There's More than One Way

I've followed Joel Spolsky's writings for a long time and he's a programmer and business owner that I admire a bit. I think he goes about his work the right way, and he has done a good job of building his business. Can you duplicate his methods? Perhaps, but he has some advantages as a thought leader in the software development world and there is only room for so many of those.

I saw his column in Inc magazine for November 2008 and it struck me as very interesting. He talked about a new project he had in 2008 that he tackled in a way contrary to the way that he normally does business. The project was StackOverflow and it's a neat idea. I like some things about it, not others, but his talk about how the project was evolved was different from all the rules that he's written about and implemented at his company, Fog Creek Software.

What's the lesson here?

There are a couple, and none of them mean you should succomb to anarchy and abandon your rules for running your business.

First, I think that you should hire good people. I think the primary reason for the initial success of StackOverflow was that Joel worked with a great programmer (or couple of programmers). Some of the passion was probably that this was a startup-type project, but I think a lot was that Jeff and the other programmers were good at what they did.

Second, it's OK to break some of your rules, or even all of your rules, but in a controlled environment. Don't bet the business by changing everything, but set up a skunk-works type project or R&D environment and cut some people loose. Google's 20% projects have resulted in some interesting things, like Gmail, though the majority might not have amounted to anything. That's OK, just allow for some failure. One great idea can be worth it.

Third, Be open to changes and if you see something working in an experiment, start to roll it out to more parts of the business. At the same time if things aren't working, be strong enough to stop them and move on.

Business is a lot of luck, but it also consists of hard word, taking advantage of opportunities, looking for opportunities, and reacting (and learning) to what is happening.