I am fascinated with the trajectory of Joel and his company. Maybe because I followed it so closely from Joel's earliest essays (which are classics and have become commonly accepted wisdom, the source mostly forgotten) and the Fog Creek forums (the Business of software) which had a great cast of characters and drama (tail of the g!) for a couple of years.

One of the interesting things is it seems to me like Joel, for all his wisdom, always made weird (I would say wrong but the man is a legend after all) decisions. Like his whole premise was to hire great programmers, give them an office with a door that closes, and watch great software appear. Which would take at least ten years. It was clear that this software was originally CityDesk (a content management system, say no more), then FogBugz (the issue tracker doomed from the start by its name alone), and even Copilot, to circle back to the documentary.

The magic never happened, but lo and behold, out of nowhere comes Stack Overflow and makes all of those other ventures an only slightly relevant footnote. And not from any clever Strategy, but completely serendipitously! Turns out Joel was more right than even he probably thought - just press on being great, something great will come out of it. Though not necessarily what you had planned. There is something beautiful about this, to me.

I am sure people will tell me how ridiculously mistaken and misunderstood my take is, but it's how I read the story.