I am pleased to announce that Stack Overflow just added another team member in an officially paid capacity: Jarrod Dixon.
Jarrod and I met on the job in 2002, and became fast friends. Here was the rare programmer who loved to code every bit as much as I did. It was our calling, and we recognized that in each other almost immediately.
I wasn't sure exactly why we got along so well, until we went to one of those corporate teambuilding events that Paul Graham loves so much. During the event, the moderator had everyone go to a corner of the room, depending on whether you were..
- the oldest child in your family
- a middle child in your family
- the youngest child in your family
- the only child in your family
Of the entire room of 30+ people, only Jarrod and I ended up in the "only child" corner. Our coworkers sadly shook their heads and agreed: this explains a lot.
It was always our goal for Stack Overflow to be a modest but self-sustaining business. Bringing Jarrod on as Stack Overflow Valued Associate #00002, there to work daily on the site alongside me, is an important milestone toward this goal. In a (very) small way, I want to do what Joel did: build a fantastic environment for programmers to work on interesting problems. OK, so the fantastic environment isn't quite there yet, but I do put my money where my mouth is: we've already bought Jarrod a Mirra chair, a blazing fast desktop computer, and a 30" monitor.
Just for the record -- and I am not trying to put a guilt trip on anyone, I'm just explaining the way things are -- pretty much all the Stack Overflow advertising revenue that comes in goes directly to Jarrod's salary. True story. This is the way I want it. In all honesty, nothing makes me happier than paying my dear friend -- who also happens to be an incredibly talented developer -- to work on this project with me. And with you! Having Jarrod on board means we can satisfy top rated UserVoice requests much faster, and build cool new stuff into the site with greater regularity.
(also, not to be be crass, but if you're interested in advertising on Stack Overflow do drop us an email. Help us feed a fellow programmer!)
Now, Stack Overflow is bigger than Jarrod and I; it's only through the contributions of our entire team that we've gotten to where we are today. I do hope to bring on more of our excellent team in a formally paid capacity as we continue growing the site. Gotta crawl before you can walk.
2009 is shaping up to be a great year for Stack Overflow. We have big plans. I'll be blogging about them shortly. We need your input, because we know it isn't about us -- Stack Overflow is You.