Fog Creek Blog

Sorry, Prashant, you lost track of the plot of the story somewhere along the way.

(creator of FogBugz, here)

FogBugz won and Jira won, but they were playing different games.

I wanted to make software development better for programmers. When I started creating Fog Creek Software in 2000 programmers were treated like typists. They were not paid very well (my starting salary was $33,000). There was almost no thought around how software should be developed. Companies that scored high on the Joel Test[1] were almost unheard of.

The LAST thing I wanted to do was make another tool of oppression for management to impose gantt charts and deadlines and strict rules about who has to sign off on things.

I set out to make software development better for programmers by blogging[2] and by building a company that would be a great place to work[3].

In 2000 the only way to do that was to bootstrap it. With a team of four people we couldn't build anything complicated. We started with bug tracking software because at least we could touch one aspect of programmers' lives with our philosophy.

FogBugz was designed for smaller collegial teams of people that wanted to work together effectively and needed a clean and simple way to track issues using the smart workflows that small, professional teams like to use.

It was remarkably successful and profitable from 2000 to today. We've never stopped working on improving it, but we also have never abandoned the market of small collegial teams of…

SEEKING FREELANCER, ISTANBUL, REMOTE OK.
Hi,

We are Gerger (www.gerger.co), the creators of Formspider (www.theformspider.com), the Web 2.0 framework for Oracle PL/SQL developers. We are preparing a new version of our product and we would like to renew our product web site www.theformspider.com along with it.

Our product Formspider is for a specific group of developers namely, the Oracle PL/SQL developers. It's mainly used in mid to large size companies to build Budgeting, Accounting, Order Management, HR, ERP etc.. software.

Current Web site was done by us a year and a half ago. It's nice but building web sites is not our focus. The site is also showing its age.

Formspider impresses our users with its simple and elegant design. It is perceived as an unusually high quality, very innovative product built with care and attention to detail. We would like our new web site reflect these facts.

We want a simple yet beautiful design in our web site. Readable large fonts, excellent copyright, gorgeous pictures, icons and screen shots should provide a enjoyable experience to the visitor. We don't want run of the mill, stock photos, icons and text anywhere on the site. Each page needs to be individually crafted and be of excellent quality.

The entire goal of the web site is to reflect the high quality of our product.

Our favorite product, company web sites are www.apple.com (you should have seen this coming at this point :-) ) and http://www.fogcreek.com/fogbugz/

We've been…

> So you're actually arguing for companies to hire employees who will likely produce negative output (their code will be so bad as to take not only their own time, but other programmers' time to fix) just to ...what, not hurt the feelings of the bottom 80 percent of developers?

I did nothing of the sort. In fact, I am arguing that your hypothetical negative output employee is much rarer that some people think.

> Your analogy is poor: Hiring a bad programmer is an extremely high probability event, even in a broad pool of candidates as would apply to a high-end company like Amazon, not a low priority event.

I have seen no data to support this. My personal experience does not support this.

> There have been studies dating back to the 70's that show a 10-20x skill difference between average and great developers. If you're going to pay roughly the same for a 1x as a 10x developer, wouldn't you want the 10x? So they tune their hiring process to skew that number as high as possible.

Citation needed. I have certainly seen this bandied about the Internet quite a bit, but the best the citations only claim a 10x difference between great and terrible developers, and even those studies are likely flawed.[1]

> I did know at least one person who applied to Amazon and who was rejected -- and rightfully so, in my opinion. His skills were sub-par, and the interview process detected that. Most others that I worked with while I was at Amazon were also above average; people I've…

> Even in Phabricator, though, when you have multiple reviewers only one has to accept for it to be accepted. Oftentimes it is _more_ confusing to have multiple reviewers because you don't know who should have the final say.

Yeah, this depends on workflow. We generally send every piece of code to two reviewers but just wait for either one to accept, unless there's a particular reason that both should look at the review. This works well for us but I can see how it wouldn't work as well for people with other processes.

> The commenting system is a matter of preference, but having forgotten to "Clowncopterize" (a great demonstration of the professionalism of those who hack on Phabricator) comments, and given that they thread in email, it hasn't been a problem for me. Though I understand where you're coming from.

Yes, Phabricator's isn't perfect but it's the best of the ones I've tried, especially if everyone using it is familiar with the tool and uses it frequently (that is, you might forget to Clowncopterize once or twice ever, but then you'll know for the future). I used to use Kiln (http://www.fogcreek.com/kiln/) which had a different approach for emails – they essentially debounce emails to have a half-hour delay and coalesce any emails within that timeframe together, so you get fewer emails but don't need to submit the collection of comments explicitly. Having tried all three choices, I'd say that they're all painful in different ways and I personally prefer…

Thomas wrote substantially what I wanted to write.

Edit to expand:

So some of the features of WorkMob were easy for you to write, but are not in the best interests of many people who could potentially work for you. If your design showcases to clients that "Number of OSS projects" or "Number of Github followers" are how you rate developers, your clients might actually develop the impression that those two numbers a) matter and b) matter quite a lot.

Instead of being inspired by freelance portfolios, which devote 95% of the emphasis to What and 5% of the emphasis to Why, maybe you should look at case studies by consulting firms who are good at what they do.

One I wrote which drove substantial additional business for me: http://blog.fogcreek.com/our-marketing-is-up-fog-creek-and-what-we-did-about-it/

One which I was not involved with, but which I routinely recommend for people when they ask "How do I write a case study?": http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/seomoz-case-study/

You'll note that neither of these is particularly intensive from a features-required-to-support-the-case-study perspective. All you need is a blogging engine that lets you add images. For bonus points, email capture.

Fog Creek Software - New York, NY (no telecommute) - http://fogcreek.com/

Current Openings:

* Software Developer
* Marketing Analytics Focus
* Sales: FogBugz and Kiln
* Intern in software development (Summer 2011)

Fog Creek Software is a small, friendly software company in New York City that was designed from the ground up to be a great place to work. We work on interesting projects with smart people, treat everyone like royalty, and eat lunch together every day.

Software developers at Fog Creek get spacious, sunlit private offices, unlimited computer gear, electronic height-adjustable desks, Aeron chairs, and a plush office featuring marble showers, a library, a salt water aquarium, professional espresso machine, daily gourmet catered lunch, unlimited snacks, video games and movie nights, and the opportunity to work with a great team.

We've been profitable since inception, and are growing rapidly, developing software products that help software developers make great software. We offer world-class compensation and benefits and a terrific work environment. We're always on the lookout for great people to join the team.

http://fogcreek.com/Careers.html