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Interview with Jeff Atwood, Co-Founder of Stack Overflow
- belter 2y agoGet thousands of workers, to work thousandths of hours, to answer technical questions for free...In exchange for "Reputation". Sell for 1.8 Billion...The American Dream...
- ktallett 2y agoThat is how any social media website works including this one.
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- netdevphoenix 2y agoIsn't it fascinating how even people that consider themselves rational and intelligent like developers would be happy doing work for a company for free in exchange for internet points?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- minitech 2y agoAnd places like Wikipedia don’t even give you internet points! What dummies these contributors are.
- swalling 2y agoExcept Wikipedia is a non-profit and the content produced is under a free license. The founder of Wikipedia and the few employees are the least wealthy people to run a top 10 website.
- minitech 2y agoI agree that the Wikipedia model is better, but Stack Exchange posts are also under a Creative Commons license.
- YetAnotherNick 2y agoNobody contributes to Wikipedia or Stackoverflow because of license. Most contribute because humans like sharing information with other people. If Wikipedia's eyeballs are low, people wouldn't contribute.
- LeonB 2y agoSome people would still contribute. It’s an intrinsic drive. (But I agree with your point in general)
- swalling 2y ago“If Wikipedia’s eyeballs are low, people wouldn’t contribute” People were contributing well before it was a top 10 website. That’s how it got kickstarted in the first place.
- YetAnotherNick 2y agoBut people knew that the content is easily accessible over internet and the usage would grow. If the content is only available in say one library in a random city, people wouldn't contribute for free.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- belter 2y agoExcept nobody is selling Wikipedia for 1.8 Billion. Do you see the difference? Congrats on totally missing the point.
- robertlagrant 2y agoSo what? That neither devalues the contributions nor the value given to other people through the content.
- belter 2y agoImagine this scenario: A group of volunteers builds a public park, putting in hours of work, landscaping, planting trees, and creating a beautiful space for everyone to enjoy. Years later, the park’s manager fences it off, sells it for $1.8 billion, and pockets the money. When questioned, the manager says, “So what? The volunteers enjoyed building it, and people got value from the park while it was open.”
- CaptainFever 2y agoYour story about a park going from "public" to "private", with the manager tricking the volunteers into making something that is no longer public and pocketing the money, is a false analogy for multiple reasons. 1. What do you mean by "open"? If you're talking about the company, the park was private -- fenced off -- from the start; there was no "bait and switch". This is the part which is worth 1.8 billion dollars: the brand name, network, software and system. 2. What do you mean by "open"? If you're talking about the content licenses, then the park is still open and public to this day. This is valuable too, of course, but no one will buy CC-licensed content for 1.8 billion dollars. It's just in the commons. Basically, while both the website and the content are valuable, the 1.8 billion dollars you're complaining about wasn't used to buy the content. Anyone can get that for free. It was used to buy the website, which has always been private and proprietary. Your story would make more sense if StackExchange was a non-profit started by a group of volunteers which somehow got turned into a for-profit and sold to the benefit of a single person, or if they somehow re-licensed everyone's content into proprietary. But neither happened. And that's why it's a false analogy.
- Johanx64 2y agoMany people landed good jobs that way. It was a good way for self-promo back in the day. Jobs stackexchange section was also way better than most other jobs boards at the time. It only went majorly downhill after the key people behind the site went away to work on other things and it got sold...
- arp242 2y agoI also learned a great deal from answering questions.
- 331c8c71 2y agoNot the least. Rational homo economicus pretty much doesn't exist in real life. The vast majority of us are driven by the essential motives and desires while the intelligence rationalizes already made decisions.
- robertlagrant 2y ago> Isn't it fascinating how even people that consider themselves rational and intelligent like developers would be happy doing work for a company for free in exchange for internet points? Is this how you'd characterise open source software contributions as well (minus the points, of course)?
- brudgers 2y agoIs that better or worse than the traditional route, wealth by birthright?
- layer8 2y agoHobson's choice?
- pdntspa 2y agoI remember reading Atwood's blog around the time he launched it, and from his writing, he seemed genuine in his desire to build a tool that would help developers write code. This was also right in the middle of the original gamification craze, so of course internet points lol
- DanielHB 2y agoI remember reading his rants about just how bad the current situation was (which was a terrible website called "developers exchange" or public phpBB internet forums). Never underestimate the passion derived from sheer hatred of the status quo. Also his backup strategies around 2008 were quite interesting.
- cyberax 2y ago> "developers exchange" It was "expertsexchange.com" initially. Then they disambiguated it by renaming to "experts-exchange.com", just to be clear.
- voidmain0001 2y agoAwesome! I didn't know that about the domain name.
- smitelli 2y agoAh yes, perpetually flagged by every corporate firewall that did substring keyword matching on DNS queries. Incidentally, the amount of sheer content-masking garbage on their pages was what originally prompted me to install and learn (IIRC) Greasemonkey and a bunch of DOM/CSS stuff.
- pdntspa 2y agoAh, good ol' Expert Sex Change I don't miss that site one bit!
- sien 2y agoBut my oh my, it was so much better than experts exchange.
- zem 2y agoi feel like a lot of people have forgotten that that was its initial impetus, literally "let's get together and collectively build a better expertsexchange without the dark patterns trying to monetize your need for answers"
- SnorkelTan 2y agoStack overflow was an invaluable resource for me as a developer. I got a wealth of knowledge about a bunch of thorny problems I was encountering with out paying anything. The people who answered the questions I had were able to help far more people than they ever could have individually without SO. I’m having a hard time being upset about his financial windfall. It’s really only a bait and switch for people who answered questions with some other unstated expectation than helping others or receiving help.
- kijin 2y agoIn aggregate, Stack Overflow probably saved developers far more time than anyone ever put in, and saved companies all over the world far more money than the founders made in their exit.
- milesward 2y agoCreating more value than you capture has ways been the jam.
- keybored 2y agoYou just need to be working class to fulfill that dream.
- fakedang 2y agoAlso saved AI companies far more effort in gathering correct code for training.
- kijin 2y agoNot just correct code, but also a whole bunch of incorrect answers, as well as votes and comments to help weigh the trustworthiness of each answer.
- belter 2y agoYour argument has nothing do to with the point I was trying to make.
- zem 2y agofor a lot of us it wasn't the reputation, it was the idea of a gift-economy help desk and knowledge base. i enjoyed being a part of it, both helping and being helped, back when it was still good.
- kstrauser 2y agoThe reputation was fun, but I saw it as a proxy for how much I’d helped people. That always felt good.
- LeonB 2y agoYou might find this hard to believe, but I find that helping other people is genuinely rewarding all by itself. And it’s rewarding in a way that money can’t buy. Stack Overflow helped it to scale really well, too. You could answer a question, just once, and over time it could help dozens then hundreds then thousands of people. It’s easy to be cynical, but actually that was really awesome.
- belter 2y agoAs I said above, your argument has nothing do to with the point I was trying to make. You call it cynical I call it 1.8 Billion.
- keybored 2y agoYeah I haven’t seen anyone in this thread being able to fit the square of selfless contribution to the developer knowledge pool with the for-profit round hole of StackOverflow.
- davidcalloway 2y agoI sometimes feel this way even about Google maps. On some level when I make a small contribution I'm aware that everyone doing so profits Google quite nicely. But then again, I think that I've profited quite a bit from having Google maps as a resource, far more than the contribution I've made. It feels much better to look at the fact that it's a place that people help share information useful to each other, which happens to profit a large company, than to only focus jealously on the fact that said large company has hit upon a way to monetize the sharing of this information. Both things are true, and whether you think it's great or horrid really is a matter of perspective.
- keybored 2y ago> You might find this hard to believe, but I find that helping other people is genuinely rewarding all by itself. And it’s rewarding in a way that money can’t buy. So Jeff took that money instead.
- weinzierl 2y agoThere was a time when StackOverflow already had considerable size and it still felt as if Jeff knew and moderated every single post. This is what made StackOverflow in my opinion. The excellent moderation in the beginning resulted in excellent quality. Now, not taking away from the other early moderators, Jeff was definitely a huge part of it and one thing is for sure: He busted his ass off for this site and he deserves the reward.
- scotty79 2y agoI don't think anyone deserves 1.8bln reward. Norman Borlaug perhaps. But good for Jeff. I think SO was immensly societally and economically valuable and most people who actually got 1.8bln are less deserving than Jeff is.
- davidcalloway 2y agoI cannot help but think of Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven... "Deserve ain't got nothin' to do with it".
- belter 2y agoI would say Jon Skeet busted his ass off :-) https://stackoverflow.com/users/22656/jon-skeet https://stackoverflow.com/users/22656/jon-skeet
- arp242 2y agoNo one is forcing anyone to do anything, and everyone always knew what they were getting themselves in to. It was always a deal where everyone wins. That you don't like that choice for yourself is fine. No need to be so negative, dismissive, and cynical about how other people choose to spend their free time.
- belter 2y agoIt's no different from creating an open source project, profiting from the free work of thousandths and then cash in a la JBoss or Redis. If he wanted to give back he could have started with John Skeet.
- scarface_74 2y agoDo you think that the expertSexChange site that it was designed to replace had a more appealing business model?
- badpun 2y agoWait till you see YouTube.com, they literally got millions of people to make videos for them, most of them for free!
- ktallett 2y agoI enjoyed the site and found it useful to begin with however it became a playground for people who felt they were know it alls to get recognition. A little ego boost if you will and that ruined the point for me, which was to get a varied response on technical questions.
- ramon156 2y agoRemoved: duplicate comment
- Salgat 2y agoOne nice thing about ChatGPT, they won't judge you as a fool for asking an easier question.
- ryandrake 2y agoIt also doesn’t answer your question as if you asked a different one. So many stackoverflow conversations: Q: I am looking for a way to do X in language Y. A: You shouldn’t need to do that. What do you really want to do? Argh. What I really want to do is exactly what I asked. If you don’t know, fine, but don’t try to steer me towards a question you do know the answer to. Just let someone else answer. Not everything is an XY problem[1]. 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem
- emptiestplace 2y ago> Not everything is an XY problem Pretty close, though.
- michaelcampbell 2y agoSure, but I find that this phenomenon is just different people thinking at different levels on the abstraction continuum.
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- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- netdevphoenix 2y agoDoes anyone still use Stack Overflow post-2022?
- burgerrito 2y agoMany including me
- netdevphoenix 2y agoNot that many judging by the two answers. Even 100k is too little relative to the number of English speaking devs in the world
- glitchc 2y agoThe answers are only 18 minutes old. Give it time.
- gus_massa 2y agoI had to write a powerscript last week. I lifted 90% of it from 2 or 3 posts in SO
- danpalmer 2y agoYes, for non-work things I find it vaguely useful. My workflow is to first google search, often see Stack Overflow answers, and then move on to an LLM or actual documentation if I don't get anything through search. I do it this way around because I can search far faster than I can write out reasonable english sentences that head-off bad LLM responses. Sometimes when I'm confident enough that the LLM will be able to give me the "right answer" faster than search I'll do it first, but that's mostly when I have something I can copy/paste in.
- recroad 2y agoMy experience with LLMs has been different. I give it trash prompts and it gives me reasonable responses. I think it's figured out the space between what I type and what I want. That's great. Until we get an input which allows it to figure out the space between what I type and what I think. That doesn't even sound too bad, because now I can just think and it'll happen. I look forward to this future, sounds wonderfully efficient, which would finally give me the time to do that thing I really want to do but don't have the time right now because we're not efficient enough. But no, my experience is different with regards to the ratio of quality of input versus output. I think we all do a subconscious ROI of whether typing that little extra will yield an output that's going to be that much better that it was worth the time and effort. Or much more likely I'm just lazy.
- fungiblecog 2y agoInstead of worrying about how hard it is to give away their money effectively these billionaires should be working to fix a political system created specifically to funnel money to billionaires. Without fixing the actual problem giving away money is just virtue signalling.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Terr_ 2y agoA fairly tame start (i.e. not overtly against their own money-making interests) would be to support voting-reform to one of the many many options that are superior to plurality/first-past-the-post voting. Insofar as regular-businesses like predictability, this would actually be good for them. Fewer dramatic changes from slim margins every election cycle.
- slg 2y agoIf you click through to the original blog post[1], you will see him advocating for exactly this. >Our status as the world's leading democracy is in question. We should make it easier for more eligible Americans to vote, such as making election day a national holiday, universal mail in voting, and adopting ranked choice voting so all votes carry more weight. We should also strengthen institutions keeping democracy fair for everyone, such as state and local election boards, as well as the Federal Election Commission. [1] - https://blog.codinghorror.com/stay-gold-america/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/stay-gold-america/
- bloomingkales 2y agoWithout morally condemning them: Accumulating that much wealth means you were in a frenzy. It’s good he snapped out of it. Take someone like Elon or Bezos, 10 billion is not enough, 100 isn’t, 200 isn’t. We have people that are still in a manic greed phase. It’s karma that the ghost of Hitler possessed Elon’s body. Simple greed can destroy a soul too. You have no idea the supernatural forces that will dock in your soul if you make it a comfortable nesting place.
- 2y ago
- iterance 2y agoWould that it had been a public benefit corporation or nonprofit; maybe I would still be contributing today.
- epistasis 2y agoThis uber-cynical and uncharitable smearing of the story is unhelpful at best. May I never be subject to this sort of misreading, and I hope you never are either.
- iterance 2y agomeh. you're probably right. I edited and distilled it down to the main point. I just wish it were a nonprofit at the end of the day, I guess. It would've been the right thing to do. That he chose not to makes me sad. That he was rewarded richly for it, sadder.
- arp242 2y ago> That he chose not to makes me sad I'm not sure if it was really up to him; I doubt he owned a majority of the company?
- SeanAnderson 2y agoSure was better than ExpertsExchange, though :)
- iterance 2y agoTrue enough. I guess it's probably not beyond saving, either. It does have a pretty good core idea.
- bigmattystyles 2y agoOh, it wasn't ExpertSexChange?
- anoncow 2y agoMaking Stackoverflow the Wikipedia of QnA was a missed opportunity in hindsight.
- Toutouxc 2y agoI encourage everyone to read his actual blogpost linked in the article, it’s pretty good. https://blog.codinghorror.com/stay-gold-america/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/stay-gold-america/
- ofrzeta 2y agoIt's great. I'd suggest to make it an HN submission on its own.
- salviati 2y agoWhat do you mean "suggest"? To whom? You should do it yourself if you think it's a good idea.
- unwind 2y agoIt has been submitted five times [1] already, so that's covered. :) [1]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=false&query=gold%20america&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=fa...
- suraci 2y agoInteresting In the article: > 34% of adults in America did not exercise their right to vote. Why? In the referenced news: > ... “Currently my biggest issue with U.S. politics is the response to the Palestinian genocide," Rojas said. ... Back to the article: > I think many of the Americans who did vote are telling us they no longer believe our government is effectively keeping America fair for everyone. Our status as the world's leading democracy is in question. > We should make it easier for more eligible Americans to vote, such as making election day a national holiday, universal mail in voting, and adopting ranked choice voting so all votes carry more weight. Is there any serious polls show how many Americans choose not to vote for the same reason? is it a number so small that it can be ignored?
- singularity2001 2y agoThe fish stinks from the top
- another2another 2y ago"A fish rots from the head down" is the saying. And since neither Jeff nor Joel are the heads at SO anymore I'm not sure of the relevance here. But we can all agree that they made a wonderful fish that has helped millions of developers (including myself) over the years.
- wmiel 2y agoInteresting, it seems that extremely rich americans are discovering what scandinavian countries solve through taxation and effective government. They used to have it in some form with 'new deal' and 'great society' until ~1970, but now they can't because of the very same reasons that are making them extremely rich. Plus there's some fetisishation of efficiency of the private sector vs public one and distrust in public institutions, while in some areas I don't think it's warranted, it's just that public insititutions are more transparent than the private sector imo.
- 11101010001100 2y agoYes, these sorts of posts strike me as rich people learning that being rich doesn't solve everyone else's problems. Better late than never.
- robertlagrant 2y agoAmerica has a lot of taxation. Fortunately for the Scandinavian countries it spends it on "protecting Scandinavian shipping lanes" and "medical research grants that benefit Scandinavia", rather than solely on local welfare spending. The America First lot are learning a lot from Scandinavia there, though. I'm not sure we're all going to like where that could lead.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- wslh 2y agoIt is very difficult to compare or extrapolate US with Scandinavian countries. US is socially super-heterogeneus, huge, and big population while Scandinavian countries are socially homogeneus, small size and population. And this is just the beginning.
- adamc 2y agoThis is just wrong, on many levels. If you look where tax revenues go, it's mostly defense (military industrial complex) and middle-class entitlements.
- tuananh 2y agoSelling StackOverflow for $1.8B in 2021 seems like a great deal now, doesn’t it?
- ActionHank 2y agoMakes me wonder which founders should be selling now...
- Etheryte 2y agoUnless you're already minted beyond measure, selling anything at any time for $1.8B is a great deal, you and everyone you ever cared about are set for life.
- CWIZO 2y agoOP was refering to SO being on a massive decline since then.
- munchler 2y agoHas there been any large business more decimated by the rise of LLM's than SO? Traffic in the tags I follow there dropped off a cliff pretty much the same day that ChatGPT was first released.
- sumedh 2y agochegg was destroyed
- kcrwfrd_ 2y agoYeah, good timing. Just about a year before the release of ChatGPT.
- diggan 2y agoHN comments at that time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27370026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27370026 | 2330 points | June 2, 2021 | 852 comments
- jmyeet 2y agoAnytime Bill Gates comes up, I feel the need to remind people that he has spent billions in “philanthropy” to destroy the public school system. He is a his backer of charter schools. The point is that even something noble-sounding like giving away your fortune still tends to enforce the current system and simply create more wealth inequality. In this case, charter schools are simply a massive wealth transfer from government to the private sector. Atwood left StackOverflow years ago but he’s been there for years. We can only speculate as to what he made from the sale. I’d guess 10-15%. I just hope his altruism goes to something of public benefit.
- billy99k 2y ago"Anytime Bill Gates comes up, I feel the need to remind people that he has spent billions in “philanthropy” to destroy the public school system. He is a his backer of charter schools." Many public schools are shit and I applaud his effort to come with alternatives instead of forcing everyone to get a poor education, until these problems are actually fixed.
- jmyeet 2y agoThat's by design. It's a strategy pioneered by Ronald Reagan called "starve the beast" [1]. Basically, you starve a public institution of funds and then use the inevitable failure for gutting it entirely and likely privatizing it. We're seeing this in real-time in Texas [2] in particular with Abbott's takeover of the Houston ISD and the blatant corruption and racism going on with the Keller ISD. Also, charter schools aren't cheaper either. They cherry pick students. Public schools don't have that luxury. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast [2]: https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/campaign-to-sabotage-texas-public-schools/ https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/campaign-to-sabot...
- abigail95 2y agoThe public school funding models in the USA are variable, even by county, they can't be controlled or set by the top down, and the fact that the USA spends more than the OECD average disputes everything you are saying.
- codethief 2y agoI don't see any interview in the linked article, only some quotes. Am I missing something?
- CharlieDigital 2y agoI'm fortunate enough to be in one of the top percentiles of household income but I'm not independently wealthy and I have no idea how my kids are going to make it. Like Atwood, I did not come from a well-off family; parents divorced in my early teens and father passed away in my late teens from cancer (smoking and alcoholism) and in many ways lucked into a very good career after attending a state university. My spouse's father -- a janitor in a public school -- and mother -- a crossing guard -- passed when she was in her 20's as well. There weren't any large fortunes passed down. Some friends recently purchased a house in my township and I visited to drop off my kid for a play date. I walked in and thought to myself "wow, this is a $1m house" ... except it looked just like mine...that I had purchased 9 years earlier for a fraction of the price. It boggles the mind to consider when/how my kids will be able to have their slice of the American Dream. There are clearly some fundamental things that have to be fixed in the US at a policy level, but there's seemingly no political will to fix them; everyone seems out for themselves and to enrich their own coffers. This is handicapping social mobility through the hostile policy positions towards social safety nets and foundational services (e.g. education, healthcare, childcare??). This is the sentiment that I feel Atwood is also feeling. As a high earning software engineer (IC), I'm not sure how I can survive in the US once I can no longer find companies willing to hire me either because of AI or because of age (early 40's now so I figure maybe 10 years of high earning as an IC?).
- epistasis 2y agoLook to the stagnancy of the UK to see where the US could be in a few more decades. They have the same high prices for housing, but far far lower wages. When the powerful political class (homeowners) has all their wealth tied up in their homes, they see little wrong with such broken basic arrangements, because it doesn't hurt them and they see their number going up for wealth. Canada and Australia have similarly destructive housing policies and outcomes. And since the self-immolation of Brexit, they have far worsened their financial future. Similar politics of self-destruction masked as the appearance of strength are gaining a loooot of ground in the US as well.
- chairmansteve 2y ago
- keybored 2y agoStackOverflow has a very successful gamification model. People just give them free labor voluntarily because they like to ask questions and even moderate. Perhaps also fueled by the naive libertarianism of the Californian Ideology.
- vasco 2y agoI asked and answered some easy questions as a student to learn more, then when I became a professional and got certified in Kubernetes and a lot of on the job experience I started answering kubernetes questions, getting quite a bunch of points and feeling good I was giving back something. They then decided kubernetes was not part of the main website and all questions should be asked somewhere else where you started from scratch. I never used any of their websites again.
- iambateman 2y agoThis is very cool of Atwood. Also…my guy sold SO at the absolute peak.
- francisofascii 2y agoBack in the early days of SO, I listened to many of the podcasts by Joel and Jeff. Jeff always came across as an overall good dude. He seemed to want SO to be a helpful tool for developers, and wanted to do the right thing, regardless of the monetary implications.
- gigatexal 2y agoImagine a world if more of the centi-billionaires were more like Gates trying to cure diseases and make the world a better place. I’m not advocating for the compelling of folks to be forced to give up their riches (Ill gotten or not) just imagine if people were better versions of themselves.
- ggreer 2y agoMany of them are. Scroll through Wikipedia's list of wealthiest charitable foundations.[1] And instead of starting their own foundations, a lot of wealthy people quietly give to existing ones. To pick one example: The founders of Netflix, GoPro, WhatsApp, Microsoft, and Facebook have all donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.[2] In terms of both absolute dollars and percentage of GDP, the US is the most charitable country on the planet. In 2016, Americans donated $258.5 billion to charities, or 1.44% of GDP.[3] The next most charitable country was New Zealand, which donated 0.79% of GDP. Since then, the US has become even more charitable. In 2023, Americans donated $557.16 billion to charities[4], or 2% of GDP. And this doesn't include non-charitable improvements in the human condition such as better internet access, new drugs, cheaper solar cells, cheaper batteries, and increased adoption of electric vehicles. I agree that there's plenty of room for improvement, but quality of life today is better than it ever has been. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_charitable_foundations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_charitable_... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley_Community_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley_Community_Found... 3. https://www.cafonline.org/docs/default-source/about-us-policy-and-campaigns/gross-domestic-philanthropy-feb-2016.pdf https://www.cafonline.org/docs/default-source/about-us-polic... 4. https://www.nptrust.org/philanthropic-resources/charitable-giving-statistics/ https://www.nptrust.org/philanthropic-resources/charitable-g...
- gigatexal 2y agoThank you for the research and the facts. My mind has been changed.
- quercus 2y ago[flagged]
- janalsncm 2y agoI’ve seen the goalposts on “the American Dream” move a lot. It used to be, everyone can work hard and have a good life. Buy a house, car, raise kids on a single income with free high school education. It might be a historical fluke but that’s what it was. Then it somehow became “anyone can become rich” and we celebrated the middle class origins of our billionaires. Now it seems to be “we have the richest billionaires”. People are being gaslit with metrics like GDP and stock index prices that measure the performance of corporations and the wealthiest Americans. But the reality is that American life expectancy has plateaued or going down, while the EU has blasted past us.
- eddieroger 2y agoYou can see the through-line if you read it as "if you work hard, you can improve your situation." That's the part that's changed.
- Clubber 2y agoI don't understand why they don't just pick 1000 people and give them $200K. See what happens.
- zabzonk 2y agoI like Jeff. Way back when, I was a front page posteron SO, and #1 on the C++ tag. I got really fed up with the whole SO thing and I asked Jeff to delete my account and all associated posts. This really screwed up their SQLServer system (not at all my intention, I had a lot of posts) but he plodded ahead with it anyway, despite me saying not to bother. A good guy, IMHO.
- hermitcrab 2y agoHe used his platform to help me promote a sale of programming themed t-shirts for charity.
- zabzonk 2y agoI think he had a bit of a thing about t-shirts. I got a free SO one for something like being a top-100 poster (can't remember exactly what) and I was quite proud of it. Those were quite fun days, unlike the sad mess SO is now.
- ge96 2y agoI miss the SO podcast that was fun Side note I watch this guy's livestreams sometimes who was a big developer for Firefox can't remember how I relate these two together
- bosky101 2y agoA $1.8B startup sale made him wealthy—now he plans to donate half his net worth My first reaction of the title was - that's pretty much every tax payer if you think about it :D On a more serious note - huch respect for SO, and props for Jeff for being so inspiring and now - generous.
- matsemann 2y agoI realized seeing the picture on top that I have actually never seen his face before, only his well known avatar. Despite having read his stuff and following him for a decade.
- davidcalloway 2y agoSame here! I thought when I saw it, "ah, so that's what Jeff Atwood looks like".
- chairmansteve 2y agoThe median wage for full time workers in the USA is ~60k. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_... The median house price is 357k. https://www.zillow.com/home-values/102001/united-states/ https://www.zillow.com/home-values/102001/united-states/ So, on aggregate, for a couple who both work, a house is affordable. And things aint gonna get any better..... The USA has the best economy in the world, and wealth redistribution is not on the agenda.
- micromacrofoot 2y agoMedian where — housing and income aren't evenly distributed
- regularization 2y agoOnly 35% of Americans have a full time job. Also likelihood of being married falls and rises with income. The median of those full timers would be the 17.5% of that group. It would be generous to say there are 2.5% of retired Americans making more yearly income than that median couple, but let us say that. It would still be only 1 in 5 Americans that can afford that $357 thousand dollar house. Also - around 50 is when earning power peaks. People in their 20s and 30s make less on average. So this median couple might eventually be able to afford a house, but they may be 50 when that happens. $357000 house for a couple in their 30s. Both put $35k down - or have to pay PMI on top of principal, ~7% interest (if their credit is good!), taxes, home insurance, and in many places an HOA. Also this is onerous even with two parents working full-time who may have to figure out how to manage raising 2.1 kids. Decades ago in the US, plenty of people were doing this on one income.
- fastasucan 2y agoLets just hope those medians is at the same geographical location.
- neves 2y agoHey Jeff! If you are reading this comments, I just want to say thank you! Thanks just for being a nice person. In this over individualistic world, you just shared what you know and helped other people. I'm your fan since the beginning of Coding Horror. Shared dozens of your blog posts. Stack Overflow changed how everybody programmed. I started coding in a pre-Internet time, when you got stuck, you just got stuck. I'm from Brazil and never went to USA, but I hope someday I can buy you a beer or a coffee.
- neves 2y agoI know that this post will be piled under thousands of others arguing about housing and health care in the USA.
- codinghorror 2y agoThank you! We did it together. More news will be coming soon ;)
- ThinkBeat 2y agoThe American dream is not at risk, nor is it fading out. In fact is has been entirely dead for sometime. Society is solidly rigged by long time rich and established players. It would take a revolution to revive it. The amazing part is that the constitution does cover how to go about this, with little actual combat. The only thing that is needed is for a good majority of voter to tell the duopoly of Democrats and Republicans that their services are no longer wanted then clean house by voting in a new set of players from a new set of political parties. It is totally legal, and it is even not that hard, IF you could pierce the indoctrinated dogma that Rs or Ds are the only choices or you are throwing your vote away. Just getting the citizens who do not vote (141 million??) to become active would bring it closer. You dont need a BILLION dollars to run for election. It is needed when you have to make someone utterly corrupt and removed from reality palatable to voters. But even after a revolution brought about by an election the fight would be tremendous against the entrenched / swamp / deep-state / oligarchs / 1% / enterprises / lobby organisations etc etc . But it is there for us to do.
- blks 2y agoIs that a case where a rich person sets up a fund to transfer his wealth to, but still have control over it? Like the founder of Patagonia did.
- mig39 2y agoCompared to Stack Overflow, I think the Discourse forum software is just as great (if not greater) Jeff Atwood-related tech contribution. Discourse has made it easy to create unique communities and avoid the social media algorithm hell. And it's open source and free.
- cbeach 2y agoDiscourse is single-handedly rescuing the web forum concept from oblivion. Without Jeff, Facebook and WhatsApp would be ruling the roost, with scant competition from decades-old PHP forum software. Discourse is pretty easy to self-host, and you get fully-featured software with no "freemium" limitations. The Discourse team are also very generous to new contributors. If you want to get started with open source contribution, please contribute to these guys.
- rossta 2y agoAdvice from a 40-something programmer: Learn how to spend responsibly, invest, and plan for your financial future. One way to do that is to work with a financial advisor. The sooner you start in your career, the better. Look for “advice only” fiduciaries who are not otherwise incentivized to promote certain investments. Start here https://adviceonlynetwork.com/ https://adviceonlynetwork.com/. A lot of this stuff isn’t taught in traditional schools. Sure, you could teach yourself, but I find this is an area where I prefer to have an expert in my corner.
- Tade0 2y ago> I’m not saying we’re socialists here I understand that this is obligatory to say for an American, but at some point you have to stop dancing around the topic so much and acknowledge that you kind of are socialists.
- hermitcrab 2y agoJeff Atwood is a mensch. It shines through in his writing and his work. And well done to him for giving away a significant part of his wealth to help others, rather than spending it on trinkets and baubles.
- bencarlos 2y ago[dead]
- BobAliceInATree 2y agoHe sounds like a prig to me /s