[andjd]

A few years ago, working at a startup, I tried to convince our founder to pay for SO talent. IIRC, there was a minimum 6-12 month commitment, and while not crazy expensive, it was too much money to lay down on a lark. Since there was no way to 'try before you buy', there was no way to know in advance if the outlay would pay off.

It was a great experience for job hunters, but that value was not apparent to employers.

Compare this to LinkedIn, where you can post a job ad for free, and pay a relatively small amount to 'promote' your ad. Do this, and you immediately see the quantity and quality of applicants increase, so it's easy to make the case to pay, even if in the end you'd pay linked in more than SO talent's upfront costs.

That SO talent didn't have a self-service, pay-as-you-go option was a major miss, especially for an audience of tech companies, where this kind of business model is common, if not expected.