Fire And MotionJessica Horne

Not in the Zone

• Last day or two• Sometimes weeks• Mood swings correlate with unproductive periods• Average enough lines of code to make me

employable

Summer Internship

• 2 to 3 hours productive coding• Fellow intern only worked from 12 to 5pm

everyday minus lunch• Team loved him • Managed to get more done than average

Most Productive

• Moved to a plush new office with large picture windows overlooking a pretty stone courtyard full of cherry trees in bloom

• Worked nonstop on Excel Basic

Typical Work Day for Joel• 1. Get into work• 2. Check email, read the web, etc.• 3. Decide that I might as well have lunch before getting to work• 4. Get back from lunch• 5. Check email, read the web, etc.• 6. Finally decide that I’ve got to get started• 7. Check email, read the web, etc.• 8. Decide again that I really have to get started• 9. Launch the editor • 10. Write code nonstop until I don’t realize that it’s already

7:30pm

In Infantry

• Only 1 strategy: Fire and Motion• “Fire at our enemy so he had to duck and can’t

fire at me while I run across this street”

Moving Forward

• Keep coding and fixing bugs• Time is on your side• Watch out when the competition fires at you

The End Result

• Cover fire• Companies that do well rely least on big

companies• Waste time trying to determine what other

companies are doing

How the Game is Played

• Sales teams of big companies understand cover fire

• Supporting different things because customer needs it?

• Can not distinguish your company from others

Fire and Motion

• Means 2 things:• Have to have time on your side• Have to move forward every day

• “Until we're a company the size of Oracle, we don't have to think about grand strategies. We just have to come in every morning and somehow, launch the editor.”

-Joel Spolsky

References

• http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html