There's a particular XKCD comic that used to constantly reflect my experience while searching for the solutions to technical problems in one particular area of

There's a particular XKCD comic that used to constantly reflect my experience while searching for the solutions to technical problems in one particular area of expertise (http://xkcd.com/979/ http://xkcd.com/979/). Seeing EE answers gumming up the search results (especially if you didn't know the trick) was at least an order of magnitude more frustrating. I'm glad EE treated its employees well, but the way a company treats its employees can be completely unrelated to the way a company treats its competitors, or its potential or actual employee base. And it seems pretty clear that EE treated its potential customer base so poorly that Stack Overflow was able to tap into latent frustration and anger and quickly corner the market on community technical Q&A. The hatred for EE grew up organically, and I doubt Joel's campaign did much more than giving direction and a voice to pre-existing resentment.