But I am thinking that even though I want to be around my son I also want to
be more than a dad for my son. This I believe is going to be important
especially when he grow older.

Perhaps if I did a huge exit I would think differently, perhaps I am being
selfish.

But life is short and complicated and at least for now this seems to be the
right thing to do all things taken into consideration.

~~~
vasco
I know this is highly subjective but I would think that every son would like
for his father to be above all, a dad. I wouldn't give a fuck if you drove two
mercedes instead of one or if you gave away a billion dollars to cancer
research if you couldn't find the time to play LEGO with me. Just my opinion,
and I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors.

~~~
nostrademons
It's a really complicated question.

My dad went the other route - he had an MIT Ph.D in nuclear chemistry and gave
up his career to be a dad. He was always, always there to play LEGO with me or
take me to the playground or drive me around to after school activities. And I
really, really appreciated that - I probably appreciate it more now that I'm
grown and he's dead.

The thing is - he still had something to prove, and because he had given up
his professional life for me, he transferred that need to prove something onto
me. And so for most of my childhood, I felt like I _had_ to do well in school,
and when I grew up it was up to me to win that Nobel Prize that he never had a
shot at. And it went like that until I was in around middle school, at which
point I basically said "Fuck that shit" and started sabotaging myself just to
prove to everyone that I wasn't this super-genius who was destined to change
the world.

And that wasn't really fair to me either.

I don't think it's really a matter of outcomes, of affording the big mansion
in a gated community. I think that every kid deserves to have a dad who can be
proud of who he is and what he's accomplished in life. If you can honestly
feel that you're not _giving up_ anything to be with your kids, but rather
_gaining_ something, then you should do it. But if you would otherwise be
bitter and resentful for what you couldn't accomplish in life - it's better to
have an absent dad than a bitter one.

~~~
jimbokun
What would have been the correct balance for you Dad to strike between working
and being with you?

~~~
nostrademons
Ideally, I would've liked it if he had done exactly what he did do up until
about age 8 or 9, and then gone back to work. As I grew up, my needs shifted
from someone who would love me unconditionally and give me lots of attention
to a role-model who could teach me how to interact with the outside world, and
someone whose life is completely coupled to yours is neither the best role
model nor someone who knows a whole lot about the outside world.

------
dazbradbury
I, and many others I'm sure, owe a huge thanks to Jeff. 99% of the time,
searching an error message from a compiler/framework I'm less familiar with +
"stackoverflow" yields a well written, well explained solution to the problem
- this solves a huge problem with overcoming undocumented code, and corner
cases.

Not only that, but StackOverflow is often the de-facto place for a response to
a technical problem of any kind. Heck, some companies even use it as a method
for responding to queries about their product - one example I noticed the
other day: <http://blog.appharbor.com/2012/02/02/announcing-pricing>

This is a result of such a thriving community, which Jeff has made possible
through StackOverflow. So I just want to say thank you, for advancing the pace
of development on the web and beyond.

------
jroseattle
Good call, Jeff. From someone who made a similar decision not so long ago,
you've made a very good decision.

As was explained to me with my own family: your job/company/career will never
hug you back.

I used to approach my career with the standpoint of figuring out how to manage
my time to wrap my family into the schedule. Now I do the opposite -- I figure
out how to manage my time to put my career around my family.

Interesting thing I've found: I'm _better_ now than I was before. Making a
family investment decision, for me, has paid off in spades.

------
yalestar
I followed the entire genesis of StackOverflow pretty closely via Jeff &
Joel's blog posts and the first go 'round of the StackOverflow podcast.

During that time, and to this day, I never ceased to be impressed by Jeff's
committment to making the web a better place for programmers and the general
public too. He never got mired in startup-speak; you never got the idea he was
just in it to sell it, and even once they got some VC backing, you never got
the idea he was planning to just sit back and collect the money. Just a no-BS
guy in every regard.

It's obvious to me that when Jeff does something, he does the shit out of it,
and I can't imagine that parenting will be any different. We could use more
people like him in every part of life.

------
spjwebster
As a relatively recent parent myself (with another on the way) I can
definitely relate to wanting to put family first. It's terribly cliché, but
little people really do grow up quickly, and it's all too easy to assure
yourself that next year is the year you'll slow down.

Good luck Jeff, and thanks for heping to rescue us from experts exchange.

P.S. Am I the only one that found the accidental relevancy of the post footer
amusing?

> [advertisement] What's your next career move? Stack Overflow Careers has the
> best job listings from great companies, whether you're looking for
> opportunities at a startup or Fortune 500. You can search our job listings
> or create a profile and let employers find you.

------
cnunciato
The timing of these posts amazes me sometimes.

I just turned down an opportunity to join an early stage startup (would've
been employee #4, engineer #2, leading a team) that was uncommonly well
backed, led by a seasoned founder, and tasked to build some truly bad-ass
technology. I've always been drawn to startups, and this was indeed a rare
one, unique in my experience so far, and particularly well suited to my
sensibilities and to the direction I'd been wanting to go in my career.
Closest thing to a perfect opportunity yet, to be sure. But it required some
travel (half-dozen or so trips a year overseas, week or so each, give or take,
probably more), and would've surely required longer hours than I work now
(generally 40, sometimes less). We have two young boys (ages 1 and 2 1/2) and
a third due in August. My wife, ever my champion, did nothing but encourage me
to take it.

But I couldn't do it. My dad traveled constantly while my sisters and I were
growing up (still does, actually -- very successful, but physically and often
mentally absent), and I've always promised myself I'd never make that mistake.
It was by far the toughest professional decision I've ever had to make, was
emotionally and physically draining (I lost much sleep over it, spanning
several days), but ultimately right -- for me, anyway. Much as it might
restrict me career-wise, I work to live, don't live to work, and I'm not
willing to risk regretting lost time with my boys because of work I chose for
myself over them. I can't imagine a future in which any of us would look back
and say that was worth it.

Many thanks indeed to you, Jeff -- you all did build something awesome. As my
dad would say, Now go have fun.

------
solutionyogi
Whenever I saw vBulletin used for programming questions (the most common
option before SO), my heart ached. vBulletin may be good software for
discussions, but it sucked as a programming Q&A site.

I always wondered why we, programmers, do not have an amazing software to ask
questions about our craft? Jeff gave us the answer in Stack Overflow and it
was everything I would have hoped for. And then some. I love the fact that
Stack Overflow (and sister sites) attracted experts in their field and
following their answers, I learned a lot.

Thank you Jeff and I wish you all the best for your next adventure. :)

~~~
cryptoz
> vBulletin may be good software for discussions,

You know, I really think it's not. It may have been in the '90s, but the times
have changed and it hasn't. Sites like HN and Reddit are _much_ better
software for discussions, but I'm sure these forms are just temporal as well.

~~~
ShardPhoenix
The Reddit/HN style is better when there are small number of most interesting
or most correct replies, forums are better when there are a large number of
valuable contributions. They're also better for long-running events and the
ongoing discussion of broad topics.

Basically, Reddit style is better for "New Star Trek Movie announced", forums
are better for "Let's talk about Star Trek".

~~~
whichdan
I get where you're coming from, but I really don't think this is the case. I
can churn through 400 reddit comments quickly, but 20 pages * 20 threads/page
with [bulletin board software] is nothing short of a pain - not to mention the
quote within a quote within a quote and tons of wasted space for
avatars/signatures, which can only be disabled on some forums. I can see the
benefit for long-running events (a reddit thread over the course of a few
weeks would be hard to read chronologically) but I think there's a lot of room
for improvement, much of which is probably up to the designers as much as the
developers.

Also, I think the barrier to entry in a 400 comment thread is largely
different as well - with reddit, the issue is whether your comment will
receive any visibility, whereas, IMO, in a [bulletin board] thread, catching
up on 400 comments of discussion seems daunting and almost pointless.

------
epaga
"Success at the cost of my children is not success. It is failure."

I can already tell this post is an instant classic that I will return to many
times in the coming years. I was left with almost exactly the same thoughts as
he was after reading Jobs' biography - and kudos to him for following through.

Seeing Jobs' life being lived at the expense of a meaningful relationship with
his kids (especially his daughters), for me personally it made his Stanford
speech about "following your heart" being the most important thing ring
hollow. What happens when your heart values your job more than your kids? Is
that just bad luck for your kids?

Perhaps our own gut instinct is not the final authority we should follow.
Maybe loving our kids is something that is more important than "succeeding" at
our job, even during times in which we don't feel like it is.

~~~
ahoyhere
What's to say he didn't learn from his mistakes? I think that was the point of
the speech. Sounds like he spent wayyyy more time with his "second round" of
kids.

~~~
epaga
Actually, reading his biography, it didn't sound like that to me at all. "More
time" as opposed to complete ignoring and acting like he wasn't the father,
yes. But the reason he had the biography written was because he wanted his
kids to be able to read why he had so little time for them and to get to know
him a bit better that way. And those are his own words, as far as I recall.

------
elviejo
Why is Jeff retiring? Couldn't he simply semi-retire? work only 2 days a week
and the rest of the time with his family?

I think he was exhausted...

maybe this books is worth a look: The Big Enough Company: Creating a Business
That Works for YOU [http://www.amazon.com/Big-Enough-Company-Creating-
Business/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Big-Enough-Company-Creating-
Business/dp/1591844215)

------
varkker
This exit is too convenient. Jeff left SE because Joel's a bit of an ass and
Spolsky's focus is back at FogCreek with offerings like Trello.

With VC cash drying up, Manhattan office space, and fifty employees that
aren't exactly cheap. Jeff (to his credit) is exiting gracefully while he can.
Kudos.

~~~
libria
Probably just coincidence, but the Microsoft Bizspark licenses he blogged
about 3 years ago [1] are probably close to finished.

1) [http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/03/stack-overflow-and-
biz...](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/03/stack-overflow-and-bizspark/)

------
jiggy2011
I'm a little surprised by this. I can understand Jeff wanting to "slow down" a
bit and spend more time with his family etc but unless he has enough money to
basically retire I can't see how his workload will reduce from not working on
stack exchange.

Stack exchange I believe is developed mostly by programmers working from home
and there are enough of them and SE is well developed enough that I doubt it
requires Jeff to be glued to his keyboard at all times so it would seem simple
to reduce his hours at his current job. In many ways it is the ideal job for
somebody with a family since he's working at home and he's already done the
hard part. I imagine it's now more a process of making gradual improvements as
the money comes in.

I wonder what is next for Jeff, I can't see him taking a cubicle 9-5 with
BigEnterpriseSoftwareCo and if he joins/starts another startup type business
he's back to square 1 in terms of workload.

Perhaps he will focus on his blog/writing more now? He doesn't seem to worried
about the prospect of being unemployed with a growing family so he must have
stockpiled a fair amount of cash.

------
ORioN63
I can't believe they have been here for just four years... I would take
centuries to debug if it weren't for stack overflow... I can only thank you
for what you have done Jeff ;-).

------
finnw
> _Farewell Stack Exchange_

When I first saw the title I thought "Oh no, why is Stack Exchange closing
down?"

Maybe the title should be changed to the more accurate "Jeff Attwood quits
Stack Exchange"

~~~
AznHisoka
I saw the heading after I read "Stack Overflow is out of space" so I got even
more scared.

------
droz
I think this is the right move for Jeff. It's good to see someone with such a
high profile, putting family (and life in general) over working.

------
mak120
I don't think the impact that stackexchange has had on the programming
community is even well understood or appreciated yet. Still for many of us it
is already hard to imagine a world without something like stackoverflow.com.
It is a tool that we rely upon every day, not unlike Google. Thank you Jeff.

------
Codhisattva
Thank you Jeff. Rock the future and I hope you find the balance that eludes
too many of us.

------
TomGullen
I basically learnt how to code c# through stack overflow. An amazing resource
that has given me and so many other people so much. It really has impacted a
lot of peoples lives. I admire Jeff for getting his priorities right as well.

------
thechut
I never even knew of Jeff, but StackOverflow has helped me more than I can
even begin to talk about. Everything from stupid questions about using Linux
to valuable conversations that helped me understand $LANGUAGE in a different
way.

------
scrame
Good Job, Jeff!

I routinely disagreed with your blog, and self-promotion -- but in the end --
you delivered a slick site and built a great community.

It doesn't matter that I didn't like your opinions, or thought that Joel's
column became pointlessly self-promoting.

All those things thrive in the tech-blog-o-sphere, and there is no shortage of
people with unpopular opinions, fanbases, or self-promoting start-ups.

Instead, you guys did all those things, _and_ delivered a kick-ass tech Q&A
site on _windows_ with a team of, what 4 people in the initial development?

Anyway, congrats to a job well done!

Take some time off, you've earned it!

------
andrewkreid
My workplace recently upgraded all devs to a dual-monitor setup. Now when I
walk around the office the most common thing I see is one monitor for the IDE
and one for Stack Overflow in the browser.

------
jc123
_Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange have been wildly successful, but I finally
realized that success at the cost of my children is not success. It is
failure._

As others have said, thanks Jeff for all the lessons and time saved with Stack
Overflow! Super happy for your success and hard to imagine how it could have
worked better. Your twins are only months old, your son is less than 3, so
your success affords you all the time with your family. Your success story is
well balanced and positively enviable.

------
Kiro
The Stack Exchange podcast will not be the same without Jeff.

~~~
finnw
I will be surprised if it continues at all.

------
FuzzyDunlop
Stack Overflow has been brilliant not only for finding answers, but for
encouraging people like me to contribute our own answers in return.

I'd say it made me a better programmer.

------
moconnor
Never, ever underestimate the ridiculous amount of time, energy and willpower
you invest to raise children. Just because billions of other people do it
doesn't mean it isn't the single most demsnding, time-consuming thing that
will ever be asked of you.

Perhaps you plan to outsource to a very understanding wife / girlfriend /
grandparents, but if you want to do it yourself then bear this in mind: Jeff's
was the only option on the table.

------
lrobb
Why not make SE a family-friendly company instead of just leaving? I'm
guessing at this stage he has already lost control and can't influence that
decision?

------
jayferd
I love the ad for Stack Overflow Carreers at the bottom.

------
tzury
Thanks is just a word, yet, all my apps, servers, desktops and smartphones,
been well supported by stack exchange sites and community.

With StackExchange, getting the correct answer is one post away, and that is a
revolution!

So I will use that word of "thanks" to express my gratefulness towards Jeff
and Joel and all the community members(!), and want to wish Jeff the best of
time with his kids.

Thank you StackExchange!

------
dbecker
I've always been amazed how the stackoverflow (and various other stackexchange
communities) turned out so much better than the other communities on the
internet.

Jeff and the stackoverflow team have put together something really incredible.
Congratulations... and thank you.

------
mathattack
Great call if his heart wasn't in it any more. You need to look forward to
going to work and going home. Leave one out of balance and things fall apart.

I am curious about the culture there. FogCreek seems very family friendly. Did
it not bleed over?

------
chrislomax
Farewell Jeff! I wonder how many other people have had the epiphany since
Steve died that no matter how much money or power you have, nothing can keep
you alive?

I say good luck to him and his reasons could not be more justified in my eyes.

------
djtriptych
It's amazing how Steve Jobs affected this generation of technologists. I wish
I could expand that sentiment beyond tweet-length without fear of starting a
flame war, but I'll leave it there.

------
Wazzup12
Jeff, understand our point about prioritizing family over work, etc but
clearly lots of people reading it but cannot afford to retire are going to end
up sad and demoralized today :(

------
tjbarbour
Which contribution is greater? Building the canonical Q/A engine or setting an
example for tech professionals that family is #1?

Thank you Jeff, I'm glad you shared some of your awesome with us!

------
asksol
Who has the means to take 6 months at home with the kids, anyway? Even one
month would be luxury for most... Is he telling me I'm failing my son?

------
nutanc
Hats off! Congrats on getting your priorities right. You have done your job,
now teach your kids to do their jobs :)

------
dev_Gabriel
Well, I just became addicted to Stack Overflow and for that I really owe big
thanks you to Jeff: THANK YOU!

------
chj
Best wishes from a programmer addicted to stackoverflow.

------
hetaoblog
a big surprise!

------
georgieporgie
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this was uninteresting for the
same reason that the Stack Exchange Podcast is uninteresting: it was just a
guy talking about himself (SE Podcast occasionally has interesting shows,
_sooo_ much of it is just them ruminating about themselves, with a bunch of
background racket). I didn't learn anything from this post, except that a Nerd
Celebrity is leaving somewhere, with no technical information, no insight,
nothing.

~~~
mountaineer
Exactly. Is he taking 6 months off to do nothing? How is he doing that? Did he
cash out something during the last investment round? Retainer? Sell some SE
stock? How's he paying the bills?

~~~
CWIZO
What is this celebrity gossip channel?

~~~
mountaineer
I was just looking for a little more practical insight. If he's in the bay
area, with a family, surely it takes significant personal capital to take a
mini-retirement. PG has written before about startups being a compressed
career, so I see Jeff executing that here and it's something in the back of my
mind too as I toil away at day job and personal/startup projects.

