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Co-founder of Fog Creek Software, Trello and Stack Overflow; blog Joel on Software
556 records in all
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18 basic records of 122
Episodes are real events from public sources, summarised by us.
Joel collaborated with Jeff Atwood to build Stack Overflow. He then led the company as CEO for nearly a decade starting in 2010.
LessonStrategic partnerships between domain experts can lead to industry-defining platforms.
Joel Spolsky launched Fog Creek Software without a sales team. He decided to use his website to promote consulting services and offered a 5% referral fee to anyone who brought in a paying client.
LessonSmall businesses can turn their audience into a virtual sales force through clear financial incentives.
The opening of the new Denver airport was famously delayed due to a software engineering failure. Joel notes that the team was forced into an impossible schedule with no buffer for errors.
LessonUnrealistic deadlines without risk management lead to high-profile project collapses.
Joel observed a handyman installing a tile floor and realized that physical labor requires repeating the same task. He noted that in software, once a 'tile floor' is built, it becomes a reusable template library.
LessonSoftware scales through automation and reuse, unlike physical labor which scales through repetition.
Joel and his team prepared to ship FogBUGZ 3.0 on a strict deadline. They focused on finishing marketing materials and improving their online store to handle support contracts.
LessonThe final week before shipping requires balancing technical bug fixes with marketing and sales readiness.
Joel noticed a bug where the suggestion popup appeared right as he was clicking the search button, causing accidental clicks on wrong items. He switched his homepage back to regular Google until the timing issue was resolved.
LessonEven innovative features can fail if they interfere with established user muscle memory and timing.
A court ruled that competitors could advertise their products when users searched for FogBugz on Google. Joel observed that while legal, high-end brands usually avoid such tactics.
LessonLegal competitive tactics are not always aligned with building a high-class brand image.
The home-built server for fogcreek.com repeatedly crashed whenever the temperature in the server closet rose above 80 degrees. Joel decided to stop patching the issue and ordered professional industrial-strength servers to replace it.
LessonReliability issues in core infrastructure should be solved by upgrading to professional equipment rather than struggling with hobbyist gear.
Joel wanted to post on Usenet while studying at the University of Pennsylvania, but the school did not officially allow undergraduates to do so. He found a way to post anyway and eventually transferred out of the university.
LessonA founder should seek out environments that do not stifle their early creative or technical contributions.
Joel responded to a critique by Carl Zetim which claimed that dogfooding prevents true usability testing. Joel pointed out that his own 'Joel Test' specifically requires usability testing as a core metric for software teams.
LessonDo not let one development philosophy, like dogfooding, blind you to the necessity of other quality control methods.
Joel gave a talk at Amazon comparing the success of the iPod to less popular competitors. He focused on why certain names and designs resonate with the public while others fail.
LessonA founder should prioritize clear, memorable branding over overly descriptive or technical product names.
Joel shared his negative experience with Verisign and recommended using register.com or its cheaper alternative, namebargain.com. He noted that some providers like Baltimore Technologies charge significantly more for the exact same underlying service.
LessonResearch the underlying providers of services to avoid paying a premium for the exact same product.
Joel launched a new version of his discussion group software in beta. He focused on backend improvements like spam prevention and making it easier to create new groups, even though the frontend was still plain.
LessonFocusing on administrative scalability allows you to manage growth with much less effort later on.
Joel observed Google launching a search feature that fetched data without reloading the page. He recognized this as a rare, prominent use of asynchronous web techniques that developers had previously ignored.
LessonNew technical implementations by competitors can instantly redefine the quality standards for your own product's user interface.
Key designers of QuarkXPress 5.0 left Quark because they felt mistreated. They started their own shop and were acquired by a Vancouver-based company that allowed them to stay in Denver and build a breakthrough product called Six Degrees.
LessonTalented people will leave and start competing ventures if they are treated poorly by management.
Joel's team at Fog Creek reached a major milestone with their first successful end-to-end demo for Project Aardvark. He used a building construction metaphor to explain that while many details were missing, the core structure had reached its full height.
LessonReaching a functional end-to-end demo is a critical turning point in product development, even if the polish is missing.
Joel discovered that a small book image on his site was over 42KB because of hidden metadata. He used a utility recommended by a reader to strip the useless data, reducing the file size by over 80%.
LessonSmall technical details like file size can impact user experience and site performance.
After shipping FogBUGZ 3.0, the trial server faced an unexpected surge in users and failed. Joel had to spend four engineer days rearchitecting the database creation process to make the server stable.
LessonSometimes skipping 'best practices' like load testing is economically rational if the cost of fixing the failure is equal to the cost of the test.
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