What Do Programmers Care About - Joel Spolsky, Stack Overflow 

We programmers understand each other perfectly but management is the problem. It's just that we don't operate on the same level. Great talk, this guy speaks for all of us. :)

Awesome speak where many problems developers have in a company. What I liked about it is that, for the most problems an solution was given. Nice speech Joel Spolsky.

I'm also not a fan of all the generalizations Joel uses

I just found the Joel test other days ago. Now I know where this test name came from. btw ... Good Talk!

Regarding the 'old' perception of programmer personality types versus new: The act of acquiring programming/comp-sci knowledge pre-stackOverflow was a financially competitive edge, attributed to college accredidation. If people's disagreements in personality types all stem from experiences -after- Stack Overflow was created, the harmony of sharing & enjoying everyone else wasn't necessarily present because many were still busy giving an arm and a leg to gain access to this knowledge: via schools or very specific, hidden people and the exchange simply wasn't as common. But now it is. This was a general shift in attitude about prizing and pricing knowledge versus sharing it so life is easier. The establishing of StackExchange, and StackOverflow, may serve to mean as a shift in culture and paradigm in general, with that accessibility leading most to having more opportunity to focus on soft-skills/personality and enjoying sharing solutions, rather than dedicating all time to searching for answers that aren't widely documented, and are expensive to acquire. It also helped establish best practices of correcting the dialogue of how to refine solutions in ways people wouldn't be able to observe unless they were interns or somehow got their foot in the door of a company, physically. i.e. prior to stackoverflow, dropping onto IRC to exchange NDA/project-agnostic problem sets and solutions was its own artform that not everyone knew existed; now you can literally spam a handheld device and get all of the information without needing anyone there present to answer it. Or code on discord, streaming, chatting in real-time, etc. Completely different nowadays but thankful for it all, including the best practices established bolstered by Stack Exchange.

That was great.... and for me some parts were pretty funny. I am a recruiter... but I did actually start as a software engineer. I use email SO much more than the phone. I really do understand the engineers and I work hard to find companies where they will like to work! I will be watching more of Joel's stuff!

Yeah, there is definitely a natural language barrier between logic and emotion. I hate when ppl call me unexpected in general much more recruiters. I literally get startled when the phone rings.

Who is the intended audience for this talk? Was that a room full of HR / recruiters?

Joel emphasizes a quiet workspace. But Facebook and Google have both very 'open' workspaces.

I'm a programmer and I like recruiters. Not on a professional level but more of a personal.

What? Unless they live in Italy? Could you guys explain this to me, because I am a programmer, right now I live in Italy, but luckily I have double citizenship and I am willing to emigrate!

It's weird how Joel describes programmers as these anti-social introverted creatures, since it's the opposite of how many programmers today are perceived . I get that it's a stereotype that dates back to the school-days where the quiet kids often enjoyed computers and programming, but many software developers today are incredibly social and active people. This is also why it's amazing to me that they cancelled the steak dinner, since getting the chance to know other developers at the company is important if you're going to be collaborating with them. However, I still do believe that most of his advice applies (e.g. quiet offices, great equipment).

Which awesome movie is he talking about at 20:24?

I dont quite get what he said at 10:40 about Italy, it is "unless they live in Italy, or they must live in Italy or something like that?"

I hate all your generalizations. - I do get in "the zone" - I love the phone especially when it allows me to discuss requirements - I have been involved in some recruitment (or at least candidate selection panels) and really enjoyed it - I'm fine with fuzzy requirements as long as you don't expect a solid code solution

Joel and Jeff created stackoverflow...But he didn't talked about Entrepreneurship