Joel on Software

2003/01/09

I've spent most of the week pounding the pavement, looking at new office space for Fog Creek. We're focusing on a neighborhood in New York called the Garment District, which used to be the home to thousands of small clothing factories, many of whom are still there, but they're slowly getting pushed out of business and the old factories are being gentrified with architects, designers, modeling agencies, photographers, and of course software companies taking over, putting in nice new windows and polished wood floors, replacing the rows of sewing machines with laptop computers, and paying double the rent. It's great to be a creditworthy tenant looking for office space; there's so much empty office space in New York that landlords are falling over themselves to do good deals.

Clay Shirky: “Two years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, FedEx pulled the plug on ZapMail, allowing it to vanish without a trace. And the story of ZapMail's collapse holds a crucial lesson for the telephone companies today.” Excellent. Clay has hit the nail right on the head; everybody's looking for the huge business opportunities around 802.11 and VoIP and they probably aren't really there.

College students: my company has paid summer internships in New York City, including free housing, free lunch, and the chance to develop software people will really use, with great mentors on interesting projects. Don't miss this chance of a lifetime. We only have a few spaces and they always go fast, so apply today.

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You’re reading Joel on Software, stuffed with years and years of completely raving mad articles about software development, managing software teams, designing user interfaces, running successful software companies, and rubber duckies.

About the author.

I’m Joel Spolsky, founder of Fog Creek Software, a New York company that proves that you can treat programmers well and still be highly profitable. Programmers get private offices, free lunch, and work 40 hours a week. Customers only pay for software if they’re delighted. We make FogBugz, an enlightened project management system designed to help great teams develop brilliant software, and Fog Creek Copilot, which makes remote desktop access easy.