Have you listened to the StackOverflow podcasts? I give Jeff a lot of credit for leading a the SO dev team, but he has shown several times on the podcast that he can be very clueless (for example podcast #48 where they discuss localization). There was another one where he asserted that taking code you wrote in a job to an interview was fair game. He deserves credit for much of the design of StackOverflow and for his team leadership, but I think you are understimating Joel's "strategic" role in this venture. There is a reason why Joel is announcing the SO financing, and not Jeff. It seems pretty clear to me that Jeff is less capable when it comes to "big picture" and "long term" stuff - and I mean no disrespect by that.

Also, Jeff was never a bigger voice in computing than Joel.