Quote

Listen to your customers, not your competitors.

Joel Spolsky

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Joel Spolsky
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: January 1
Businessperson
Chief Executive Officer
Computer Scientist
Programmer
Software Engineer
Albuquerque
New Mexico
Avram Joel Spolsky
Motivational
Listen
Business
Competitors
Customers

More quotes by Joel Spolsky

Image
Remember, just because Microsoft can do something, doesn't mean you can. Microsoft makes their own gravity. Normal rules don't apply to them.
Joel Spolsky
Image
So if you want to get things done, you positively have to understand at any given point in time what is the most important thing to get done right now and if you're not doing it, you're not making progress at the fastest possible rate.
Joel Spolsky
Image
Not having a schedule is OK if it's your PhD and you plan to spend 14 years on the thing, or if you're a programmer working on the next Duke Nukem and we'll ship when we're good and ready. But for almost any kind of real business, you just have to know how long things are going to take, because developing a product costs money.
Joel Spolsky
Image
Last week I was listening to a podcast on Hanselminutes, with Robert Martin talking about the SOLID principles... They all sounded to me like extremely bureaucratic programming that came from the mind of somebody that has not written a lot of code, frankly.
Joel Spolsky
Image
We just have to come in every morning and somehow, launch the editor.
Joel Spolsky
Image
Good software, like wine, takes time.
Joel Spolsky
Image
If something seems possible, that's probably because someone is already doing it. When something seems that it can't possibly work, nobody tries it. Real innovation happens when someone tries anyway, overlooking an obvious flaw, and finds a way to make an idea work.
Joel Spolsky
Image
I've been using Vista on my home laptop since it shipped, and can say with some conviction that nobody should be using it as their primary operating system - it simply has no redeeming merits to overcome the compatibility headaches it causes.
Joel Spolsky
Image
Software development takes immense intellectual effort. Even the best programmers can rarely sustain that level of effort for more than a few hours a day. Beyond that, they need to rest their brains a bit, which is why they always seem to be surfing the Internet or playing games when you barge in on them.
Joel Spolsky
Image
People ridiculously overvalue aesthetics and beauty when evaluating products. It's one of the reasons iPods, and, for that matter, Keanu Reeves, are so successful.
Joel Spolsky
Image
If your goals is to produce something of permanent value, you start to think differently about you want on the site.
Joel Spolsky
Image
Talk to your customers. Find out what they need. Don't pay any attention to the competition. They're not relevant to you.
Joel Spolsky
Image
Life is a bit hard sometimes, and sometimes you have to step up and fight fights that you never signed up for.
Joel Spolsky
Image
There's a subtle reason that programmers always want to throw away the code and start over. The reason is that they think the old code is a mess. [...] The reason that they think the old code is a mess is because of a cardinal, fundamental law of programming: It's harder to read code than to write it.
Joel Spolsky
Image
Design adds value faster than it adds cost.
Joel Spolsky
Image
Entrepreneurship boils down to the simple fact that a team of really smart people who can get things done are going to get smart, useful things done.
Joel Spolsky
Image
Writing code is not production, it's not always craftsmanship though it can be, it's design.
Joel Spolsky
Image
The secret of Big Macs is that they're not very good, but every one is not very good in exactly the same way.
Joel Spolsky
Image
Full service brokers, in this day and age of low cost mutual funds and discount brokers, are really nothing more than machines for ripping off retail investors.
Joel Spolsky
Image
Nothing works better than just improving your product.
Joel Spolsky