Good points ++.

Ah, Mr. Spolsky, I don't think I'll ever understand why so many people link to his articles

Just for the record I am not a card carrying Joel fan. I had merely read the article a while back and thought it might have provided some food for thought.

Mind you, his first point wasn't so bad "Just Do It"

Some of his other points weren't so bad either. The main reason I linked to the article was because I remembered that it addressed the issue in the main post of:

I also think he redeems himself on some of your points in this paragraph.

None of these strategies work if you're not really an excellent contributor. If you don't write good code, and lots of it, you're just going to be resented for messing around with bug databases when you "should be" writing code. There's nothing more deadly to your career than having a reputation of being so concerned with process that you don't accomplish anything.