[discojesus]

I'd like to read about the impact "Joel on Software" and his celebrity has had on his success/sales though.

within epsilon of 100%. I love Joel, his articles, and the Stack Overflow podcast, but nobody would have heard of him (or FogBugz) if he weren't such a brilliant marketer. He established FogBugz and Joel Spolsky as pretty big brands in the programming community, and made a previously unknown software company into what is now seen as one of the elite places to work in the industry.

He's got the technical chops to back it up, but that doesn't matter - he is amazingly good at marketing, and he really gets the power of brands.

[csallen]

I remember reading Joel's articles a couple years ago when I was studying for job interviews, and thinking, "Wow Joel sure is smart - Fog Creek must a really badass company." I had no idea what products they made. Now I'm working on my own company, and one of the first things I did was sign up for the 45-day free trial of FogBugz.