Joel Spolsky provides a valuable lesson even for those of us not in the software industry: “It’s easy to spend on marketing and PR, since that just takes cash, but it’s hard to spend on software development, because that actually takes time and talent.”

Every business has the part that takes time and talent, where intelligent spending is hard. Joel doesn’t seem to make the distinction between intelligent spending and dumb spending, which is always easy, but I think it’s implied in his statement. Wearing my editor’s hat, I’ve always found it difficult to find enough good journalists to lavish my money on. There are times when I’d like to spend more money, but I just can’t find the right person, with the time to do it.