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Joel Spolsky: The Day My Industry Died
- tptacek 17y agoWaiwaiwaiwaiwaiwait... What about CityDesk? Wasn't that your first product? Did you really go straight from consulting to a successful product, or did you have a second false start? How'd you guys navigate that? I know the Inc. audience probably doesn't need the details, but I'd be interested in them.
- pchristensen 17y agoThe order was 1) consulting, 2) FogBugz, 3) CityDesk. FogBugz was a side project that grew into a successful product, CityDesk was the first intentional product but it was not successful.
- galactus 17y agoAre you sure? From http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000009.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000009.html (October 2001): "I've been rather quiet lately on this weblog -- mainly because we've been working so hard at Fog Creek getting ready for the beta of CityDesk, our flagship product." I have been reading Joel on software for quite a long time, I remember reading that fogbugz was just their home-grown brug tracking system, not intended to be a real "product" at the beggining. I also remember how Joel used to argue that citydesk would win because no one would like to write a blog using a web interface...
- ovi256 17y agoVictors write history.
- pchristensen 17y agoFogBugz 1.0 shipped November 2000 (http://www.foundersatwork.com/joel-spolksy.html http://www.foundersatwork.com/joel-spolksy.html) Version history (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FogBugz#Version_History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FogBugz#Version_History) Version 2.0 - March, 2001 Version 3.0 - November, 2002 Version 3.1 - February, 2003 Version 4.0 - December, 2004 Version 5.0 - March, 2006 Version 6.0 - August, 2007 Version 7.0 - July, 2009
- tptacek 17y agohttp://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000013.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000013.html clears all this up.
- keltecp11 17y agoProbably one of the more inspirational postings I've seen on HN in awhile. Thanks for sharing.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- sanj 17y agoIt is strange that City Desk never gets mentioned: http://www.fogcreek.com/CityDesk/ http://www.fogcreek.com/CityDesk/ From what I recall, that was the primary product and FogBugz was an in-house tool used to track it.
- kailoa 17y agoJoel uses his articles as marketing tools. FogBugz makes money and CityDesk is part of that industry that died.
- davi 17y agoA Maker's marketing can be more interesting than a non-Maker's reporting.
- lackbeard 17y agoHow is CityDesk part of the dead industry? I thought it was basically blogging software. That industry was just being born at that time.
- blasdel 17y agoIt was Site Publishing software written as a Windows GUI application that generates static files. At least it wasn't as mindbogglingly stupid as Dave Winer's MacOS/Win32 desktop/server programming-language/blogging-platform/outliner floor-wax/desert-topping
- bjplink 17y agoThis story is kind of more of the same and I'm sure a lot of the readers here have heard it before; if not about Joel in particular, than at least about ArsDigita and Razorfish and this era of the tech boom in general. What IS interesting though is his mention of the Startup.com documentary. If you haven't seen it, and have any kind of passing interest in the startup space or starting your own web company, I strongly suggest you check it out. It's fantastic.
- Batsu 17y agoThere's something about the stories told by Joel that always feel more down to earth than the typical sensationalist blog write up. Good read.
- diz 17y agoI thought it was a little dry, even for Joel, who isn't terribly interesting. He sure knows how to sell a/his product, though.
- SamAtt 17y agoA nice read but a badly titled article. The truth is Web Consultancy is probably 10,000 times bigger than it was in 2000 it's just decentralized now. So yeah, if you're trying to make it in the bay area as a web consultant you probably don't stand a chance. But elsewhere there's about as much opportunity as you're willing to try for. The truth is it's so big now that it (sadly) manages to sustain a fairly significant underbelly of complete incompetents along with all the qualified people.
- callmeed 17y agoI totally agree with you, but they almost feel like different industries. Back then, old media and F500 companies had to hire the consultants because there was no one in-house to do it. Today, most of those corps have entire departments devoted to web design/app development. Sure, they still outsource some gigs, but it seems like the consultancy industry now focuses on smaller companies (even down to the mom-and-pop level).
- netsp 17y agoThere is even a lively market in blog themes for individuals.
- cstross 17y agoAnecdote from 1996 in the UK, back when web consultancy was still relatively small, but growing: fma (my employer at the time) bid for one web design job against competition. When we got the job, we learned that our bid was the highest by a factor of two! And we got the job because we were "reassuringly expensive"! Folks who don't understand a new field will throw money at it because they want a serious professional to hold their hand. As the old 80s aphorism put it, "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM"; an executive at an FT100 company, dabbling in the web for the first time, would expect to spend lots of money at the steep start of the learning curve. But once they began to get a clue about how difficult (or easy) the job really was, they'd start to play hardball. And that's what the early web consultancies didn't understand: they were living on borrowed time, and basing their growth on a commodity that could only scale linearly (web developer/programmer hours).
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- koos 17y agoThese inc articles are just re-hashing stuff that you can read in "Founders at Work" or even Joel's blog. It's a bit disappointing actually.
- swolchok 17y agoVery similar to Founders at Work. Might be some lifted or paraphrased paragraphs in there.
- rewind 17y agoThat's a pretty bold statement. Care to be more specific? "Might" doesn't cut it when you're publicly questioning somebody's credibility.
- swolchok 17y agoI'm not questioning anyone's credibility. I made a statement about the article's redundancy with a work that many HNers might read or have read. It's the same guy talking about the same topic, so he could reasonably be expected to say the same or very similar things.
- jmtulloss 17y agoYou used the word "lifted". That's not an accusation of having a similar experience, that's an accusation of plagiarism.
- pyre 17y agoPlagiarizing himself? Huh? Is that even possible?
- blasdel 17y agoYes, and it's a big fucking deal in academia -- you're bloating your publications / citations / reputation without actually contributing anything. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism#Self-plagiarism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism#Self-plagiarism
- sgoraya 17y agoThe day I knew things were in trouble was at a party in San Francisco (fall 2000). A recruiter for a "hot new start up" was trying to hire my friend, a history major, as a programmer that did not have to program, guaranteeing that he would make "75k" starting. If he hit his recruitment numbers, a big bonus was in store. He may have been drunk but was sober enough to give my buddy a business card and rough directions to the office. One of my favorite stories from those days.
- silentbicycle 17y agoAs an aside - Just because someone is a history major, it doesn't mean they can't program. (Given how many things seem to be invented, then forgotten, then recreated from scratch and shown off as the new hot breakthrough every few years, the field could benefit from caring more about its history.)
- jodrellblank 17y ago"Programmer-archaeologist" (credit: Vernor Vinge)
- Locke1689 17y agoThe problem with that is exactly as Peter Norvig states: learn programming in ten years[1]. I would not argue that some great programmers have never had any formal training. But they worked hard. Really hard. For a long time. To believe that someone who has never touched a programming language before is ready for a developer job after a couple weeks, a couple months, or even as much as a year is just ridiculous. When CS grads can't even program for years after graduation, the solution is not to bring in people with even less training. [1]http://norvig.com/21-days.html http://norvig.com/21-days.html
- silentbicycle 17y agoWhile I'm just one data point, I was a history major, and I've been programming since I was six. I already knew C, C++* , Perl, Python, and small bits of other stuff, and majoring in CS to learn Java didn't seem appealing. I majored in history (with a focus on history of science and medicine) and continued teaching myself on the side. While majoring in CS correlates with previous programming experience, it isn't an absolute indicator. College is probably too late to learn the fundamental techniques and mindset of programming, anyway. * Inasmuch as anybody can really know C++...
- tlrobinson 17y agoI still have my CueCat somewhere :) It's interesting the idea is sort of making a comeback with QR codes and cell phone readers. Perhaps CueCat was just far ahead of it's time (and flawed by not being portable)
- joe_bleau 17y agoI have a couple as well, one still plugged into to my PC at work. I never understood why people thought it was such a terrible idea.
- Quarrelsome 17y agoCause of the whole chicken <-> egg problem. No-one will use CueCats unless there are lots of those barcodes online. The barcodes wont appear in significant numbers online unless everyone has a CueCat.
- old-gregg 17y agoSay all you want about Joel the programmer, but Joel the writer is awesome. Sadly, we're in exactly the same situation right now: after almost 2 years of exsiting life of self-funded young company in NYC, suddenly most of our customers did not renew, our recurring revenue is being consumed by medical insurance and rent and we're brainstorming on new business ideas... This piece gives me hope, because living off your savings in NYC is scary-scary! :) BTW if someone is working on something cool in NYC let me know [see my profile].
- omouse 17y agoThe immediate problem all those consultancies faced in 1999 and 2000 was that, like ArsDigita, they couldn't find enough great software developers to handle all the new business they were bringing in, so they had to turn away clients. I thought the trouble was that they were hiring so many people that they couldn't keep the same company culture and in the end the software devs became outsourceable?
- kscaldef 17y agoIn 1999, ArsDigita was never more than 40 people (and probably started the year with less than 20). It's possible at that time that they were turning away business. I joined in Jan 2000. By August the company was over 200 and the sales stream was collapsing. They had massively overshot the demand of the market. (Largely because the market they were serving was other dot-coms, which were now in the process of imploding.) To keep all those people busy, and in an attempt to shift from a services company to a product company, a "core engineering" team was created with the task of rewriting the ACS in Java. This further exacerbated the revenue stream problems, because the version of the software we used for client projects was now stagnant, making it harder to get or keep contracts. In the end the rewrite was never finished before the money ran out, although I think it did live on for a while as some sort of RedHat offering. (The "assets" of the company were bought by RH in the end.)
- davi 17y agoI got a job offer from aD back in the day... went for a walk w/ Greenspun + Alex to talk about it. I didn't like how everyone at the company's ego seemed to depend so entirely on programming ability (I was fresh out of college and cared about these things a lot). His response? "At least it's a meritocracy!" Not a bad answer, really. I am glad to have participated in that time (1998-2000) + place (Boston).
- jasonkester 17y agoThe late 90's was a great time to be alive, and it taught me one lesson that still guides me today: The dot-com boom was a goldrush, and if you look back to the Klondike goldrush 100 years previous you can notice a pattern. There were two groups of individuals who got rich back then: The guys that got there first, and the guys that sold shovels to everybody else. It's hard to be that First Guy, but it's easy to notice him and set up a shovel stand.
- brown9-2 17y agoThis is true of all bubbles. It's what makes a bubble a bubble. See: Housing bubble of mid 2000s.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- binarycheese 17y agoThe one who gets extremely rich is the one whole suppliers beer & liquor to all the bars (& w houses)
- smithjchris 17y agoOh my god Joel has Spoken. Must worship etc etc. Seriously - why do people genuinely wait on his every word? Atwood is the same! All they do is spurge illogical capitalist business nonsense for the sake of making a few pounds/dollars/yen etc. The blog is a marketing medium for their products and their mindset. They constantly contradict (think Joel on simplicity a while back). What about people who do this because they like it and want to help people. What about those people and their motivations. The altruistic nature surrounding these people is far more important than the self-important blog pimps. And yes CityDesk and FogBugz are crap. CityDesk is a chunk of jumk reminiscent of MCMS 2002. FogBugz is FlySpray with some tartyness and some cost added. So whoopee doo.
- smithjchris 17y agoModded to -2. Thou must not insult those who are holier than thou.
- allenbrunson 17y agoAs a matter of fact, the social mores around here prohibit insulting anybody. You can disagree, but it must be done respectfully.
- smithjchris 17y agoI noticed. My last 4 posts have been a semi-trolling attempt to see how people react. It's a good indicator on if I can be bothered to read the comments in future.
- allenbrunson 17y agoAhem. news.yc is not here for you to run experiments on. People who don't participate in good faith tend to get banned.
- mmilenko 17y ago
- thomasfl 17y agoAnd in the late nineties everybody was making content management systems. Two of my web content management systems became products.