Subject line: [Flawless Financials] The Wisdom of Joel Spolsky Flawless Financials the Financial Forecasting Online Newsletter from Minotaur Financial and David Brode May, 2003 Please pass on Flawless Financials to those in your network. To leave Flawless Financials, follow instructions at bottom. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * This month: The Wisdom of Joel Spolsky * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Sometimes other people have said it first. I met Joel Spolsky when I lived in New York City. He was fresh from working at Microsoft where he wrote the spec for VBA, Excel's current macro language. I was astounded at his command of Excel and I've been on his mailing list ever since. Being a programmer, much of what Joel writes about is related to technical software development, but he also runs a software startup, bringing incredible analytic power and a detached perspective to common business issues. Best of all, his essays are fun. He writes with a light yet erudite style, and I enjoy reading his pieces. So what follows is a review of some of my favorites. For this newsletter I've chosen eight of his essays from four areas: company building, personal productivity, business strategy, and technical efficiency. I hope you enjoy these as much as I do. *Company Building* Topic: Interviewing/hiring. Great employees are essential to building a great company. URL: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000073.html Sample quote: "An important thing to remember about interviewing is this: it is much better to reject a good candidate than to accept a bad candidate. A bad candidate will cost a lot of money and effort and waste other people's time fixing all their bugs. If you have any doubts whatsoever, No Hire." Topic: Finding an Office In New York City. Few things are as weird as NYC real estate. URL: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/OfficeNewYork.html Sample quote: "[W]hen you relocate more than a couple of miles, some employees' lives would be too disrupted to make the move, so you lose a lot of employees, and all the institutional knowledge, skill, and experience that comes with those employees." Topic: Giving employees the authority to get things done URL: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/TwoStories.html Sample quote: "It comes down to the difference between trusting employees and letting them get things done, versus treating them like burger flippers that need to be monitored and controlled every minute, lest they wander off and sabotage everything." *Personal Productivity* Topic: Human Task Switches Considered Harmful. Implementing this thinking has greatly improved my personal productivity. URL: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000022.html Sample quote: "On the individual level -- have you ever noticed that you can assign one job to one person, and they'll do a great job, but if you assign two jobs to that person, they won't really get anything done?" *Business Strategy* Topic: Converting Capital Into Software That Works. (That is, using VC funding to create marketable software.) URL: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000071.html Sample quote: "Imagine that the goal of your software company is not to solve some specific problem, but to be able to convert money to code through programmers." Topic: Michael Porter's _Competitive_Strategy_ and Microsoft URL: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000016.html Sample quote: "Lemming VCs generally have a policy of automatically saying "no" to any investment that could be seen as competing with Microsoft or which might prod Microsoft to create a new product in response. This herd fear of Microsoft in the software industry is enormously beneficial to Bill ... lots of potential competition never gets off the ground because of fear that Microsoft will squash it." *Technical* Topic: The Joel Test (software development productivity factors) URL: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html Sample quote: "If you're an investor doing due diligence to judge the value of a programming team, or if your software company is considering merging with another, this test can provide a quick rule of thumb." Topic: The Law of Leaky Abstractions URL: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.html Sample quote: "You can't drive as fast when it's raining, even though your car has windshield wipers and headlights and a roof and a heater, all of which protect you from caring about the fact that it's raining (they abstract away the weather), but lo, you have to worry about hydraplaning (or aquaplaning in England) and sometimes the rain is so strong you can't see very far ahead so you go slower in the rain, because the weather can never be completely abstracted away, because of the Law of Leaky Abstractions." You can find the Joel's complete archives at http://www.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000247.html. Until next month, all the best, David Brode – Minotaur Financial Helping Companies Create Better Financial Forecasts * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * http://www.brode.net mailto:David@Brode.net 1919 14th Street, Suite 510 Boulder, CO 80302 (303) 444-3300 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE AVAILABLE Make sure to visit the Minotaur Financial website for the Newsletter Archive at http://www.brode.net/resources/index.html * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * (c) 2003 Minotaur Financial, All rights reserved. You are free to use material from the Flawless Financials newsletter in whole or in part, as long as you include complete attribution, including a live web site link. Please also notify me where the material will appear. The attribution should read: "By David Brode of Minotaur Financial. More articles on financial forecasting can be found at http://www.brode.net" * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Are you struggling to convince others to fund a deal which you think is a no-brainer? To discuss how you can take numbers off the table as a deal roadblock, call (303) 444-3300. I'm very accessible and glad to help. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * DO YOU LIKE THIS NEWSLETTER? You are welcome to share this email with colleagues who would benefit from better numbers. Your feedback is always welcome and appreciated. Write in to mailto:feedback@brode.net. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * PRIVACY POLICY: I never rent, trade, or sell my email list to anyone for any reason whatsoever. You'll never get an unsolicited email from a stranger as a result of joining this list. To SUBSCRIBE FREE to this newsletter, send an email to mailto:subscribe@brode.net. And you'll get Minotaur's Financial Forecasting White Paper in the deal. To be REMOVED from this list, send an email to mailto:remove@brode.net. (Please note that this message needs to come from the email address that originally subscribed. If you need help determining this, please email mailto:David@Brode.net.)