Joel Spolsky On Why He Is Quitting Blogging

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100301/lets-take-this-offline.html

by Jim_Neath • 16 years ago

193 97 16 years ago

patio11• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

Agreed. Changed.

shin_lao• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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_dorfman5• 16 years ago

"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.)

pchristensen• 16 years ago

He said later that he's now a big fish in a small pond (developers that read blogs) and almost completely unknown outside of that niche. That's his main reason - it's not worth the time any more.

akshat2• 16 years ago

"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_dorfman5• 16 years ago

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.

akshat2• 16 years ago

"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).

yungchin2• 16 years ago

You can build content in other forms than a blog. Looks like he's been working on that: http://hginit.com/

whyleym3• 16 years ago

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_dorfman5• 16 years ago

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.

whyleym3• 16 years ago

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 ?

_delirium• 16 years ago

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.

greyman• 16 years ago

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.

yungchin2• 16 years ago

I do the same. In fact, if it's a relatively young company and I find that the blog hasn't been updated for months, that will influence my decision on buying their product. The blog may or may not be a good indicator of company health, I don't know. But in the absence of other indicators, I'll treat it as a heartbeat signal.

raganwald• 16 years ago

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

mattmaroon2• 16 years ago

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.

edj• 16 years ago

I can confidently say reading company blogs has never factored into my purchase decisions. I also don't read company press releases, most company copy, or most ads before buying. What's the point? That time is better spent reading independent reviews and such.

username3• 16 years ago

I look at online company blogs as their What's New section.

stevoski• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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".

abalashov• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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

javery• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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.

ananthrk2• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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.

ananthrk2• 16 years ago

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.

smiler• 16 years ago

Fog Creek Copilot I am guessing (www.copilot.com)

bjplink• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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

rayvega2• 16 years ago

First Steve Yegge and now Joel.

j_baker• 16 years ago

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.

jrockway2• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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.

statictype• 16 years ago

I think comments like this are part of the reason he's stopping.

adamc• 16 years ago

My take-away was slightly different: I think his goals changed along the way. These days, he is very interested in furthering Fog Creek. But when I started reading his essays (before even "Joel on Software", when he was using Dave Winer's software to manage his blog), I think his goals were less clear and a lot of the essays were just ideas that he needed to express.

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.

zavulon• 16 years ago

He'll be back

noarchy• 16 years ago

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

amilr• 16 years ago

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

jrockway2• 16 years ago

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.

richardw• 16 years ago

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.

pw0ncakes12• 16 years ago

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.)

ewanmcteagle• 16 years ago

Many companies are reluctant to say anything about why they didn't choose you because there is no upside and potential legal downside for them. I don't know what top 100 Putnam is or DE Shaw or how picky you are but I'm sure you are great.

pw0ncakes12• 16 years ago

I am not going to sue them. Why would I waste a year of my life chasing a lawsuit that I can't win, having no legal leg to stand on, over a decision they have every right to make?

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.

mattmanser• 16 years ago

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.

pw0ncakes12• 16 years ago

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.

alan-crowe• 16 years ago

I think there is a deeper unreasonableness. What would a truly scientific hiring process look like? What might a large organisation, such as the British Civil Service do to make sure that it hires the right people?

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."

tom_rath• 16 years ago

When you've become your planned '10-year self' and are running a company, you'll find that there is no up-side to giving a no-hire an honest reason for your decision and plenty of down-side for doing so. As an example here, the binary decision not to hire you as an employee has created such a grudge that, almost two years later, you're still bitter enough to compose a rant against the company -- even though you never set a foot inside the place!

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!"

pw0ncakes12• 16 years ago

As an example here, the binary decision not to hire you as an employee has created such a grudge that, almost two years later, you're still bitter enough to compose a rant against the company -- even though you never set a foot inside the place!

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.

MrFoof• 16 years ago

Joel received a question regarding this sort of feedback in an SO podcast.

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.

pw0ncakes12• 16 years ago

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.

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.

10ren• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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.

gruseom• 16 years ago

PG's essays long precede YC. I've always thought that they're more a medium for thinking than anything else.

staunch• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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.

eande• 16 years ago

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.

rudd• 16 years ago

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.

dpritchett2• 16 years ago

I figure the podcast can stay alive at least short term. Riffing off of Jeff's podcast agenda by phone for two hours a month isn't nearly as much work as blogging a full two out of every five work days.

rayvega2• 16 years ago

>> Is this also the end of the StackOverflow podcast?

http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/40602/joel-to-quit-t...

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

mattmaroon2• 16 years ago

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.

thunk• 16 years ago

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

webwright• 16 years ago

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.

ghshephard• 16 years ago

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

Aleran• 16 years ago

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/

Joel Spolsky On Why He Is Quitting Blogging

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