31–40 of 232 posts
Looks horrible, still don't know what it's for.
the video targets, manager, who probably dont care what this is ... and maybe developers who are very familiar with this domain
i guess, either, it is targeted as a niche app for specific people or .. they messed up badly
When you join a company a few weeks before it releases a new software product, have the humility to admit that you had precious little to do with it. Don't write about yourself, at all! Write about the product, what it can do for me, and the amazing team who built it.
I'm going to go way out of line and do a bit of a hatchet job on your writing, because this is honestly how it came across to me when I read your post. Here are your exact words, with a few ellipses thrown in to emphasize the point.
> I'M AT FOG CREEK…I’m the new CEO of Fog Creek Software!
> If you know me…It’s no secret that I’ve become increasingly critical of the conventional tech world’s lack of focus on ethics, humanity, and inclusion.
> [Fog Creek's] brilliant and thoughtful founders Michael and Joel were willing to trust me to be the CEO of the company that have so carefully shepherded all these years. [sic]
> …after challenges like shutting down ThinkUp earlier this year, I started reckoning a bit with how to be most effective in pushing the tech industry to be a little more thoughtful. This personal inflection point became clearer as the team at Activate released this year's Activate Outlook — seven years after we'd set out to create the leading strategy consulting company, I realized we'd not just succeeded, but done so to the degree where the team could now run effectively without me being involved day-to-day. Between stepping back to an advisory role at Activate and sharpening the focus of my work for the organizations whose boards I serve on, I was able to bring some clarity to the work in front of me.
> I realized that I wanted to fully engage myself with a single, all-encompassing role that would use all my skills, and that Fog Creek's legacy of leading the industry made it the perfect place to try and push things forward again. So now, I have a simple answer if someone at a cocktail party asks what I do.
> What do I do? I'm the CEO of a small software company in downtown Manhattan that’s as influential in the tech world as companies 1000 times our size.
> For the past several years, I found that the overhead of provisioning servers, or trying to maintain a dev environment, or wrangling with version control took all the fun out of coding for me, to the point where I don’t just hack on things for fun anymore. I can’t imagine how much more intimidating it would be if I hadn’t spent many years coding.
Tell me, does any of this have anything to do with… What was the product called again? What does it do for me? And how can you helpfully communicate that value?
Now I realize this post was on your personal blog. So a bit of self-indulgence is understandable. But still… Is all of this about you, or about a great company and its new product that you were lucky enough to be asked to be involved with?
I should admit that I'm probably just jealous. How in the world do you get a publication like TechCrunch to give you personal credit for this product when you had so little to do with it? Their headline from 12/6: "Anil Dash, new CEO of Fog Creek, launches platform to remove barriers to app development"
How many times can this blowhard say "I'm the CEO" in one blog post? He & his CEOness are not the story here.
Anil Dash is one of the most notorious social justice warriors in the tech world. It's unfortunate Fog Creek made him its CEO - I don't predict the company will flourish under him, since he seems more concerned with promoting an airy political agenda than with making good products. He's non-technical (I don't think he's ever written a line of code in his life, and knows next to nothing about the actual craft of build…
I used to really respect Joel Spolsky. I've read all of his stuff and really liked it.
But I can't help thinking that Fog Creek just isn't that important of a company. As a decidedly "technical" person, I don't know a single person that uses any of their products. And I really do mean, zero. I know plenty of people that use git, IntelliJ, github, Stack Overflow, Twilio, AWS, Firebase, Google Cloud Platform, MongoDB, Pivotal Tracker, hell even JIRA, but nothing from Fog Creek. Ten years in the trenches, writing software, and never have I even once used, or even _met_ anyone that uses their stuff.
Furthermore, the world has kinda moved on. We aren't shipping desktop software anymore and also, it's not enough to release to the web, either. These days people expect mobile apps, complex responsive design, and 1000 other things you didn't need to do 10 years ago. Software is increasingly becoming a field dominated by teams of specialists in all areas, and I just don't get the sense that Gomix was built with this new reality in mind.
Second. I first heard of this guy (Anil) only about a month ago, when I came upon Joel's blog. I heard that he became CEO and yeah, I agree with a lot of what you've written -- a windbag with a political agenda who's great at self-promotion. Honest question though, does this make for a great CEO? We can certainly look to really cerebral guys like Bill Gates as a model for a tech CEO, but consider that Jeff Bezos apparently wasn't a developer. Also consider that more problems in tech are basically "solved" at this point, and as the industry matures, things like promotion and marketing are getting increasingly important. Satya Nadella (Microsoft) himself acknowledged this; I just read last week that Microsoft had some kind of senior meeting, and Satya was on a rant about how MS's culture is too engineering-driven for today's world. I don't have the temperament to be as much of a self-promoter as a guy like Anil, but I know plenty of companies that seem to be run by these guys, like Buffer, Groove, or anyone else specializing in "content marketing", and it seems to be working for them.
So before you dismiss this guy, think of what it takes to make a good tech CEO. I fucking loathe self-promoters, really I do, but I'm becoming increasingly convinced that's what it takes to make it in the sort of CRUDdy "tech" that isn't too research-heavy, which is most of software, these days (not autonomous vehicles, genetics, deep learning, thorium reactors, etc)
I really like the spirit of this, and I hate to be the gnu in the room, but the only thing holding this back is that it's centralised. Again, I totally get how that might sound stupid. "How can we have nice things if we always need to solve the decentralisation problem first?", is one of a billion reasonable responses to my comment, but I'm just a guy who has gotten his heart broken before by the likes of Geocities,…
I really like the spirit of this, and I hate to be the gnu in the room, but the only thing holding this back is that it's centralised. Again, I totally get how that might sound stupid. "How can we have nice things if we always need to solve the decentralisation problem first?", is one of a billion reasonable responses to my comment, but I'm just a guy who has gotten his heart broken before by the likes of Geocities,…
I think its a great idea by still cant get past the new latest name for it. HyperDev was geared toward the technical crowd, But GoMix??? It speaks to no one...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anil Dash is one of the most notorious social justice warriors in the tech world. It's unfortunate Fog Creek made him its CEO - I don't predict the company will flourish under him, since he seems more concerned with promoting an airy political agenda than with making good products. He's non-technical (I don't think he's ever written a line of code in his life, and knows next to nothing about the actual craft of build…
So, two things. I used to really respect Joel Spolsky. I've read all of his stuff and really liked it. But I can't help thinking that Fog Creek just isn't that important of a company. As a decidedly "technical" person, I don't know a single person that uses any of their products. And I really do mean, zero . I know plenty of people that use git, IntelliJ, github, Stack Overflow, Twilio, AWS, Firebase, Google Cloud Pl…
Anil, I don't know you, and you certainly don't know me. But I have a word of advice. When you join a company a few weeks before it releases a new software product, have the humility to admit that you had precious little to do with it. Don't write about yourself, at all! Write about the product, what it can do for me, and the amazing team who built it. I'm going to go way out of line and do a bit of a hatchet job on…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, two things. I used to really respect Joel Spolsky. I've read all of his stuff and really liked it. But I can't help thinking that Fog Creek just isn't that important of a company. As a decidedly "technical" person, I don't know a single person that uses any of their products. And I really do mean, zero . I know plenty of people that use git, IntelliJ, github, Stack Overflow, Twilio, AWS, Firebase, Google Cloud Pl…
You do realize that Stack Overflow and Twilio are Fog Creek products yea?
Anil, I don't know you, and you certainly don't know me. But I have a word of advice. When you join a company a few weeks before it releases a new software product, have the humility to admit that you had precious little to do with it. Don't write about yourself, at all! Write about the product, what it can do for me, and the amazing team who built it. I'm going to go way out of line and do a bit of a hatchet job on…
I don't know you, and you certainly don't know me, but I suspect Dash knows his target audience for this particular post pretty well. The product-focused posts are somewhere else, not his personal blog, and chances are they're gathering dust, speaking relatively and metaphorically.