Hey Jeff! If you are reading this comments, I just want to say thank you! Thanks just for being a nice person. In this over individualistic world, you just shared what you know and helped other people.
I'm your fan since the beginning of Coding Horror. Shared dozens of your blog posts. Stack Overflow changed how everybody programmed. I started coding in a pre-Internet time, when you got stuck, you just got stuck. I'm from Brazil and never went to USA, but I hope someday I can buy you a beer or a coffee.
Interesting, it seems that extremely rich americans are discovering what scandinavian countries solve through taxation and effective government.
They used to have it in some form with 'new deal' and 'great society' until ~1970, but now they can't because of the very same reasons that are making them extremely rich.
Plus there's some fetisishation of efficiency of the private sector vs public one and distrust in public institutions, while in some areas I don't think it's warranted, it's just that public insititutions are more transparent than the private sector imo.
I encourage everyone to read his actual blogpost linked in the article, it’s pretty good.
Selling StackOverflow for $1.8B in 2021 seems like a great deal now, doesn’t it?
Get thousands of workers, to work thousandths of hours, to answer technical questions for free...In exchange for "Reputation". Sell for 1.8 Billion...The American Dream...
Back in the early days of SO, I listened to many of the podcasts by Joel and Jeff. Jeff always came across as an overall good dude. He seemed to want SO to be a helpful tool for developers, and wanted to do the right thing, regardless of the monetary implications.
The median wage for full time workers in the USA is ~60k.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...
The median house price is 357k.
https://www.zillow.com/home-values/102001/united-states/
So, on aggregate, for a couple who both work, a house is affordable.
And things aint gonna get any better..... The USA has the best economy in the world, and wealth redistribution is not on the agenda.
I enjoyed the site and found it useful to begin with however it became a playground for people who felt they were know it alls to get recognition. A little ego boost if you will and that ruined the point for me, which was to get a varied response on technical questions.
I like Jeff. Way back when, I was a front page posteron SO, and #1 on the C++ tag. I got really fed up with the whole SO thing and I asked Jeff to delete my account and all associated posts. This really screwed up their SQLServer system (not at all my intention, I had a lot of posts) but he plodded ahead with it anyway, despite me saying not to bother. A good guy, IMHO.
A $1.8B startup sale made him wealthy—now he plans to donate half his net worth
On a more serious note - huch respect for SO, and props for Jeff for being so inspiring and now - generous.
Would that it had been a public benefit corporation or nonprofit; maybe I would still be contributing today.
Compared to Stack Overflow, I think the Discourse forum software is just as great (if not greater) Jeff Atwood-related tech contribution.
Discourse has made it easy to create unique communities and avoid the social media algorithm hell. And it's open source and free.
Advice from a 40-something programmer: Learn how to spend responsibly, invest, and plan for your financial future. One way to do that is to work with a financial advisor. The sooner you start in your career, the better. Look for “advice only” fiduciaries who are not otherwise incentivized to promote certain investments. Start here https://adviceonlynetwork.com/.
A lot of this stuff isn’t taught in traditional schools. Sure, you could teach yourself, but I find this is an area where I prefer to have an expert in my corner.
Anytime Bill Gates comes up, I feel the need to remind people that he has spent billions in “philanthropy” to destroy the public school system. He is a his backer of charter schools.
The point is that even something noble-sounding like giving away your fortune still tends to enforce the current system and simply create more wealth inequality. In this case, charter schools are simply a massive wealth transfer from government to the private sector.
Atwood left StackOverflow years ago but he’s been there for years. We can only speculate as to what he made from the sale. I’d guess 10-15%.
I just hope his altruism goes to something of public benefit.
Jeff Atwood is a mensch. It shines through in his writing and his work. And well done to him for giving away a significant part of his wealth to help others, rather than spending it on trinkets and baubles.
This is very cool of Atwood. Also…my guy sold SO at the absolute peak.
I realized seeing the picture on top that I have actually never seen his face before, only his well known avatar. Despite having read his stuff and following him for a decade.
I miss the SO podcast that was fun
Side note I watch this guy's livestreams sometimes who was a big developer for Firefox can't remember how I relate these two together
Does anyone still use Stack Overflow post-2022?
I don't understand why they don't just pick 1000 people and give them $200K. See what happens.
Is that a case where a rich person sets up a fund to transfer his wealth to, but still have control over it? Like the founder of Patagonia did.
I asked and answered some easy questions as a student to learn more, then when I became a professional and got certified in Kubernetes and a lot of on the job experience I started answering kubernetes questions, getting quite a bunch of points and feeling good I was giving back something. They then decided kubernetes was not part of the main website and all questions should be asked somewhere else where you started from scratch. I never used any of their websites again.
I don't see any interview in the linked article, only some quotes. Am I missing something?
The American dream is not at risk, nor is it fading out. In fact is has been entirely dead for sometime. Society is solidly rigged by long time rich and established players.
It would take a revolution to revive it.
The amazing part is that the constitution does cover how to go about this, with little actual combat.
The only thing that is needed is for a good majority of voter to tell the duopoly of Democrats and Republicans that their services are no longer wanted then clean house by voting in a new set of players from a new set of political parties.
It is totally legal, and it is even not that hard, IF you could pierce the indoctrinated dogma that Rs or Ds are the only choices or you are throwing your vote away.
Just getting the citizens who do not vote (141 million??) to become active would bring it closer.
You dont need a BILLION dollars to run for election. It is needed when you have to make someone utterly corrupt and removed from reality palatable to voters.
But even after a revolution brought about by an election the fight would be tremendous against the entrenched / swamp / deep-state / oligarchs / 1% / enterprises / lobby organisations etc etc .
But it is there for us to do.
StackOverflow has a very successful gamification model. People just give them free labor voluntarily because they like to ask questions and even moderate. Perhaps also fueled by the naive libertarianism of the Californian Ideology.
Instead of worrying about how hard it is to give away their money effectively these billionaires should be working to fix a political system created specifically to funnel money to billionaires. Without fixing the actual problem giving away money is just virtue signalling.
I’ve seen the goalposts on “the American Dream” move a lot. It used to be, everyone can work hard and have a good life. Buy a house, car, raise kids on a single income with free high school education. It might be a historical fluke but that’s what it was.
Then it somehow became “anyone can become rich” and we celebrated the middle class origins of our billionaires.
Now it seems to be “we have the richest billionaires”.
People are being gaslit with metrics like GDP and stock index prices that measure the performance of corporations and the wealthiest Americans. But the reality is that American life expectancy has plateaued or going down, while the EU has blasted past us.
> I’m not saying we’re socialists here
I understand that this is obligatory to say for an American, but at some point you have to stop dancing around the topic so much and acknowledge that you kind of are socialists.
Imagine a world if more of the centi-billionaires were more like Gates trying to cure diseases and make the world a better place.
I’m not advocating for the compelling of folks to be forced to give up their riches (Ill gotten or not) just imagine if people were better versions of themselves.
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He sounds like a prig to me /s
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The fish stinks from the top
I'm fortunate enough to be in one of the top percentiles of household income but I'm not independently wealthy and I have no idea how my kids are going to make it.
Like Atwood, I did not come from a well-off family; parents divorced in my early teens and father passed away in my late teens from cancer (smoking and alcoholism) and in many ways lucked into a very good career after attending a state university. My spouse's father -- a janitor in a public school -- and mother -- a crossing guard -- passed when she was in her 20's as well. There weren't any large fortunes passed down.
Some friends recently purchased a house in my township and I visited to drop off my kid for a play date. I walked in and thought to myself "wow, this is a $1m house" ... except it looked just like mine...that I had purchased 9 years earlier for a fraction of the price. It boggles the mind to consider when/how my kids will be able to have their slice of the American Dream.
There are clearly some fundamental things that have to be fixed in the US at a policy level, but there's seemingly no political will to fix them; everyone seems out for themselves and to enrich their own coffers. This is handicapping social mobility through the hostile policy positions towards social safety nets and foundational services (e.g. education, healthcare, childcare??). This is the sentiment that I feel Atwood is also feeling.
As a high earning software engineer (IC), I'm not sure how I can survive in the US once I can no longer find companies willing to hire me either because of AI or because of age (early 40's now so I figure maybe 10 years of high earning as an IC?).