6 ms·

Announcing The Fog Creek Fellowship

85 points by joshyeager 12y ago

coldtea 12y ago
Fellowship? It's my personal opinion, and it might not be very popular, but I've never seen a company making such ho-hum products being so pompous as Fog Creek. (Well, StackOverflow is great. But it's not a Fog Creek business per se, and it's probably more due to Jeff). One might say 37 Signals, but 37 Signals has written New York Time best-selling books, created the most celebrated web framework of the last decade, and has a bunch of web products people love to use. Plus, I don't find them much pompous anyway, just good at self-promotion, which is a different thing.
- jlarocco 12y ago
  Yeah, we use Kiln and Fogbugz at work, and they're not the greatest. Honestly, I don't care if it's a male or female who does it, I just want them (especially Kiln) to work at an acceptable speed. Waiting 30 seconds for any given page to load gets old fast.
- austinz 12y ago
  I just took a look at their 'About Us' page. It's basically "we're a software company, like startups, but we're better than those stupid startups because we're a real business". Sort of off-putting. I'm sure Fog Creek is a wonderful place to work, but when I visit an 'About Us' page, I want to read about your business, not a point-by-point comparison regarding all the ways you're better than some strawman caricature.
gadders 12y ago
Great firm, but I still can't ever imagine wanting to (or being compelled to) eat lunch with the rest of my team every day.
- DanBC 12y ago
  Some places set aside work time, half a day per week, for "game playing". They provide a bunch of games. You're paid as part of your work to play them. This is to get people out of their cubicles and away from their computers and talking to colleagues. It helps people have a break from a particular problem (which is often all they need to solve that problem). It allows people time to chat to each other, about problems they're trying to solve or just general stuff. You know that you're not interrupting someone's work during one of these afternoons. So, if a company is going to force some social time this is probably a better way to do it.
  - josefresco 12y ago
    I worked for a small company that did this. After the first few successful weeks, the high wore off and we would lose people to stress/pressing projects and the novelty of gaming at work lessened the excitement. Crazy as it sounds, you have to manage this effectively to keep it from becoming "the norm" and losing people along the way. You need from the top down, a continuing excitement so that each week's even is special.
    - vemy 12y ago
      Yes. Making it an every week thing would make it boring pretty fast. It might be more useful if done a few weeks every year or so.
      - josefresco 12y ago
        I tend to agree. We also had weekly Friday lunches and even weekly tai chi which became almost a chore after only a few months. I believe a good manager/boss should be keenly aware of the emotional state of his or her team, and plan accordingly.
- zaksoup 12y ago
  The developers last company I worked at just naturally had lunch together almost every day. It wasn't mandatory and often some folks would go and meet friends or do their own thing for lunch, but overwhelmingly most of us ate together. Honestly, I really loved it. It really helped us to get to know each other outside of the work we were doing. It was also common for the non-developers at the company to also join us for lunch, which I thought was awesome. There was no sense of separation or exclusiveness. Every day may seem like a bit much, but if you don't want to eat lunch with your team 3, 4, or even 5 days in a row, maybe you're not working with the right people...
KRuchan 12y ago
Great initiative. Reading Joel's blog was a fun and inspiring part of growing up in the programming world. As a woman in CS, I look forward to see this expanded to allow more of us to participate, not just NYC residents.
dominotw 12y ago
Ugh.. Disgusting. What about other disparities? This is a company that is famously elitist and now they seem to have jumped on this 'gender parity' bandwagon for brownie points. Lets give more opportunities to the most mollycoddled social class ( white women) in the history of humanity.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- endersshadow 12y ago
  This attitude is very pervasive on the internet, especially with amateur critics. Just because an initiative doesn't solve an entire problem doesn't mean that it can't help or isn't worth doing. Moreover, just because one group is more disadvantaged doesn't mean that the less disadvantaged groups (which are still disadvantaged!) shouldn't matter at all. The idea that you have to solve the entirety of a gargantuan problem to be doing anything of value is stupid. Most gargantuan problems are solved with steps of progress, not sweeping changes. If we want diversity in our industry, we have to, step by step, start aligning the incentives for young people to get into software in ways that don't overwhelming appeal to white and Asian males. This is one (very) small step along the path. Now, whether or not this fellowship will actually do anything to help women get into software is a different argument completely. If what you're trying to communicate is that you think this is just PR and won't actually accomplish anything, then fine--there are plenty of arguments that you can make for that stance, but you haven't.
  - dominotw 12y ago
    I just don't think white women should be the first disadvantaged group that any company should go after. That just reeks of unoriginal 'me too' strategy. I might be totally wrong here but has FogCreek ever reached out to black and latino communities in social/economic ghettos ? Sorry that merely stating this opinion gets people all riled up and offended.
    - DoggettCK 12y ago
chollida1 12y ago
> Additionally, all fellows will have 1:1 pair programming sessions with their mentors. Fog Creek currently has a 0.4% acceptance rate for full-time developers; The fellows will be working with the best in the industry. I understand what fogcreek was tryiing to communicate here but I chuckled at this as it flies in the face of something joel said about how everyone thinks they are hiring the top 1% > http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html On a more serious note....Congratulations to FogCreek, atleast they are trying to do something here rather than just complaining about it on internet forums:)
- itsnotvalid 12y ago
  I was about to make a note of this but you found a much better example from co-founder's (sort of defunt) blog.
stevoski 12y ago
A female developer I once employed was from Singapore. She told me that in Singapore there is no noticeable gender discrepancy in IT. How accurate was she? I don't know. If she was correct, then it suggests that the enormous over-representation in IT in the US and some other countries may be due solely to cultural reasons.
- moron4hire 12y ago
  That is literally the only thing that could explain the issue. We know that women are just as capable at the job as men. There is no biological reason. That only leaves culture.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    Perhaps, but it's not necessarily "bad culture". E.g women might culturally just prefer other jobs in the US compared to Singapore. If more women are into Biology or Math and less in IT or Physics in some country, it doesn't mean the said country's culture has to change to achieve 50-50 men/women in all professions. The main issue is: what makes something a valid part of culture as opposed to a bad part of culture we need to change? Culture doesn't just grow from opression, but also from preferences, historical accidents, etc. Should we abolish Cosmopolitan and Men's Health and have everyone read the same magazine (say, Wired)?
- doppp 12y ago
  I'm Singaporean and yes, this is correct. The whole gender movement in tech is really only an American thing. The whole help-the-minority-because-they-must-be-disadvantaged/affirmative action phenomenon is something unique to American culture and it's been really interesting to observe from a foreigner's perspective.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
frogpelt 12y ago
In the past, we’ve focused on our intern pipeline by recruiting heavily from schools with high percentages of female students. We’ve hosted and sponsored hackathons and events with a focus on women in tech. We provide continuing education programs for female employees who want to learn how to code. These efforts have helped some, but it’s not enough. This topic has become VERY popular of late and is considered by most people to be such a worthy cause. Can I be a voice of dissent? If you've tried this hard to hire your fair share of female developers and you still haven't been able to do it, is it possible that trying to force it to happen may be the wrong approach? Perhaps it is the case that there just are not females who want to be developers at Fog Creek. The problem with equality, even equal opportunity, is that it is not realistic (the world doesn't naturally provide equal opportunity) and it creates as much discrimination as it purports to abolish.

85 points by joshyeager 12y ago

Fellowship? It's my personal opinion, and it might not be very popular, but I've never seen a company making such ho-hum products being so pompous as Fog Creek. (Well, StackOverflow is great. But it's not a Fog Creek business per se, and it's probably more due to Jeff). One might say 37 Signals, but 37 Signals has written New York Time best-selling books, created the most celebrated web framework of the last decade, and has a bunch of web products people love to use. Plus, I don't find them much pompous anyway, just good at self-promotion, which is a different thing.

jlarocco 12y ago
Yeah, we use Kiln and Fogbugz at work, and they're not the greatest. Honestly, I don't care if it's a male or female who does it, I just want them (especially Kiln) to work at an acceptable speed. Waiting 30 seconds for any given page to load gets old fast.
austinz 12y ago
I just took a look at their 'About Us' page. It's basically "we're a software company, like startups, but we're better than those stupid startups because we're a real business". Sort of off-putting. I'm sure Fog Creek is a wonderful place to work, but when I visit an 'About Us' page, I want to read about your business, not a point-by-point comparison regarding all the ways you're better than some strawman caricature.

gadders 12y ago

Great firm, but I still can't ever imagine wanting to (or being compelled to) eat lunch with the rest of my team every day.

DanBC 12y ago
Some places set aside work time, half a day per week, for "game playing". They provide a bunch of games. You're paid as part of your work to play them. This is to get people out of their cubicles and away from their computers and talking to colleagues. It helps people have a break from a particular problem (which is often all they need to solve that problem). It allows people time to chat to each other, about problems they're trying to solve or just general stuff. You know that you're not interrupting someone's work during one of these afternoons. So, if a company is going to force some social time this is probably a better way to do it.
- josefresco 12y ago
  I worked for a small company that did this. After the first few successful weeks, the high wore off and we would lose people to stress/pressing projects and the novelty of gaming at work lessened the excitement. Crazy as it sounds, you have to manage this effectively to keep it from becoming "the norm" and losing people along the way. You need from the top down, a continuing excitement so that each week's even is special.
  - vemy 12y ago
    Yes. Making it an every week thing would make it boring pretty fast. It might be more useful if done a few weeks every year or so.
    - josefresco 12y ago
      I tend to agree. We also had weekly Friday lunches and even weekly tai chi which became almost a chore after only a few months. I believe a good manager/boss should be keenly aware of the emotional state of his or her team, and plan accordingly.
zaksoup 12y ago
The developers last company I worked at just naturally had lunch together almost every day. It wasn't mandatory and often some folks would go and meet friends or do their own thing for lunch, but overwhelmingly most of us ate together. Honestly, I really loved it. It really helped us to get to know each other outside of the work we were doing. It was also common for the non-developers at the company to also join us for lunch, which I thought was awesome. There was no sense of separation or exclusiveness. Every day may seem like a bit much, but if you don't want to eat lunch with your team 3, 4, or even 5 days in a row, maybe you're not working with the right people...

KRuchan 12y ago

Great initiative. Reading Joel's blog was a fun and inspiring part of growing up in the programming world. As a woman in CS, I look forward to see this expanded to allow more of us to participate, not just NYC residents.

dominotw 12y ago

Ugh.. Disgusting. What about other disparities? This is a company that is famously elitist and now they seem to have jumped on this 'gender parity' bandwagon for brownie points. Lets give more opportunities to the most mollycoddled social class ( white women) in the history of humanity.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
endersshadow 12y ago
This attitude is very pervasive on the internet, especially with amateur critics. Just because an initiative doesn't solve an entire problem doesn't mean that it can't help or isn't worth doing. Moreover, just because one group is more disadvantaged doesn't mean that the less disadvantaged groups (which are still disadvantaged!) shouldn't matter at all. The idea that you have to solve the entirety of a gargantuan problem to be doing anything of value is stupid. Most gargantuan problems are solved with steps of progress, not sweeping changes. If we want diversity in our industry, we have to, step by step, start aligning the incentives for young people to get into software in ways that don't overwhelming appeal to white and Asian males. This is one (very) small step along the path. Now, whether or not this fellowship will actually do anything to help women get into software is a different argument completely. If what you're trying to communicate is that you think this is just PR and won't actually accomplish anything, then fine--there are plenty of arguments that you can make for that stance, but you haven't.
- dominotw 12y ago
  I just don't think white women should be the first disadvantaged group that any company should go after. That just reeks of unoriginal 'me too' strategy. I might be totally wrong here but has FogCreek ever reached out to black and latino communities in social/economic ghettos ? Sorry that merely stating this opinion gets people all riled up and offended.
  - DoggettCK 12y ago

chollida1 12y ago

> Additionally, all fellows will have 1:1 pair programming sessions with their mentors. Fog Creek currently has a 0.4% acceptance rate for full-time developers; The fellows will be working with the best in the industry. I understand what fogcreek was tryiing to communicate here but I chuckled at this as it flies in the face of something joel said about how everyone thinks they are hiring the top 1% > http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html On a more serious note....Congratulations to FogCreek, atleast they are trying to do something here rather than just complaining about it on internet forums:)

itsnotvalid 12y ago
I was about to make a note of this but you found a much better example from co-founder's (sort of defunt) blog.

stevoski 12y ago

A female developer I once employed was from Singapore. She told me that in Singapore there is no noticeable gender discrepancy in IT. How accurate was she? I don't know. If she was correct, then it suggests that the enormous over-representation in IT in the US and some other countries may be due solely to cultural reasons.

moron4hire 12y ago
That is literally the only thing that could explain the issue. We know that women are just as capable at the job as men. There is no biological reason. That only leaves culture.
- coldtea 12y ago
  Perhaps, but it's not necessarily "bad culture". E.g women might culturally just prefer other jobs in the US compared to Singapore. If more women are into Biology or Math and less in IT or Physics in some country, it doesn't mean the said country's culture has to change to achieve 50-50 men/women in all professions. The main issue is: what makes something a valid part of culture as opposed to a bad part of culture we need to change? Culture doesn't just grow from opression, but also from preferences, historical accidents, etc. Should we abolish Cosmopolitan and Men's Health and have everyone read the same magazine (say, Wired)?
doppp 12y ago
I'm Singaporean and yes, this is correct. The whole gender movement in tech is really only an American thing. The whole help-the-minority-because-they-must-be-disadvantaged/affirmative action phenomenon is something unique to American culture and it's been really interesting to observe from a foreigner's perspective.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

frogpelt 12y ago

In the past, we’ve focused on our intern pipeline by recruiting heavily from schools with high percentages of female students. We’ve hosted and sponsored hackathons and events with a focus on women in tech. We provide continuing education programs for female employees who want to learn how to code. These efforts have helped some, but it’s not enough. This topic has become VERY popular of late and is considered by most people to be such a worthy cause. Can I be a voice of dissent? If you've tried this hard to hire your fair share of female developers and you still haven't been able to do it, is it possible that trying to force it to happen may be the wrong approach? Perhaps it is the case that there just are not females who want to be developers at Fog Creek. The problem with equality, even equal opportunity, is that it is not realistic (the world doesn't naturally provide equal opportunity) and it creates as much discrimination as it purports to abolish.