#fogcreek

[peoplepersonperson-blog]

Happy 15th, Fog Creek!

Fog Creek is celebrating our 15th anniversary this week. To commemorate this insane achievement, we’re throwing a huge party (obviously) for Creekers, alumni and friends, and rolling out some themed blog content, my favorite of which is this special podcast where our founders, Joel & Michael; Trello’s VP of Product, Justin Gallagher; FogBugz developer Jack Bowman; and Stack Overflow’s VP of Engineering, David Fullerton, discuss Fog Creek’s successes and failures.

We wanted our round table to include the company’s founders, someone who’d represent our current engineering team (Jack), and both Justin & David who were Fog Creek employees before their projects - Trello & Stack Overflow, respectively - spun out of FC and became sustaining companies of their own. 

There’s a ton of great information in this audio about how to create a successful company (hint: hire great people!) and how to gain as much from your failures as you do your achievements. I'm  so insanely lucky to work with super smart, self-reflective visionaries - now you can hear a piece of what makes them great.

Check it out here: https://soundcloud.com/fogcreek/success-and-failure-at-fog-creek/s-T5cTN

Here’s to 15 more!

[peoplepersonperson-blog]

I’m hiring!

Fog Creek is building it’s sales team from the bottom up. Amazing opportunity for any sales person who wants to be one of the FIRST of a potentially huge team.

Check out the listing and please feel free to share! I want to meet ya: 

http://www.fogcreek.com/Jobs/AccountExecutive/

Account Executive

Fog Creek is changing the way we do sales, and we're looking for smart, organized and driven salesmen and saleswomen to join us as founding members of our brand new team.

Without ever having a lead generating sales team, Fog Creek has been in business selling B2B software for 15 years; we've never taken VC, and we've been profitable since day one. We plan to double that success over the next 15 years with our new sales initiative - this is your opportunity to get in on the ground floor, and build up your career along with our team.

You:

Are a Smart & Gets Things Done sales-minded individual

Have 3 - 7 years relevant sales experience

Know how to develop new business and sustain a stable sales pipeline

Are super comfortable making cold calls. In fact, the idea of making more calls than anyone else excites you.

Have excellent written and oral communication skills

Thrive on competition and love being the first one to spot an opportunity

Have an interest in technology, start ups and developer culture

Are high energy and responsible with your time

About Fog Creek Software

Fog Creek Software is a small, entrepreneurial software company founded in 2000 by Joel Spolsky & Michael Pryor in New York City.

At Fog Creek we believe the best products come from putting the smartest people in a room and letting them play. We’re bootstrapped, and we don’t have outside investors, so we’re free to constantly innovate. We pay our bills and fund new development with the revenue from our products. Profits that aren’t reinvested are distributed to employees. A few products that have come from Fog Creek are:

FogBugz - The world’s best bug tracker Kiln - a system for distributed version control with Mercurial & Git, or both at once Stack Overflow - the largest Q&A site for programmers and a top 50 website in the US. Trello - the fastest growing team productivity tool, now a venture backed company with over 8 million users

Benefits

We built Fog Creek to be an insanely great place to work. We treat employees like royalty. That means…

Gym reimbursement up to $150/month

Free monthly unlimited MetroCard

Free catered lunch daily

An office full of drinks, snacks and lots of social events

Comprehensive health insurance plan covering both co-pays and prescriptions

Your choice of tech setup

Height adjustable desks & Aeron chairs at the office

401(k) retirement plan with matching

4 weeks paid vacation

Uncapped commission

To apply, please email us at [email protected], and attach a current resume in HTML or PDF format. In the body of the email, include a cover letter explaining why you'd be a good fit for the position, and your answers to the following questions:

1. Fog Creek's target market is developers and technology companies. What are 3 ways you'd keep up to date with that market?

2. Explain a time you saw an opportunity that your sales-colleagues had yet to notice. What was the opportunity? How did you spy it? How did you capitalize upon it?

[peoplepersonperson-blog]

A Little LOL Goes A Long Way

Below is a repost from Careercloud.com. They showed Fog Creek a little love by posting our auto-response email that all candidates receive after they apply to one of our open positions. It’s a good read for a little laugh!

We've all gotten those 'Thanks We Received Your Resume' emails when applying to a job. But they are usually all the same boring text that leave you feeling as if your resume will never be seen again.

--

Not Your Average Employer Response!

When a reader tipped us off the the email below sent by Fog Creek Software we couldn't help but publish it. Its a unique, tongue-in-cheek way to make a great first impression. So here is that email, in all its glory.

For more cool recruiting stuff click here.

Hurrah! We have received your job application. At least, we think it's yours. It is possible that someone who thinks very highly of you is forwarding around your resume while pretending to be you. That's not a bad thing, is it? In any case, this is an automatic email, sent by a mindless robot, to let you know that we're absolutely thrilled that you would be interested in working for Fog Creek Software. We're very honored. Even though this is an automatic email, it's not the usual blah blah, so please read on! First of all -- what to expect? Well, it may take a week or two (or even three or four as our volume of applications have increased) before a developer gets around to reviewing your application. We're a small company, and to be honest sometimes eating lunch seems more important than reviewing resumes. But we will assure you that a real live human being, not an automated computer zapper program, will review your application carefully, and only after drinking plenty of coffee and getting lots of sleep and exercise, and under no circumstances will we reject your application because you lack ten years of experience in a technology that was invented only last year. Next -- yes, you will hear back from us. It is our policy to reply to all applications, even if we have to send you an unpleasant "go away, you smell bad" letter. We always tell people when we're rejecting them for olfactory reasons. Now, this bit is really important: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make sure that when you reply to us, you reply to this email (or at least preserve the subject line with our case ID number in it). We keep track of all this stuff in FogBugz and that ugly case ID number in the subject is the only thing that keeps us sane. Finally -- there's probably some additional information we need to consider your application: (1) Where you're located in the world (2) A phone number where you can be reached (3) If you're a college student or recent graduate, providing us with your GPA and any standardized test scores (SAT, ACT, GRE, etc.) will greatly enhance your chances. (4) How you heard about the position you're interested in (5) For applicants residing within the United States: Whether or not you have the permanent, unrestricted, legal right to work in the United States (6) For applicants residing outside of the United States: Whether or not your workday overlaps New York afternoons (1700 - 2200 GMT) (7) Expected graduation date (internship applications) If you forgot to tell us any of these things, just hit "reply" and let us know now. OK, for an automated bot, I'm rather talkative, aren't I? I'll shut up now, and I assure you that I look forward with zeal to tracking down a developer, interrupting his or her lunch, and making him or her review your application. --- The Recruiting Robot at Fog Creek Software [email protected] P.S. If for some reason you are not actually applying for a job, or if you just wrote with a question about Fog Creek, I apologize, for I am a stupid recruiting robot, built without much cognitive ability, and rest assured that an actual human will really look at your email and reply to it appropriately.

[cledefa]

Un outil simple pour gérer les projets... même à distance

Plus de 4,5 millions de personnes sont désormais loguées sur Trello. Plus d'1 million d'utilisateurs actifs par mois !

Trello est valable pour de nombreuses utilisations. Gérer des projets ou nos tâches internes comme chez Clé de Fa, coordonner des données ouvertes comme certaines villes, suivre des candidats lors de recrutement ou encore rénover sa maison...

Trello n'était), à ses débuts, qu'un produit de la société Fog Creek. Aujourd'hui, Trello évolue à Trello Inc., une société indépendante. Cette transition permet de recueillir des fonds auprès d'investisseurs et d'accélérer leur croissance.

Clé de Fa forme à cet outil. Demander à [email protected] les prochaines sessions !

[kaler]

It should come as no surprise that we use Trello to make Trello. We have a board called “Trello Internal” which includes all the stuff related to the API and website that we’re currently working on. Our lists look something like this: “Doing”, “Waiting for test/review”, “Ready for merge”, then a bunch of lists for recent releases, “Incoming Bugs”.

The rest of the article digs into their API, how they schedule tasks, and how they design features.  It's quite good.

[anglee-blog]