All yuor best programmers are belong to teh Joel...
... or at least he'd like to think so. Joel is once again talking about the subject of who he hires and why and how. When reading this article I couldn't help but feel like he took a lot of his ideas from Phil Greenspun of ArsDigita fame. I really hate it when someone jumps up into the pulpit and preaches without letting you know that they didn't write the gospel. Oh, but wait, here is an article where he mentions the impact Phil's ideas and practices had on him early on; sorry for judging too soon. I very much agree with most of his points:
- If you are doing business apps, you don't need the bestest programmers but you do need some higher level folks to keep the masses in line
- If you want to do cool reasearch and be a creative scientist, chances are you'd be happier if you stopped writing stored procedures and ASP tags and went to work for a software product company.
- Companies both large and small with an honest personal voice, all other things being equal, will often enjoy success
Is FogCreek making money because of Joel's Blog or the quality of their software, or both? I don't know, but I do know I have at times been on either side of the "Polished Public Image" fence. I keep my personal stuff seperate from this site just in case my political views or other personal quirks might make someone skip me over next time they are looking for people. It also helps if your business clients do not view you as having the "Hacker Mentality"; you have to know that the business is going to (or should) drive tech choices even in the most enlightened work environment. If you are jumping up and down because you can't just write all your company's systems in PERL on LINUX and wear your mohawk to work and name your servers things like "elitephr34k.insurance.com" then people may not take you as seriously. No matter how progressive you are and how well that helps you crank out great products your clients have to take your seriously. On the flip side, whenever I read a web site talking about how great a companys products/services will "Maximize shareholder value by minimizing risk and providing the greatest return on investment in the shortest amount of time", I wonder if I'm the only one who saw that on every single company's web site and wonder why this place is different from the shop next door. With everyone making the same claims the personal voice does help you stick out a little bit. Otherwise, people would just go through the "Maximize shareholder value by minimizing risk and providing the greatest return on investment in the shortest amount of time" checklist in your marketing materials, and then buy from whatever sales guy took them to the best clubs and golf courses. Oh, wait...