Jeff Atwood

Early life and education Atwood graduated from the University of Virginia in 1992 with a bachelor's degree in environmental science with a minor in computer science.

Career

Atwood started the programming blog Coding Horror in 2004. As a result, he met Joel Spolsky. In 2008, Spolsky and Atwood founded Stack Overflow, a programming question-and-answer website. The site was followed by Server Fault for system administrators and Super User for general computer-related questions, eventually becoming the Stack Exchange network, which includes many Q&A websites about topics decided on by the community.

Atwood and Spolsky published a weekly podcast covering the progress, Stack Exchange Podcast, and a wide range of software development issues. Jeff Atwood was also a keynote presenter at the 2008 Canadian University Software Engineering Conference.

In February 2012, Atwood left Stack Exchange to spend more time with his family.

On February 5, 2013, Atwood announced a new company, Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc. The company develops open source server and client software for threaded discussions called Discourse. Atwood and others developed it out of frustration with then-current bulletin board software, which hadn't evolved since 1990.

Atwood, together with WASD Keyboards, launched a mechanical keyboard, CODE, in 2013.

In 2021, Stack Overflow was sold to Prosus for $1.8 billion.

Philanthropy In January 2025, Atwood announced one million dollar gifts to eight non-profit organizations, including The Trevor Project, an organization dedicated to suicide prevention and crisis intervention for LGBTQ+ youth. In addition, Children's Hunger Fund, First Generation Investors, Global Refuge, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, PEN America, Planned Parenthood, and Team Rubicon received donations from Atwood and his family.

In 2025, Atwood started the Rural Guaranteed Minimum Income Initiative (RGMII), studying the effects of cash payments to citizens in 3 rural counties: Mercer County, West Virginia, Beaufort County, North Carolina, and Warren County, Mississippi.

Personal life Atwood and his partner, Betsy Burton, have three children.