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This is honestly quite a trip to read (I'm the Benjamin Pollack in the movie). I did want to make two small corrections, though: In one scene, she’s being

by gecko 3y ago

This is honestly quite a trip to read (I'm the Benjamin Pollack in the movie). I did want to make two small corrections, though: In one scene, she’s being interviewed on her birthday. Nobody remembered, so she had to buy herself a birthday hat. While she’s explaining this to the camera, one of her co-workers shushes her for making too much noise. On her birthday! No, this coworker right here was starting to say "shit fuck shit dammit" on camera as he discovered that a stale precompiled header was getting picked up on the build box and then realized Lerone was rolling, so you're hearing me halt myself before saying a pile of profanity on film. In retrospect, Liz talking about her birthday and me suddenly cussing like a drunk sailor would've been a much better take. I regret the error. [Benjamin Pollack] seems to have never caught the startup bug, mainly working at larger, more established companies. I worked at Fog Creek (max ~60 employees during my tenure, usually more like 40) from 2005 to 2014, Khan Academy (~120 if you count contractors) from 2015 to 2017, Spreedly (~40) from 2017 to 2018, and Bakpax (there were a dozen of us) from 2018 to 2021 (we got acquired, I wanted to stay at startups, so I didn't stay once we were bought), and another small startup briefly after that before settling at The Knot Worldwide. Yes, I'm currently at a very large company (~6500), but I'm a bit confused at how you'd come up with that summary of my career. I honestly really enjoyed the article, though, and neither of these are exactly big errors; just some extra color I wanted to provide. [Edit: I'm also happy to answer any questions anyone has about the movie or about that time at Fog Creek.]

codinghorror 3y ago
Hi Ben! We'll always have London..
- gecko 3y ago
  I'm happy to always have London, but I could do with forgetting most of Cambridge.
  - krallja 3y ago
    What about Cockfosters?
mtlynch 3y ago
Author here. Cool to see your response here! >I'm a bit confused at how you'd come up with that summary of my career. I worded that poorly, you're right. I meant early-stage startups at the scale of Fog Creek when you started. I've updated the post. >No, this coworker right here was starting to say "shit fuck shit dammit" on camera as he discovered that a stale precompiled header was getting picked up on the build box and then realized Lerone was rolling, so you're hearing me halt myself before saying a pile of profanity on camera. Ah, thanks for the context! I watched that scene over and over trying to figure out what happened. It sounds like a "shush" but it's also weirdly stretched out. Liz seems to have heard it as a shush, as she shushes herself after. It shows Michael look over at you, but it's not clear if he was reacting to the noise. There's an imdb trivia item[0] about how you and Liz disagree about whether it was a shush, but it's unsourced, so it was hard to put much stock in it. This is a much more satisfying answer. I've updated the post to link to your comment here. >I'm also happy to answer any questions anyone has about the movie or about that time at Fog Creek. How do you feel about the movie looking back? I notice on your website that you recommend people watch it "if [they]’re feeling masochistic." Is it just the awkwardness of being the focus of a film at that age or were there things you disliked about how it came out? What did you like/dislike about working at Fog Creek? How'd it change during your tenure? [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0813987/trivia/?item=tr0602787&ref_=ext_shr_lnk https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0813987/trivia/?item=tr0602787&...
- anildash 3y ago
  One other bit of trivia, Alexis Ohanian drew one of the versions of Fog Creek’s kiwi mascot that was featured on some t-shirts and merch, though never in any of the products.
  - mtlynch 3y ago
    Wow, I never expected to hear from so many Fog Creek folks! Thanks for sharing that bit of trivia, Anil. How'd that happen?
    - anildash 3y ago
atesti 3y ago
>I'm also happy to answer any questions anyone has about the movie or about that time at Fog Creek Why was FogBugz for your server discontinued silently? I think you had build something really great at the end with the change to .net and the plugin architecture (which would have made it possible to do customizations even in the cloud). Also how kiln integrated was great. Did key people leave so that FogBugz basically stopped to be maintained anymore? Where you still around when they removed the plugins and tried to put it back and maybe switched to elastic search etc.?
- krallja 3y ago
  We still had about a dozen developers combined on FogBugz+Kiln at the very end. The plug-in API was very bad for performance and security, especially in a multitenant cloud application. That led a team to experimentally reimplement the entire frontend as a single-page app (code named Project Ocelot, whose shirt I am wearing today). Webhooks and a well-designed web API would have been a much tidier solution than the plug-in API. FogBugz For Your Server had constant support costs, like Ben said, but also the application started growing all sorts of supporting services (a QueueService, an ElasticSearch cluster, Redis…) that made the existing InstallerShieid installer a huge cost to maintain. Later, I wrote an “autosetup” script in PowerShell to help developers and support engineers onboard faster, which later became the new installer for FogBugz On-Site / Manuscript On Premises. It was designed for a single edition of Windows (Server 2012 iirc?) and SQL Server. We sold a million bucks worth of licenses for that.
- gecko 3y ago
  Everything you're asking about happened after I left, so I have no idea. I didn't even know they'd discontinued FogBugz for Your Server. [Edit: We did discontinue Kiln for Your Server while I was there. We nuked that because the support burden was monstrous, to the point we needed three extra SDETs/sales engineers purely to handle testing and on-prem bug fixes. It threatened Kiln's ability to be profitable. The FogBugz team may've made the same calculus a few years later.]
  - mwcampbell 3y ago

by gecko 3y ago

codinghorror 3y ago

Hi Ben! We'll always have London..

gecko 3y ago
I'm happy to always have London, but I could do with forgetting most of Cambridge.
- krallja 3y ago
  What about Cockfosters?

mtlynch 3y ago

Author here. Cool to see your response here! >I'm a bit confused at how you'd come up with that summary of my career. I worded that poorly, you're right. I meant early-stage startups at the scale of Fog Creek when you started. I've updated the post. >No, this coworker right here was starting to say "shit fuck shit dammit" on camera as he discovered that a stale precompiled header was getting picked up on the build box and then realized Lerone was rolling, so you're hearing me halt myself before saying a pile of profanity on camera. Ah, thanks for the context! I watched that scene over and over trying to figure out what happened. It sounds like a "shush" but it's also weirdly stretched out. Liz seems to have heard it as a shush, as she shushes herself after. It shows Michael look over at you, but it's not clear if he was reacting to the noise. There's an imdb trivia item[0] about how you and Liz disagree about whether it was a shush, but it's unsourced, so it was hard to put much stock in it. This is a much more satisfying answer. I've updated the post to link to your comment here. >I'm also happy to answer any questions anyone has about the movie or about that time at Fog Creek. How do you feel about the movie looking back? I notice on your website that you recommend people watch it "if [they]’re feeling masochistic." Is it just the awkwardness of being the focus of a film at that age or were there things you disliked about how it came out? What did you like/dislike about working at Fog Creek? How'd it change during your tenure? [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0813987/trivia/?item=tr0602787&ref_=ext_shr_lnk https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0813987/trivia/?item=tr0602787&...

anildash 3y ago
One other bit of trivia, Alexis Ohanian drew one of the versions of Fog Creek’s kiwi mascot that was featured on some t-shirts and merch, though never in any of the products.
- mtlynch 3y ago
  Wow, I never expected to hear from so many Fog Creek folks! Thanks for sharing that bit of trivia, Anil. How'd that happen?
  - anildash 3y ago

atesti 3y ago

>I'm also happy to answer any questions anyone has about the movie or about that time at Fog Creek Why was FogBugz for your server discontinued silently? I think you had build something really great at the end with the change to .net and the plugin architecture (which would have made it possible to do customizations even in the cloud). Also how kiln integrated was great. Did key people leave so that FogBugz basically stopped to be maintained anymore? Where you still around when they removed the plugins and tried to put it back and maybe switched to elastic search etc.?

krallja 3y ago
We still had about a dozen developers combined on FogBugz+Kiln at the very end. The plug-in API was very bad for performance and security, especially in a multitenant cloud application. That led a team to experimentally reimplement the entire frontend as a single-page app (code named Project Ocelot, whose shirt I am wearing today). Webhooks and a well-designed web API would have been a much tidier solution than the plug-in API. FogBugz For Your Server had constant support costs, like Ben said, but also the application started growing all sorts of supporting services (a QueueService, an ElasticSearch cluster, Redis…) that made the existing InstallerShieid installer a huge cost to maintain. Later, I wrote an “autosetup” script in PowerShell to help developers and support engineers onboard faster, which later became the new installer for FogBugz On-Site / Manuscript On Premises. It was designed for a single edition of Windows (Server 2012 iirc?) and SQL Server. We sold a million bucks worth of licenses for that.
gecko 3y ago
Everything you're asking about happened after I left, so I have no idea. I didn't even know they'd discontinued FogBugz for Your Server. [Edit: We did discontinue Kiln for Your Server while I was there. We nuked that because the support burden was monstrous, to the point we needed three extra SDETs/sales engineers purely to handle testing and on-prem bug fixes. It threatened Kiln's ability to be profitable. The FogBugz team may've made the same calculus a few years later.]
- mwcampbell 3y ago