While I can’t begin to judge you without being in your shoes, I must admit I was disappointed to here your reasoning for leaving. I think it sends the message that in order to launch a start-up you need to be a single person in your 20s with no obligations… family people need not apply. I find this sad. I think it would have been a much more productive message if you would have announced that you were limiting your involvement to X hours a week and Y weeks a year and that you were going to work almost exclusively from home. It would have sent a message that balancing work and family is not only important but practical, especially for people in the software business. By quitting completely, it seems to convey that there is no middle ground between crazy 24/7 devotion and non involvement whatsoever, which I don’t think is accurate. But despite all this, I wish you well and thank you for what you’ve added to make software development (and so many other topics) into much more of a community than it was before.
I can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done for me. Even when I know you don’t know me at all, you’ve helped me to become a better programmer. You lent me a hand, some times at ridiculous hours, with the perfect piece of code for the problems I was struggling with, or with the most simple idea that refused to come to my mind for hours.
Thank you for making StackOverflow, you’ll always be appreciatted.
Adriana Villafañe
(from the remote Argentina)
Thanks for Stack Overflow! Being able to interact and measure up with other coders has made such a difference to me. Especially the downvotes when I thought I was right but wasn’t.
Here’s a good article in The Guardian. If your family is really the reason you’re leaving, the dying agree with you: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-five-regrets-of-the-dying
If you find a good cause that would benefit from donations, mention it on coding horror.
Congratulations, your kids are lucky! Thanks for StackOverflow and the blog.
Thank you Jeff!
We hope to see you again soon as a citizen of http://Parenting.stackexchange.com
Best of wishes to #theladybabies because being a twin is just the best! :)
Congratulations, Jeff. Godspeed your new adventure!
I always suspected you of being a good guy, Atwood.
-trav
Enjoy your time off, Jeff!
I like to thank you as well! Your decision is wise.
I’ve been a reader of your blog since I discovered the intense discussion of wether or not to use stored procedures, way back in 2004 (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/10/who-needs-stored-procedures-anyways.html)
I kept reading your blog and must confess I probably learned more from it, then from all the lessons I took to get my bachelor degree.
You inspired so many of us. And with stackoverflow you gave us something I was missing, when I started coding and only followed your blog. A community that does proove that out there are a lot of people with the same interrests/work as I have. (Imagine, my first coding job was in a company with only 3 people, I was the only one coding for .NET. Your blog was the only light in the dark at that time.)
Therefore I hope you will take up bloging a bit more often again!
(I don’t even mind you providing us with links to neardy gadgets on amazoon, from time to time.)
Wish you all the best!
I suspect the real reason you are retiring is so you can spend full time rolling around in your pile of money. But that’s cool too, you’ve earned it. Have fun with it.
Thank you and you are a good dad.
You’re my hero. Thanks for everything.
Thank You Jeff for building Stack Overflow and other StackExchange sites! Brilliant work! These are one of the few websites which I routinely keep on visiting.
Looking forward for your next adventure. Best Wishes.
I know my comment will mostly just echo what so many others have already said, but I had to say it as well.
You have chosen wisely!
It truly warms my heart after following you pre-parenthood, one-child-parenthood, and recently, overwhelming-parenthood. I was always happy to see little quips from @RockHardAwesome because it meant (to me at least) that you were finding connection with your son.
Your contributions to the internet are well spoken for and deserved. How fortunate your family is to have you to themselves. I’m sure they deserve it as well, as your time must have been stretched quite thin.
I had the chance to meet you briefly at PDC 2008 in the vendor hall for an epic one song game of Rock Band2. You played drums, Phil Haack played guitar, and I sang. It confirmed my impression of you being a playful, lighthearted, big kid and I can only imagine how well that will fit with your 3 little ones.
Keep rockin’ the geeky father/developer part!
\m/
Dunno, many of us have kids. We spend time with our families and still go to work every morning.
In a functional company (as opposed to a dysfunctional company), it should be possible to find a position that allows for a decent work/life balance and still be involved with SE in one or the other way. I just don’t really get why it has to be a full-scale cut.
After all, work/life balance is about work and life.
Jeff, Thanks for this.
One of my biggest problems with my fellow developers has been the naive (and even arrogant) assumption by many that the “devoted passion” could or should be sustained. It has been a source of discouragement to me that our industry demands so much time, and that so many are willing to cost themselves and those around them to give it, because it has made it difficult for equally good devs with family priorities to compete.
I love software development. In my first years I spent as many waking hours as I could in front of a computer learning and writing code. But now I have a wife and four kids, in addition to other people who need my time, and I love them all more. At various times I’ve gone through much anxiety over not being able to keep up, not stopping to think about whether it mattered whether I kept up like my more “passionate” peers did. Then I realized that my kids didn’t care about how much money I was making, or what my professional reputation was, or what cool app I had made, as long as they could eat and stay warm and have Dad around.
So, I’ve had to redefine what it means to “keep up”, and redesign how I do it.
I don’t want to waste my short life pushing around bits and bytes. At the end of the day, (flame-on) it’s just a job.
Oh, one more thing: If you have a family, and after 40 hrs of Dev work a week all your other time isn’t soaked up by the needs of your wife, kids, parents, neighbors, and church (if you have one), then all I can say is,
You aren’t doing it right!
I may turn out to be a failure in business, but I refuse to fail my kids.
Bravo!! We’ll miss you, but your kids certainly won’t! And they won’t care that we do. And you will never regret it. Ever.
My opinion of you has always been very high. Today you have proven that it was justified. Godspeed, and all the best to you in your future endeavors.
Give your kids a hug from all of us.
I’m also in love with my software development work. But just like you, I’m a father of three (including twins) and love, and prioritize, my family more. Kudos to you!
Jeff, StackOverflow is something akin Wikipedia for programmers, only much better. You can proudly tell your grandkids how you helped build it. Enjoy your family, bro’.