Joel Spolsky On Why He Is Quitting Blogging
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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.
e.g. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000036.html
As with many similar bloggers, I think his early years were incredible, but the good ideas gradually became scarcer -- compare his last five years of essays with his first five years. I suspect that is because in his early years he could mine the many ideas he'd had prior to blogging. So it may not be a bad thing from him to let that lie fallow for a while. He can always un-retire if so moved.
Anyhow, I wish him well and hope he finds joy in following his current interests.
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.
"Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt".
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.
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:
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.)
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.
Not that that's bad. Just saying.
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 ?
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.
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 ?
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.
Any idea what products he is referring to? CityDesk or Aadvark (or something else)?
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.
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.
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?
"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.
SEO is more like one of the arrows in the quiver, which is extremely efficient(profitable).
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.
http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/40602/joel-to-quit-t...
He might have meant no longer doing other people's podcasts.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.)
However, the "black box" behavior of companies is pretty unprofessional. It makes the job search process a lot more difficult than it needs to be.
To make this as clear as possible, suppose you were trying to get pain killers without a prescription. No matter how obvious it is you're not a junkie and are in pain, it would not be appropriate for the pharmacy to sell you the medicine based on their subjective judgment. It may not matter in this instance, but it would undermine the whole system.
The reason why I respond is because it has been frustrating for me to read your replies on this thread because this gap in reasoning has made all of your comments sound very personal. Anybody can sympathize with the frustration around being denied a job, but your story says nothing about Joel's management approach.
There is no upside. Remember that the hiring manager can be sued personally, not just the business.
Finally, consider another factor. Most of the time there are several qualified candidates and one may stand out. That does not mean the others were bad, just that one candidate clicked. It is of negative value to say "Nothing personal, but we really hit it off with Mr. Foobar and not you." Silence is actually better than pronouncing an under-informed judgement on someone based on a series of half-hour interviews.
It just means you have rather unreasonable expectations of what other people should do for you.
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.
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.
Most companies don't call back. You can just assume that they had at least one candidate in the pipeline who was a better fit in terms of culture, location, salary expectations, or skills.
Oh, I'm sure of that, but it reflects badly on his company that, when a talented applicant-- someone you'd not want to piss off if you have any future-sight whatsoever-- wanted to know what he could do to make future applications more successful, they wouldn't even help me out in the slightest.
All joking aside.....from reading your posts, something seems a bit off about you. You seem to be introspective, but it really seems you have some deep seeded issues, maybe you should talk to someone about it?
I try to stay more upbeat about it though and work on a portfolio in the meantime so I'll get a competitive edge. Maybe you'll even see a startup by me in the near future ;-)
If being unemployed just out of college is such a problem for the young man (and that's not unreasonable), he should drop the attitude of "I'm pretty particular about what kind of work I want to be doing, and that makes me a poor fit for most jobs". If he doesn't want to work or only wants a very specific job and can't get it, that's reasonable. Just don't complain about it. Otherwise, this young man who believes himself highly qualified should take a job that's reasonably satisfactory as opposed to perfect until the "Worst Recession Ever" is over. There are a lot of people out there who'd kill to be in his position.
I'd just been laid off and my ex-boss was a friend of Joel's, which is why I said it was unprofessional not to inform me of the reason; declining to do so casts aspersion onto my ex-boss (although I checked my own references and he wasn't saying anything negative).
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.
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?
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.
I'm not asking for anyone to say anything "good" or "bad". There is no good or bad. There's the truth, and I'm asking for the basic courtesy of telling it straight. And yes, you can say "you came off as arrogant in your phone interview". I'm an adult; I can handle it.
One idea is to score candidates on many measures (100?) and make use guessed weights to guide initial hiring decisions. A decade later the organisation can compare the initial assessments against the hires subsequent progress up the organisation. This leads to a re-assessment of the weights.
Notice that the new weights were computed from the poputation of hires, not the population of candidates, and the hires were chosen using the old weights. The new weights are causing the organisation to hire people that it would have rejected in the past and it has no solid data on how those people would have performed in the organisation - it didn't hire them! There are other problems. The whole approach has too many parameters to calibrate it reliably from the data available. The linearity implicit in a weighted sum is implausible, a more sophisticated model with the number of variables squared or cubed is clearly required. The time scale on which the success of the hiring decisions becomes apparent is long, decades. It is the time scale on which things change. So the new scientific weights might be no better than rebooting the whole process with new, guessed weights.
My point is that organisations don't have substantial reasons for their hiring decisions. They have a process because they are forced to chose, and they consequently have procedural reasons for their hiring decisions.
A small organisation, such as Fog Creek, that has scientifically trained personnel, may be well aware that it hires the wrong people. Those in charge know that they hire the wrong people and that they cannot fix the problem. They also know that business is competitive, they only have to do better than their competitors, and since the problem is pretty much impossible, their competitors cannot fix it either.
The serious answer to the hiring question is "We don't know how to chose. We make wild guesses and then pretend that we have good reasons for them so that we don't feel too bad afterwards. The whole topic is really embarrassing. You shouldn't have asked."
How bad would your rant have been if you were told "you're just not strong in <certain knowledge you thought you had cased>" or "a colleague told us that you were exceptionally difficult to work with in high-pressure situations and often became bitter if you didn't get your way"? What would the up-side have been for the company telling you these things? Wouldn't your bad-mouthing have just become worse, with your rant here (and elsewhere?) even nastier?
Yes, it would be nice if we could all tell no-hires exactly what they need to work on, but it is a very rare person who would say "Thanks for the rejection! That's awesome feedback and I'll tell everyone how you've managed to make me a better developer!"
Not such a grudge. I just thought I'd point out a discrepancy between image and reality. I have no idea if this reflects at all on Joel, and I'm sure that Fog Creek is a better place to work than 94% of all companies. The two Fog Creek programmers I've had substantial discussions with have impressed me.
How bad would your rant have been if you were told "you're just not strong in <certain knowledge you thought you had cased>"
I'd ask for advice and maybe the name of a textbook or open source project that I could learn from. I was unemployed at the time, and one great thing about being unemployed is that you have a lot of free time in which to learn things.
or "a colleague told us that you were exceptionally difficult to work with in high-pressure situations and often became bitter if you didn't get your way"?
That's excellent information (in the sense of being useful; it's obviously bad news). It means that you need to use someone else as a reference.
He brought up a case where someone made it to an on-site interview, and it was noted that the guy repeatedly belittled the office assistant and sort of thumbed his nose at her. In this case, he would refuse to give advice to this individual because he wouldn't want to give him insight on how he could fake being a nice person well-enough to get a job somewhere else.
However, overall his general stance was that you're being compared to a large number of applicants. Even if you were qualified to get a job there normally, someone could've applied that happened to wipe the floor with everyone. Regardless, the odds of you reapplying aren't that high (though he notices it), so it's simply not worth the effort - if he noticed you stood out, he would've made the effort to continue. Whereas otherwise he could be driving business value elsewhere.
Honestly, I don't disagree with him.
You can take my word on this or not, but I'm not an asshole. I'm a decent guy whom he chose not to hire, probably for good reasons, but it would have been better to tell me what those reasons were, seeing as I was in a very tough spot (remember that recession thing?). Now I'll never work with Fog Creek in any capacity, never buy their products, and never recommend anyone to work there (although I wouldn't advise against it; I'm not vindictive).
Even if you were qualified to get a job there normally, someone could've applied that happened to wipe the floor with everyone.
Fair. I wouldn't have objected at all if he told me something to the effect of "someone else applied with more experience". That's the reality of a competitive market and I would have respected him for telling me that. Besides, if I don't get in because they're hiring these great people, then that's an incentive for me to re-apply in a few years when I am a stronger applicant and much more likely to succeed.
Regardless, the odds of you reapplying aren't that high (though he notices it), so it's simply not worth the effort - if he noticed you stood out, he would've made the effort to continue.
If he turned me down because he didn't see me as a fit for the job, or I didn't have the skills he was looking for, then that's perfectly reasonable and he could have said as much. On the other hand, if the reason he didn't take 5 minutes out of his day (or that of someone else who could do so) to explain his rationale was because he didn't think I am talented enough for doing so to be worth it, then his judgment of talent is worth less than dogshit.
A little humility while asking for help goes a long way with most people. That means if someone chooses not to help you out you recognize that their world isn't centered around you and your problems, and don't hold it against them. Instead, be grateful if they do give you the gift of their time and advice.
It seems like you convinced yourself you were naturally entitled to work there, and are having a hard time dealing with the cognitive dissonance of not even getting an in-office interview. Even wanting to be told why you weren't hired seems to imply a sense of entitlement on your part. To be fair, Joel spends a lot of words in his blog trying to make programmers feel entitled to special treatment (because then we'll apply to work at his awesome company which pampers us). So I can understand the emotions involved here, I just think you need to be a little more critical about how you're responding to this.
Getting turned down by a company with 32 employees and yet hundreds of applicants for each open position is to be expected, frankly. At those scales, I don't think they can afford the time it takes to tell everyone why they were rejected.