Farewell Stack Exchange

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/02/farewell-stack-exchange.html

by dko • 14 years ago

1233 213 14 years ago

MrFoof• 14 years ago

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.

bluekite2000• 14 years ago

What is stopping you???

jc1232• 14 years ago

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.

sriramk• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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

ams61103• 14 years ago

A good mailing list can still be better than SO for niche subjects. Not saying that to take anything away from SO, it's just that it seems to work best with lots of participants.

anildash• 14 years ago

I'm on the board of Stack Exchange, and I can attest -- not just Jeff, but Joel (Jeff's cofounder & CEO) and everyone on the team care profoundly about the web and ther responsibility to the community. Not a single conversation, from the Meta conversations on the site to the planning decisions on the board, happen without a reiteration, either implicitly or explicitly, of that goal of trying to make the web better. I'm incredibly proud of that ethos and of the values that Jeff's post also makes clear, and delighted it's obvious to folks who are (as I am sometimes) just interacting with the site as a coder who has a problem to solve.

djtriptych3• 14 years ago

Besides that, as a contract programmer there have been a few times I've posted my StackOverflow profile in a cover letter and have had very positive reponses.

One interviewer went so far to say he didn't bother asking technical questions since he'd seen my answers on SO.

Obviously I wouldn't recommend that tactic, but it's nice to see my online rep actually translate to the real world like that from time to time.

malnourish2• 14 years ago

Online reputation, when contextually appropriate, should be a very strong defining attribute related to an interview or judgement of knowledge and expertise in a field.

I imagine a world, reminiscent of Ender's Game, where online discussion holds much sway and credence, and the separation between it and "the real world" exists only to differentiate physical properties.

It would seem that we are slowly approaching this more transparent mesh of societies.

If a person can empirically show their value and experience with a topic, as you did with your SO profile, it should hold the same regard as similar measures.

neves• 14 years ago

Or, instead of working, you would spend all your work day playing StackOverflow to win new badges and points. :-)

bambax• 14 years ago

An important feature of SO is that it's been open: crawlable by search engines, readable by anyone without an account, etc.

In those same four years Facebook, Twitter and the likes of Quora have exploded, and made the Internet worse. Yet at the same time all the Stack Exchange properties resisted this trend. I'm very grateful for that too.

Drbble2• 14 years ago

What's wrong with Quora?

Kiro• 14 years ago

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

finnw3• 14 years ago

I will be surprised if it continues at all.

georgieporgie8• 14 years ago

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.

mountaineer2• 14 years ago

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?

CWIZO2• 14 years ago

What is this celebrity gossip channel?

solutionyogi2• 14 years ago

Knowing Jeff, he would have posted those details on his blog if he wanted to share them with everyone. If he hasn't, let's assume that he is not interested in discussing his financials and respect that choice.

I am sure we will hear from him whenever he is back with his new adventure.

darrenkopp• 14 years ago

Likely the ads on his blog.

eliben• 14 years ago

Seriously, why shouldn't a guy with years of programming career behind him be able to take 6 months off? It's only basic financial wisdom not to live on 99% of your earning and always save so you have something to fall back to.

untog4• 14 years ago

It's his personal blog, I'm not sure what rules you are applying on what he is allowed to post to it.

In any case, I thought there was content in there for everyone. Reflecting on what 'success' means, where your priorities ought to lie... it's all interesting stuff.

georgieporgie8• 14 years ago

There's no rule that he can't post to his blog. I flagged it because it's not relevant hacker news. Just like downvotes, I explain my flags.

CWIZO2• 14 years ago

Have you even read the article? He is leaving so he can spend quality time with his wife & kids. And mearly the fact that he is leaving is big news (if you ware stabbing at why is this here).

georgieporgie8• 14 years ago

That isn't relevant hacker news. I explain when I downvote, and I explain when I flag articles.

chrisbennet• 14 years ago

I think it meets 2 criteria: 1) It's of interest to startup people or people who want to be. 2) It's of interest to developers (at least ones who use Stack Overflow).

droz• 14 years ago

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.

bryanh• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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

cruise02• 14 years ago

I just checked by Stack Overflow profile. I've visited on 986 consecutive days. But then, I am a moderator, so I view it as a bit of an obligation. ;)

ORioN63• 14 years ago

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 ;-).

solutionyogi2• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

> 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• 14 years ago

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".

spjwebster• 14 years ago

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.

Codhisattva• 14 years ago

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

staunch• 14 years ago

> 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.

jfarmer3• 14 years ago

It's common to re-up soon-to-vest employees with additional options, especially founders.

yarone• 14 years ago

From my personal experience, it's not just about vesting. It's about energy. For many folks, after 3-4 years, things just aren't the same.

Jeff's baby is all grown up. He's poured his heart and soul into this thing. Time to catch his breath, refocus priorities, and move on to something new.

raganwald• 14 years ago

Perhaps (I am speculating, not dictating) this is exactly why four-year vesting periods work. If a large chunk of people burn out or get bored after four years, a five year vesting period would create sullen, unproductive boat anchors. A three year period would have people jumping ship to found something new while they are still able to bring their prowess to bear growing the company. But after four years, both parties have maximized their gain from each other.

finnw3• 14 years ago

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.

rgrieselhuber• 14 years ago

Because your shares vest gradually over time, so that by the time you get to year 4, you're well over 75% of the way there.

mhartl2• 14 years ago

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%.

JoshTriplett• 14 years ago

Vesting of shares does not necessarily imply that you give anyone the right to fire you. For example, a company with several founders might choose to use vesting even if they never take or need VC funding, to deal with the case where a founder voluntarily chooses to leave early on. And while an arrangement with a VC could potentially grant them the ability to fire a founder, it doesn't necessarily have to, and I've seen plenty of cases where the founders did not agree to such terms (especially in cases of VCs signing on with well-established companies).

getsat• 14 years ago

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

Perhaps they'd like people to actually consider taking investment money from them in the future?

Your "cliff" is typically one year, anyways.

InclinedPlane• 14 years ago

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

A severance option in your contract which would make it even more lucrative for you if they tried to get rid of you without a really, really good reason (like a criminal conviction).

sshumaker• 14 years ago

As others have suggested, you would have likely vested 98% of your stock by then by then (typically 4 year terms with 1 year cliff, vesting monthly after the first year).

There are also often trigger clauses, which cause your stock to vest instantly when certain conditions are met. Being fired without cause (and cause here typically means a criminal conviction) is typical, although this can be structured to only take effect if the firing takes place after a liquidity event ('double trigger').

jfarmer3• 14 years ago

1. The standard vesting arrangement is four years with a one-year cliff. This means 25% of your stock (as a founder) vests at the end of the first year, and the remainder vests month-to-month for the next three. In your scenario it sounds like the founders have been at it for two years before their first financing.

2. Why does the VC even have the right to fire the founders or CEO? The board has that right, and presumably the VC is on that board, but their rights are defined in the financing agreement. Control is an important negotiating point when raising a round of financing.

3. Why would a VC want to invest in a company where the founders have completely vested? What's to stop them from running off with the money, so to speak?

4. That said, I've seen incorporation documents where some small portion of the founders' stock is vested immediately (maybe 5%), and the remainder follows the standard four-year vesting, one-year cliff arrangement. This makes it a little harder to raise money and the VCs might insist on changing the vesting schedule as part of the financing agreement. Generally it's just easier to have everyone on the same vesting schedule, that way nobody can object.

georgemcbay• 14 years ago

All money issues aside, 4 years is also around the time you tend to get really sick of working on the same problem with the same codebase. And that's an outside bound, when the problem and codebase you were working on were both good ones. The wall gets hit even sooner if you're working on something less interesting.

All IMO and IME, of course.

jseliger• 14 years ago

All money issues aside, 4 years is also around the time you tend to get really sick of working on the same problem with the same codebase.

Four years, incidentally, is also the length of time a PhD used to take, in both the sciences and the humanities. Now it's stretching towards six - seven for the sciences and ten for the humanities, which may contribute to burnout.

ma2rten• 14 years ago

It's funny how far we have come from working for the same company for all your life.

moconnor2• 14 years ago

Relax? Start another company? Jeff has just had twins.

This has nothing to do with relaxation, or for that matter vesting schedules.

TimGebhardt2• 14 years ago

When my wife and I were about to have our twins we had read that it takes about 170 hours a week to take care of baby twins. Remember, there's only 168 hours a week.

Now that they've just turned a year old I can safely look back and vaguely recall that: Yes it probably took about that much time to take care of the little guys.

Good luck, Jeff!

thechut• 14 years ago

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.

jxcole• 14 years ago

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?

jneen2• 14 years ago

I wish I knew the answer to that question. I know that most startups will ask you to sacrifice other aspects of your life, which I think is really unfortunate.

tikhonj• 14 years ago

I think the real problem isn't that you have to work long hours, it's that you get so involved in whatever you're doing that you end up working far longer than you planned.

ry0ohki• 14 years ago

It's definitely possible to only clock in 8 hours at the office and be successful, but I know mentally the startup is with you 24/7 and that alone can be quite draining.

benmathes3• 14 years ago

Startups are marathons, not sprints; It's about making the right decisions most (if not all) of the time when building, hiring, marketing, etc. Fatigue and exhaustion mean bad decisions; There's plenty of research to back this up:

http://likesbuildingthings.blogspot.com/2011/12/i-know-many-...

People who are willing to take the risk of founding tend to be workaholics by nature, but you don't need to be a workaholic by nature to be a founder. It's bad for you longterm and it sets a poisonous precedent for your company culture.

dpark• 14 years ago

I find this metaphor interesting, because in a marathon, you run the entire time. At least if you want to win, or even race competitively. You might not be sprinting, but you're running at a hard pace until the finish line,

thematt• 14 years ago

It's definitely possible. I have a full time job, a girlfriend, work out everyday and after all that I still manage to run two startups on the side. It's mostly about cutting out non-value-added activities while at the same time optimizing every free minute you have.

DonnyV• 14 years ago

Thats not the same. After you have a family things are very different.

swilliams• 14 years ago

It's possible, but really hard, especially if you have a family. And actually, building a product in your free time isn't that rough; it's supporting it that will consume all of your free time.

Think about it, let's say you have a perfectly reasonable 40 hour work week. What would be a good extra amount to put into a side project/startup? 20 hours?

Now you're working 60 hours per week, just under an extra 3 hours per night. How long can you keep that up? How much time will that take away from your family?

Let's say you stick it through and launch. The questions and support emails roll in. How much of that will eat up your extra 20 hours per week to work on bugs and new features? And will your customers be ok with waiting the extra time while you slog away at your day job?

And what happens if that 40 hour/week job goes into crunch mode and goes up to 50 or maybe even more?

Doing this isn't necessarily hard in terms of difficulty, but it does take a LOT of time.

WadeF2• 14 years ago

In my experience the actual physical amount of time spent doing something can be pretty ordinary, but the amount of time spent mentally is enormous.

When I'm hanging out with friends or my family I'm not 100% there. I'm running over marketing scenarios in my head, trying to figure out how to squash this weird bug, or figuring out whether I should spend time talking with that one investor or not.

So no, I don't think it needs to take over all aspects of your life, but I'm not sure you can consciously stop it.

jacobr• 14 years ago

I also sincerely wonder if it's not possible to just slow down a bit? If there's no parental leave where you live, take time off and then return to your job after 1 year or so, at 80% speed?

bradt2• 14 years ago

I think it would be difficult for Stack Overflow to slow down. In the post, Jeff links to one of his previous blog posts that describes the "running as fast as they can" culture that's been instilled in the company: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/09/go-that-way-really-...

I can see why he'd take some time off and maybe start another venture that would lend itself to a more laid back culture.

ahoyhere7• 14 years ago

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.

ams61103• 14 years ago

It's inspiring that you are successful with something as "ordinary" as a time tracking tool. Just goes to show that there is still opportunity even in what most people would think of as a totally saturated space.

emehrkay• 14 years ago

I need a developer wife :) Great advice!

robyates• 14 years ago

Great post! +1 for the Felix Dennis reference.

PonyGumbo• 14 years ago

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?

eddy_chan• 14 years ago

Thank you for being such an inspiration - and a therapist, I'm working on an online reservation tool for small business service providers cos the rest of them as you say 'suck goatnuggets' (LOL) but it's all too easy to get depressed reading HN about all the 'cool stuff that other startups are doing'.

TIL that I've got to put the right mental filter on before coming to HN.

One question, obviously you don't have any high-touch sales going on, what do you do for marketing to find and convert new customers?

aledalgrande• 14 years ago

First of all, you have to really love your startup. Programming all day, then getting home and have to do the same job in the night can be really draining.

Second you have to make it profitable as soon as possible, so you can leave your job and at least start contracting 2-3 days per week, leaving full days to work on your startup.

Third, the sacrifice depends on the nature of your startup: if it's a no brainer like a management tool and you're a smart programmer, you won't need to get mad. But if it's really techy, then you better find some mate to not get lost in the venture and use up every minute of your free time.

That's my experience and what I've seen around the community here.

garrettdimon• 14 years ago

I may be a little late to the party on this, but it's definitely possible. There are times where regular hours are impossible, but for the most part, it's definitely possible. I agree wholeheartedly with everything Amy has said about their experience with Freckle.

In the four years since quitting my day job to freelance and build my app, I've gotten engaged, married, gone on a honeymoon, got a dog, gone to Europe for a week, and had our first child. I also regularly go on vacation and go snowboarding. I've been full-time on Sifter for about half of that time. So I was part-time for about two years, and that was hard work balancing the two, but it wasn't that bad. I just split time between freelancing and building the company. It was stressful at times, but well worth it.

In my case these days, as a solo founder, it's a bit involved. I work every day, but for the most part, I still only work 40 hours per week. I work from home and see my wife and daughter all of the time and find time to go to the gym every single day. I take breaks and spend time with them whenever I want, and I just work whenever it fits into the family schedule. The only catch is that it's very hard to stop thinking about work in my downtime, but I think that has as much to do with me and being passionate about work as it does being a business owner.

It hasn't been a cakewalk by any means, but it's entirely possible. I've got a slide deck that covers some of the personal side of things if you're interested. (http://bootstrapping.sifterapp.com)

djtriptych3• 14 years ago

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.

TomGullen• 14 years ago

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.

ThomPete3• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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.

ThomPete3• 14 years ago

Yeah I hear you.

krobertson5• 14 years ago

Especially at the age of 2. I have two boys, 4 and 2, and have spent the past 2 years with a 5 hour a day commute. It is not uncommon for the 4 yr old to ask if I can stay home in the morning. They care more about visibility and don't understand the connection between working hard for comfortable lifestyle yet.

After 2 years of my crazy commute for a higher paycheck, the paycheck doesn't quite feel as justified.

nostrademons3• 14 years ago

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.

Lukeas14• 14 years ago

I just went through the same transition. I moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco without my wife and 2 year old son. After driving down every other weekend for 6 months they're now up here with me.

If your son is anything like mine he:

1. Will not understand why you're not there no matter how much you try to explain beforehand.

2. Will not like it one bit (I think my son was clinically depressed the first week).

3. Will eventually get used to it (It got easier after the first month but still not something I wanted him to get used to).

And if you're anything like me you:

1. Will be tired all the time (Spending 12 hours every other weekend in the car staring at cows takes its toll).

2. Will feel guilty all the time.

In the end I'd say the sacrifice paid off since I'm able to spend much more time with him now than I was able to in L.A. Also, thank God for Skype.

ThomPete3• 14 years ago

Dude, you saved my day. Thanks for sharing.

Lifes complicated. In some ways I am aware that being in the US for 3 weeks at the time is not optimal, but who said it had to be.

FuzzyDunlop• 14 years ago

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.

dazbradbury• 14 years ago

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.

jneen2• 14 years ago

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

yalestar• 14 years ago

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.

finnw3• 14 years ago

> 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"

AznHisoka2• 14 years ago

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

jroseattle• 14 years ago

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.

elviejo• 14 years ago

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...

martincmartin2• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

>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.

martincmartin2• 14 years ago

The crazy thing is, I've told this story on the phone when interviewing at startups, and I've had them say "oh, we work 60 hours a week here!" At that point, I say that's a deal breaker and wish them well.

ams61103• 14 years ago

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.

Jgrubb• 14 years ago

Amen. I got into HN and programming in general with big ideas of what I wanted to build once I knew how. At this point, I'm pretty happy working as a contractor, building my skills up, and getting to cook dinner and read stories to my kids at bedtime every night.

Contract programming can facilitate a cushier lifestyle than I really ever thought possible when I was a professional musician. My ideas and my abilities will some day meet, but in the meantime I'm pretty satisfied. This whole post/thread gives that a bit more perspective.

gawker• 14 years ago

Thanks for the story. It reminded me of why sometimes there are things more important than career success. While I'm nowhere near having kids or a wife, I've always thought about the tradeoffs between them while constantly reminding myself of how relationships and family is so important despite desperately wanting to succeed. I guess success can also be thought of as succeeding your family and making sure they are well taken care of.

nutanc• 14 years ago

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

mathattack• 14 years ago

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?

moconnor2• 14 years ago

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.

epaga2• 14 years ago

"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.

ahoyhere7• 14 years ago

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.

epaga2• 14 years ago

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.

dbecker• 14 years ago

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.

mak120• 14 years ago

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.

hetaoblog• 14 years ago

a big surprise!

andrewkreid• 14 years ago

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.

varkker• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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...

tzury• 14 years ago

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!

jc1232• 14 years ago

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.

chrislomax• 14 years ago

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.

chj• 14 years ago

Best wishes from a programmer addicted to stackoverflow.

asksol• 14 years ago

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?

scrame• 14 years ago

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!

dev_Gabriel• 14 years ago

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

cnunciato• 14 years ago

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.

Wazzup12• 14 years ago

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 :(

jiggy2011• 14 years ago

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.

lrobb• 14 years ago

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?

tjbarbour• 14 years ago

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!

Farewell Stack Exchange

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