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Forgive potential ignorance here, but people often quote Joel Spolsky as saying things like: "...the trouble with using a lot of mediocre programmers instead of

Forgive potential ignorance here, but people often quote Joel Spolsky as saying things like: "...the trouble with using a lot of mediocre programmers instead of a couple of good ones is that no matter how long they strive, they will still produce something mediocre." What really genius-level things has Fog Creek done? I remember demoing FogBugz, and it was marginally better than its competitors, but it was far from a complete game-changer. Trello is ok, but it's only marginally better than a whiteboard with post-it notes. None of these reinvent an industry, or provide something so outstanding that people rush toward it. Don't get me wrong; I think Joel has a lot of good ideas in general, and Stack Exchange is indeed a game-changer. But as someone who continually talks about hiring "rock star programmers", I simply don't see a result that I'd consider "rock star" equivalent. But, maybe I'm missing something? Edit: More than that, I don't even consider myself a rock star developer, just a normal developer who loves learning new things and getting a lot of stuff done. I'd be thrilled to work for a Google or Microsoft, but what would attract "rock star developers" to Fog Creek? Basically, are fancy chairs enough? Isn't the most attractive thing a super interesting problem domain?

ajross 14y ago
I'm constantly fighting that same urge. The problem is one of domain. UI coding for straightforward data models (which is 90% of all "web" development) just ... isn't very hard or impressive. Great programmers in that regime produce software that is smaller, cleaner, tighter and higher quality. But it's still just a bug database or social thing or web store, etc... Anyone (even mediocre programmers) can look at it and say "I know how that works." There's plenty of rock star coding out there, of course. But it tends to be either hidden inside companies due to secrecy concerns (Google's scaling architecture or the NVIDIA driver stack, say) or exposed in the open source community instead of the startup world (Fabrice Bellard is a great example here). Startups all say they want rock stars, but then they put them to work doing "better versions" of the same boring stuff we all recognize. Which, if you think about it, is sort of what startups are supposed to do.
- vbtemp 14y ago
  Although the article never used the word "super star", it's something I see around HN and the startup world quite a bit.... I sort of snicker when I see startups post jobs looking for "rock star" coders [1]. What self respecting person would call him or herself a "rock star", let alone apply for such a position? Maybe it's just a gimmick to get mediocre developers to get to work on boilerplate web work.. [1] I also saw a job posting recently where they were looking for a coder "to work on hard problems and blow a hole through the universe"... Why not have them blow bullshit of their face while they're at it? Is this just HR trying to sound too cool, or what?
  - ajross 14y ago
    It's just a meme. Some people are into it, some aren't. There are lots of ways to motivate people, and this works for some. I try not to get to wound up over language usage.
    - zainny 14y ago
      I think you have to be a pretty shallow person to be motivated by the idea of being called a rock star programmer. I specifically do not applied for positions that are advertised in this way.
      - hackinthebochs 14y ago
        I'm just guessing here, but I bet its more about communicating a shared perspective on software development than people thinking they're actually "rock stars". When a job ad says "looking for rock stars to blow a hole in the universe", you would be a fool to take that literally. But its along the lines of a "secret handshake" that lets both parties know something about the other in as few words as possible. A job posting like this is basically saying "hey, we read HN, reddit, etc, we know there's a ton of crap jobs out there full of walking-dead programmers. But this isn't one of them". Of course, the whole "rock star" meme has been hammered to death so that you're more likely to be a company pretending to be something you're not. The point is there is validity in this method of job posting.
noselasd 14y ago
You're missing the point that the term rock-star programmer doesn't mean they will produce world changing programs. It means they'll do an order of magnitude better/faster than their non-rockstar peers. That might be a bit contradicting to what Joel is explaining. From what I've experienced first hand, there's programmers that can produce similar code/software in a week that takes 5 mediocre programmers to produce in a month. Those are extreme cases though. There's not enough "rock star programmers" to go around, so not everyone can have a piece of that cake. Much of this is also very domain specific, it's not a given that a "rock star" game programmer is going to be a orders-of-magnitude better at developing business support systems. Finally, this is not that specific to programming. Not everyone's Einstein, Feynman or Michelangelo.
- drharris 14y ago
  Well, in the linked article he used a Mozart/Salieri analogy, implying that rock star programmers write masterpieces, not simple bug trackers. If all Fog Creek programmers were truly rock stars, wouldn't they be beating Google instead of writing menial money-farm stuff? In my experience, those of us who move at a faster pace than our peers tend to get the most interesting projects. There's a reason that ERP software is so bad, after all. In the rock star analogy, it'd be like getting the Beatles to write music for Justin Bieber fans, or getting Metallica to switch to the "easy listening" genre. That's not what you do with rock stars.
  - sgt101 14y ago
    The point is that if John Lennon was borne today he (or if Jean, she..) would make great music. You might never hear it because of "the industry" but John, or Jean, would be out there somewhere doing ingenious things with melodies that no one else would have. You can't stop people like that, the same is true for programming, if it's your thing you'll do it. If not.. you won't, you'll be a session musician, and every tune you hear (or function you see) you will be able to say "I could of written that" but you didn't.
- calinet6 14y ago
  Can we please stop using the term "rock star?" It's getting old. This idea that a single programmer is somehow so much better or superior may have its merits, but it's harmful to your overall business if you put all your weight on that single support. You have to accept that above a certain number, your employees will fall on a bell-curve of ability, and you should support the efficiency and productiveness of the entire system, not depend on a few "rock stars" to drag it up with you. Here are words I associate with Rock Star: driven (sure), but myopic, single-minded, selfish, unbalanced, and unfaithful. I say we strike it from the vocab.
sophacles 14y ago
I think it is always important to consider time-lines on stuff like this. In this field (many fields actually, but it seems especially this one), the first version of something may be revolutionary or particularly good, and then everyone copies that as obvious, making the first one seem only OK or even bad. TV-Tropes covers this effect nicely in the world of fictional television at: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny I'm not sure the timeline on FogBugz, but it wouldn't surprise me if this was a case of it.
- drharris 14y ago
  FogBugz arrived when the main player on the scene was BugZilla, and capitalized on the fledgling "AJAX" craze. It was definitely a Bugzilla zapper, and it still remains a quality product to this day, gaining features and maintaining simplicity. It's a quality piece of software, but it's still "only a bug tracker". It wasn't the first of its kind, and it's definitely not the only one these days. When I think of a rock star, I think of someone who not only produces stuff of quality, but actually changes the landscape of the industry. If FogBugs hires 40 rock star developers, I'd expect to see a lot more come out of them than products all in crowded spaces. While they are all quality products, they aren't changing the landscape of the industries involved.
spitfire 14y ago
> What really genius-level things has Fog Creek done? Made himself independently wealthy. Repeatedly (IE: Not luck). Not that I disagree with you. But that is worthy of respect in itself. Also, there is an art to the very difficult task of making the difficult look simple and easy.
- ry0ohki 14y ago
  I'd argue that occurred through his writing talent more then his recruiting.
  - biot 14y ago
    Perhaps you didn't catch the fact that everything he wrote was a recruitment pitch?
- zeroonetwothree 14y ago
  There have been many people that have won the lottery more than once. Does that mean they are skillful at winning the lottery? Simply succeeding more than once is not sufficient evidence that the success wasn't because of luck. All success is based on luck to some extent. It's silly to argue otherwise. Of course there is skill involved as well.
larrys 14y ago
"Forgive potential ignorance here" "Don't get me wrong; I think Joel has a lot of good ideas in general" The saying that comes to mind is perhaps the following. "Those who can, do, those who can't teach." I'm guessing that Joel, by his writings, is a combination of the two and as a result his output is not "rockstar" quality. Another example might be Steve Blank. Who no doubt achieved more fame as a teacher then he ever did creating anything. There is obviously quite a value in people who can do both in varying degrees.
- drharris 14y ago
  Indeed; and my post was never intended to belittle Joel himself. He has provided great value to the industry in both capacities. I'm mainly challenging the notion that if he truly hires only developers he considers to be rockstars, then why doesn't the company have a more compelling domain than bug tracking and PM?
  - larrys 14y ago
    Well that certainly has to do with both business sense as well as the risk taking ability and what he feels comfortable with. To do something compelling you have to want to take that risk (which could result in spectacular success or failure). Joel might not want to bite off more than he can chew or he simply might not be creative enough to come up with anything "more compelling domain than bug tracking and PM". That is why a good programmer needs to be around good business people (add: as well as people with ideas and a feel for the marketplace). They are two different skills. Same with medicine. Doctors specialize. You don't find that someone is the best thoracic surgeon and world famous also does urology. Maybe he also dables in photography but he's not going to be as good as Ansel Adams who does it full time. Business is a skill and takes full time attention. So does programming. Look at PG. Running YC is a full time job. While he can certainly do programming on the side now and maybe write a book you're not going to tell me he can do all three better than a specialist who can devote full attention.
    - randomdata 14y ago
      That is why a good programmer needs to be around good business people Partnering with a business person for my next venture is something I'd like to try, but it's not exactly clear where you find a good business person who wants to partner up. The business people I am in contact with are already busy with their own things. Unlike a programer who might be presently doing the 9-5 corporate job, it seems like a good business person will always be busy doing their own businesses, as that is what business people do. I have been mulling over something in particular as of late, but I presently don't have much interest in building it if I'm also going to be responsible for selling it. A partner seems like it would be a good fit.
emiliobumachar 14y ago
http://www.fogcreek.com/fogbugz/Downloads/KamensPaper.pdf http://www.fogcreek.com/fogbugz/Downloads/KamensPaper.pdf To quote The Spolsk himself: "This paper is the ultimate rebuttal to those grumpy people who email me, barely able to conceal their disgust, saying, 'why do you need to hire such smart people to work on bug tracking software?'"
- alayne 14y ago
  Is Bayesian filtering supposed to be impressive? This paper is more a symptom of somewhat smart people being bored.
MartinCron 14y ago
For a lot of developers, the how of making software can be as important as the what of making software. I've worked on casual games, bug trackers, retail signage databases, public outreach platforms, streaming media servers, and lolcat captioners. And you know what? It's all about the same. It comes down to things like being respected, challenged, engaged, and working with people you like being around. If Spolsky were to go slumming it and open an office in my town, I would be first in line to apply to work on FogBugz, and I don't care about the fancy chairs.

ajross 14y ago

I'm constantly fighting that same urge. The problem is one of domain. UI coding for straightforward data models (which is 90% of all "web" development) just ... isn't very hard or impressive. Great programmers in that regime produce software that is smaller, cleaner, tighter and higher quality. But it's still just a bug database or social thing or web store, etc... Anyone (even mediocre programmers) can look at it and say "I know how that works." There's plenty of rock star coding out there, of course. But it tends to be either hidden inside companies due to secrecy concerns (Google's scaling architecture or the NVIDIA driver stack, say) or exposed in the open source community instead of the startup world (Fabrice Bellard is a great example here). Startups all say they want rock stars, but then they put them to work doing "better versions" of the same boring stuff we all recognize. Which, if you think about it, is sort of what startups are supposed to do.

vbtemp 14y ago
Although the article never used the word "super star", it's something I see around HN and the startup world quite a bit.... I sort of snicker when I see startups post jobs looking for "rock star" coders [1]. What self respecting person would call him or herself a "rock star", let alone apply for such a position? Maybe it's just a gimmick to get mediocre developers to get to work on boilerplate web work.. [1] I also saw a job posting recently where they were looking for a coder "to work on hard problems and blow a hole through the universe"... Why not have them blow bullshit of their face while they're at it? Is this just HR trying to sound too cool, or what?
- ajross 14y ago
  It's just a meme. Some people are into it, some aren't. There are lots of ways to motivate people, and this works for some. I try not to get to wound up over language usage.
  - zainny 14y ago
    I think you have to be a pretty shallow person to be motivated by the idea of being called a rock star programmer. I specifically do not applied for positions that are advertised in this way.
    - hackinthebochs 14y ago
      I'm just guessing here, but I bet its more about communicating a shared perspective on software development than people thinking they're actually "rock stars". When a job ad says "looking for rock stars to blow a hole in the universe", you would be a fool to take that literally. But its along the lines of a "secret handshake" that lets both parties know something about the other in as few words as possible. A job posting like this is basically saying "hey, we read HN, reddit, etc, we know there's a ton of crap jobs out there full of walking-dead programmers. But this isn't one of them". Of course, the whole "rock star" meme has been hammered to death so that you're more likely to be a company pretending to be something you're not. The point is there is validity in this method of job posting.

noselasd 14y ago

You're missing the point that the term rock-star programmer doesn't mean they will produce world changing programs. It means they'll do an order of magnitude better/faster than their non-rockstar peers. That might be a bit contradicting to what Joel is explaining. From what I've experienced first hand, there's programmers that can produce similar code/software in a week that takes 5 mediocre programmers to produce in a month. Those are extreme cases though. There's not enough "rock star programmers" to go around, so not everyone can have a piece of that cake. Much of this is also very domain specific, it's not a given that a "rock star" game programmer is going to be a orders-of-magnitude better at developing business support systems. Finally, this is not that specific to programming. Not everyone's Einstein, Feynman or Michelangelo.

drharris 14y ago
Well, in the linked article he used a Mozart/Salieri analogy, implying that rock star programmers write masterpieces, not simple bug trackers. If all Fog Creek programmers were truly rock stars, wouldn't they be beating Google instead of writing menial money-farm stuff? In my experience, those of us who move at a faster pace than our peers tend to get the most interesting projects. There's a reason that ERP software is so bad, after all. In the rock star analogy, it'd be like getting the Beatles to write music for Justin Bieber fans, or getting Metallica to switch to the "easy listening" genre. That's not what you do with rock stars.
- sgt101 14y ago
  The point is that if John Lennon was borne today he (or if Jean, she..) would make great music. You might never hear it because of "the industry" but John, or Jean, would be out there somewhere doing ingenious things with melodies that no one else would have. You can't stop people like that, the same is true for programming, if it's your thing you'll do it. If not.. you won't, you'll be a session musician, and every tune you hear (or function you see) you will be able to say "I could of written that" but you didn't.
calinet6 14y ago
Can we please stop using the term "rock star?" It's getting old. This idea that a single programmer is somehow so much better or superior may have its merits, but it's harmful to your overall business if you put all your weight on that single support. You have to accept that above a certain number, your employees will fall on a bell-curve of ability, and you should support the efficiency and productiveness of the entire system, not depend on a few "rock stars" to drag it up with you. Here are words I associate with Rock Star: driven (sure), but myopic, single-minded, selfish, unbalanced, and unfaithful. I say we strike it from the vocab.

sophacles 14y ago

I think it is always important to consider time-lines on stuff like this. In this field (many fields actually, but it seems especially this one), the first version of something may be revolutionary or particularly good, and then everyone copies that as obvious, making the first one seem only OK or even bad. TV-Tropes covers this effect nicely in the world of fictional television at: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny I'm not sure the timeline on FogBugz, but it wouldn't surprise me if this was a case of it.

drharris 14y ago
FogBugz arrived when the main player on the scene was BugZilla, and capitalized on the fledgling "AJAX" craze. It was definitely a Bugzilla zapper, and it still remains a quality product to this day, gaining features and maintaining simplicity. It's a quality piece of software, but it's still "only a bug tracker". It wasn't the first of its kind, and it's definitely not the only one these days. When I think of a rock star, I think of someone who not only produces stuff of quality, but actually changes the landscape of the industry. If FogBugs hires 40 rock star developers, I'd expect to see a lot more come out of them than products all in crowded spaces. While they are all quality products, they aren't changing the landscape of the industries involved.

spitfire 14y ago

> What really genius-level things has Fog Creek done? Made himself independently wealthy. Repeatedly (IE: Not luck). Not that I disagree with you. But that is worthy of respect in itself. Also, there is an art to the very difficult task of making the difficult look simple and easy.

ry0ohki 14y ago
I'd argue that occurred through his writing talent more then his recruiting.
- biot 14y ago
  Perhaps you didn't catch the fact that everything he wrote was a recruitment pitch?
zeroonetwothree 14y ago
There have been many people that have won the lottery more than once. Does that mean they are skillful at winning the lottery? Simply succeeding more than once is not sufficient evidence that the success wasn't because of luck. All success is based on luck to some extent. It's silly to argue otherwise. Of course there is skill involved as well.

larrys 14y ago

"Forgive potential ignorance here" "Don't get me wrong; I think Joel has a lot of good ideas in general" The saying that comes to mind is perhaps the following. "Those who can, do, those who can't teach." I'm guessing that Joel, by his writings, is a combination of the two and as a result his output is not "rockstar" quality. Another example might be Steve Blank. Who no doubt achieved more fame as a teacher then he ever did creating anything. There is obviously quite a value in people who can do both in varying degrees.

drharris 14y ago
Indeed; and my post was never intended to belittle Joel himself. He has provided great value to the industry in both capacities. I'm mainly challenging the notion that if he truly hires only developers he considers to be rockstars, then why doesn't the company have a more compelling domain than bug tracking and PM?
- larrys 14y ago
  Well that certainly has to do with both business sense as well as the risk taking ability and what he feels comfortable with. To do something compelling you have to want to take that risk (which could result in spectacular success or failure). Joel might not want to bite off more than he can chew or he simply might not be creative enough to come up with anything "more compelling domain than bug tracking and PM". That is why a good programmer needs to be around good business people (add: as well as people with ideas and a feel for the marketplace). They are two different skills. Same with medicine. Doctors specialize. You don't find that someone is the best thoracic surgeon and world famous also does urology. Maybe he also dables in photography but he's not going to be as good as Ansel Adams who does it full time. Business is a skill and takes full time attention. So does programming. Look at PG. Running YC is a full time job. While he can certainly do programming on the side now and maybe write a book you're not going to tell me he can do all three better than a specialist who can devote full attention.
  - randomdata 14y ago
    That is why a good programmer needs to be around good business people Partnering with a business person for my next venture is something I'd like to try, but it's not exactly clear where you find a good business person who wants to partner up. The business people I am in contact with are already busy with their own things. Unlike a programer who might be presently doing the 9-5 corporate job, it seems like a good business person will always be busy doing their own businesses, as that is what business people do. I have been mulling over something in particular as of late, but I presently don't have much interest in building it if I'm also going to be responsible for selling it. A partner seems like it would be a good fit.

emiliobumachar 14y ago

http://www.fogcreek.com/fogbugz/Downloads/KamensPaper.pdf http://www.fogcreek.com/fogbugz/Downloads/KamensPaper.pdf To quote The Spolsk himself: "This paper is the ultimate rebuttal to those grumpy people who email me, barely able to conceal their disgust, saying, 'why do you need to hire such smart people to work on bug tracking software?'"

alayne 14y ago
Is Bayesian filtering supposed to be impressive? This paper is more a symptom of somewhat smart people being bored.

MartinCron 14y ago

For a lot of developers, the how of making software can be as important as the what of making software. I've worked on casual games, bug trackers, retail signage databases, public outreach platforms, streaming media servers, and lolcat captioners. And you know what? It's all about the same. It comes down to things like being respected, challenged, engaged, and working with people you like being around. If Spolsky were to go slumming it and open an office in my town, I would be first in line to apply to work on FogBugz, and I don't care about the fancy chairs.