"They’re the elite of the elite of the best programmers out there. They’re the people who participate in Stack Overflow..."
participating in SO makes you elite?
Although, there are many convincing real case scenarios discussed by few (perhaps fit for 'elite' label), they are overshadowed by the majority - the badge-gatherers.
What I found (mostly) in SO is more of karmaholics, copying/pasting info from the web. Imho, it is more of a human-enabled search engine for your questions - you get a compiled list of filtered result for your questions, instead of you filtering google results.
The major flaw in StackOverflow is the huge difference in rep you can gain depending on how many people use the same tech as you do. Answering C# questions, even insanely easy ones will get you loads of rep (between +100 to +1000) but that really specific and difficult post about some edge case in a niche technology will probably get you +10 rep, mebbe +30 if you're lucky.
Seems Jeff and Joel are always patting their readers on the back and saying they are so 'elite' for reading Coding Horror or attending Dev Days. That part may be true, but using SO is anything but elite. Any google search containing something remotely resembling programming will return an SO result, it's not quite the underground programming exchange where only the artisanal coders are allowed that they think it is.
That said I use SO and enjoy it for what it is, but I definitely don't think it has made me the elite of the best, perhaps the elite of the not so bad.
I've gotten terrific answers to the questions I've posted on there, for what it's worth. And it was stuff that was difficult to google for (which is why I asked it there).
I think there is a reasonable chance that the number of non-"shithole" employers (using Joel's term from the article) that know the difference or maybe even care that they are not getting the top 10% of talent is overestimated.
I hope that StackOverflow Careers site does turn the job market upside down for the best software developers. I completely respect the idea they are trying to get across to employers looking for good candidates. But pointing at some online reputation and technical question forum isn't going to help the people who wouldn't know a great hacker from a turnip. Which, as discussed here many times, is the vast majority of people, including other hackers.
I think that it is more effective for hackers to offer up portfolios of completed work to potential employers. Projects the hacker designed, implemented, integrated with the work of others, in X time, that serve Y customers.
I also don't buy the idea that charging people to post their resume/CV before it will show up in potential employer's searches helps filter so that only "active, serious job applicants" show up (from the FAQ). Its a bit on the slimy side - you're charging us for the content you're selling to someone else?
My immediate reaction was that making developers pay a fee to be searchable doesn't seem to be turning the job market on its head at all.
I don't know if there's a non-slimy way to take money from developers when your stated goal is to help developers make money. It comes off sounding like any other job-assistance scam, where they take $20 to drop a resume into a template and spam it to X-hundred companies.
If you only want serious job applicants, you could just require the developer to check in every now and again.
And if this were really turning the market on its head it would need to provide developers far more information that they could use to get a leg up during negotiation and assessment. Developers would need to see things like: who's looking at their resume, what salary range they're looking in, team sizes, technologies in use, what search terms brought them to your name, what other developers they looked at, how many positions they're trying to fill, etc.
"To a hiring manager, the fact that you took the time to help a fellow programmer with a detailed answer in some obscure corner of programming knowledge, and demonstrated mastery, is a lot more relevant than the Latin Club you joined in school."
I wonder how relevant will the fact be that I dared to ask stupid noob questions about new technologies I am trying to learn. Maybe it's best I stick to giving Java advice :-/
You could always ask the "stupid noob" questions under a different identity if this is something you are worried about.
Although personally I wouldn't really be all that crazy about working for the kind of employer who cared about this thing ("What? You asked... questions?").
I think it depends on how you ask the question. If you give every indication that you've made an effort to try and figure it out on your own, even if it's a newb issue, I doubt anyone who knows what they're doing would see it as anything other than a good indication of character.
My concern is that this takes the fun out of participating in these kinds of online communities. Learning and helping others for the sake of fun is one thing, but doing it to beef up a resume is totally different.
You don't have to file a CV. It's completely optional. So far about 7000 people have filed CVs, which is a tiny fraction of the millions of people on the site.
I was one of those engineers that hated their job a month ago, so my job search commenced just around the time Joel and Jeff announced SO Careers.
At first the idea is intriguing. SO has a customer base of engineers, some of whom are very talented and where there is a rough way of quantifying talent through the karma points. Why not tap into that for the job market?
I was very tempted to sign up, because as I said, I was sick of my job and finally ready to move on. But $99/year? I spent a handful of hours on Craigslist and LinkedIn and within two weeks I had several interviews and two good offers. And I'm not nearly an all-star, just a guy with 5 years experience with LAMP (PHP and Perl) that isn't an idiot (or so I'd like to think).
So is SO Careers really targeted at someone like me? Is it targeted at the young post-college upstart? (If so, does he even have $100/year?) Is it targeted at the uber-engineer that has his own FOSS project and is a minor blog celebrity? (doesn't he have an even easier time picking and choosing his jobs than I would?)
It doesn't make any sense to me, and what frustrates me most is their explanation for charging is that "they need to make sure the candidates are serious." If they want to avoid the "stale resume" (and why do Jeff/Joel keep using the term 'CV'? are they too good for the word 'resume'?) problem on existing job boards, charging someone isn't going to make a difference -- a person is going to get hired and unless he immediately updates his SO careers profile, his resume is now stale too. Also why would I pay $99/year for something that I'll probably only use once a year, at most? Just how often am I looking for a job exactly?
Hi. I'm that employee (http://babak.ghahremanpour.com/). Joel does pay me for using the photo. He babysits twice a month so my wife and I can enjoy romantic dinners. I get shoulder rubs when I ask for them. And, he makes me the best lattes (including latte art). All the other Fog Creekers are jealous...but, they're not the ones entertaining JoS readers, by being funny in a picture... :)
Were I to pay for this kind of service I'd want to know who's looking at me (not just how many times). Are the hiring companies vetted in any way?
There has to be more balance in the model. Employers can look at you and see how your peers (or actually, anyone with an account) rate you. Hiring companies should be similarly exposed.
As I understood it, we provide the content, we pay for the service, maybe we get job offers from companies that don't suck. Who's getting the most value from this arrangement.
(let me state for the record that I really, really like SO. I'm just iffy about this careers business model)
It would be good to offer the service free to the unemployed (if that could even be verified). It's terrible practice to charge people for access to a job if they need the money for food.
Maybe a more fair arrangement would be to offer the service free after X number of comments or questions contributed. That way, even if you don't get a job out of it, there's a direct relationship between what you contribute to SO and what you get (aside from all the free knowledge).
Anyone I know who is a good developer has more offers than they can manage, even in these times of recession. In my experience, there is no real need to put one's cv up on a jobsite to get good offers.
Would any good developer pay to put their cv on SO? I find it difficult to believe but I could be wrong. If anyone does this, please keep us posted on how it went.
I'm not going to look good on Stack Overflow. I like to spend my spare time actually programming, you know? It's the difference between being a spectator and playing the game.
Edit: Of course, a high SO rep might mean that you spend your working hours answering questions there. Generally you're employed to do something else [says the HN contributor, midday].
SO is turning out to be a really nice case study on web business. (1) Create a community that will provide free content to your web site; (2) charge them for the privilege of saying to potential customers that they are contributing. :-)
I wouldn't be concerned about paying for this, but what I think that it will not turn around the market as mentioned. Instead will create another hurdle for developers. The issue is that after a potential employer contacts you, the whole interview process will be the same as before. No Hollywood treatment you can be sure.
Moreover, for many companies search is usually done by HR firms. The SO interface will be used by these firms in the same way they currently use linkedin, etc.
I would be much more interested in free web site where you can list your accomplishments: projects finished, previous jobs, open source developed, so employers can have an easier way to compare you to your peers.
My goal is to establish a successful company that people will recognize as being worthwhile and offering a useful product or service. Then if I'm ever in a position where I'm looking to work for someone else again I can just point to that and say "I did that". Hopefully that'll be enough street cred to get me the job.
I just listened to one of the SO podcasts that happens to have more information about this service. A few things of note (that have come up in these comments):
The $99/yr is meant to be a nominal fee to keep out the riff-raff, basically (my metaphor, not Joel's). SO will charge the hiring companies a much larger amount to get the opportunity to search the database.
It seems like this was actually designed more from the perspective of the person who is HIRING, not the person being hired. Joel mentions the frustrations of sorting through a zillion resumes, many of them from people who are wildly out of their league, and the reality that even a good resume doesn't really prove that the person is a good coder. Two people with identical backgrounds might have wildly different qualities as developers. Looking at resumes isn't enough.
So the $99/yr is a deliberate barrier to entry to reduce spam, and your Stack Overflow rep/answers are a second way to distinguish the quality of developers.
The grand unifying theory that makes it work (if it does work) is that developers want to work for the kind of company that takes enough care to look at SO answers in order to distinguish great devs from mediocre ones. That's why you would want to pay the $99 bucks just to have your resume searchable there. In theory.
Also, as a deliberate, specific method to prevent recruiters from using the database, you're required to give the name of the company that is hiring in order to search the database. Recruiters won't do this since the dev could skip the recruiter and go straight to the company, in which case the recruiter can't get their commission.
I'm excited to see where this goes. I've always felt like finding a job is probably the most annoying thing to go through. It'd be nice to have companies try to find you using parameters that they find useful. I'm not sure where it will all end up but I'm glad that people are actively working on this problem in a sane way.
I don't mind paying for the service either. It seems like something I'd want to have exposure to and support to work towards a good solution to this problem whatever it turns out to be.
Then using SO careers isn't a good idea for you? The whole point is people who want to try and leverage what they do on SO towards easing/improving the job hunt.
Which if you aren't reputable on the site would tend to imply that isn't a goal so why would you care?
I can't imagine paying to have a searchable CV. I already hear from recruiters about 2 or 3 times a month.
Other people have made a lot of money finding me and placing me with good employers, or I've sought out specific positions at specific companies I was interested in. While I can see some value in linking CVs to SO accounts, it seems like the wrong group is being asked to shell out.
To me, the value is in what a technical team could see about a developer. Are they narrow-focused, or have a broad range of skills? Do they keep up with newer technologies? Are they capable of answering tough questions, or do they just skim the easy ones? Too many people say 5/5 for Java or whatever, but don't have the first clue.
I love StackOverflow. From the first day StackOverflow was announced, I wanted to be a part of it. I knew that it would be successful and useful to at least a small group of programmers.
StackOverflow Careers? Not much. Why do they have to defend this careers thing so much? SO Careers is addressing a real problem, but I don't know if it is the right solution.
I don't mind paying, (paying back the great SO team is fulfilling) but the viability of the SO Careers model for an international audience is debatable. As EugeneG pointed out, we are not participating in SO just for the karma factor.
"Why do they have to defend this careers thing so much?"
A career page seems to be the preferred route to go to raise revenue for programming websites. They're not defending it, they're promoting it. Using a job board to directly or indirectly raise revenue is done here, on reddit, on Joel on Software, and now on Stack Overflow. Probably because programmers often have adblock on and don't generally buy a lot of software.
You can pay $99 a year to be in a database where potential employers will contact you? I ended up on a whole ton of those for free back in the 90s.. :-)
I guess you're paying to prove that, yes, you will take their calls.
[+] [-] justlearning|16 years ago|reply
participating in SO makes you elite? Although, there are many convincing real case scenarios discussed by few (perhaps fit for 'elite' label), they are overshadowed by the majority - the badge-gatherers.
What I found (mostly) in SO is more of karmaholics, copying/pasting info from the web. Imho, it is more of a human-enabled search engine for your questions - you get a compiled list of filtered result for your questions, instead of you filtering google results.
[+] [-] Quarrelsome|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bmalicoat|16 years ago|reply
That said I use SO and enjoy it for what it is, but I definitely don't think it has made me the elite of the best, perhaps the elite of the not so bad.
[+] [-] yummyfajitas|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] csbrooks|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tom_b|16 years ago|reply
I hope that StackOverflow Careers site does turn the job market upside down for the best software developers. I completely respect the idea they are trying to get across to employers looking for good candidates. But pointing at some online reputation and technical question forum isn't going to help the people who wouldn't know a great hacker from a turnip. Which, as discussed here many times, is the vast majority of people, including other hackers.
I think that it is more effective for hackers to offer up portfolios of completed work to potential employers. Projects the hacker designed, implemented, integrated with the work of others, in X time, that serve Y customers.
I also don't buy the idea that charging people to post their resume/CV before it will show up in potential employer's searches helps filter so that only "active, serious job applicants" show up (from the FAQ). Its a bit on the slimy side - you're charging us for the content you're selling to someone else?
[+] [-] roc|16 years ago|reply
My immediate reaction was that making developers pay a fee to be searchable doesn't seem to be turning the job market on its head at all.
I don't know if there's a non-slimy way to take money from developers when your stated goal is to help developers make money. It comes off sounding like any other job-assistance scam, where they take $20 to drop a resume into a template and spam it to X-hundred companies.
If you only want serious job applicants, you could just require the developer to check in every now and again.
And if this were really turning the market on its head it would need to provide developers far more information that they could use to get a leg up during negotiation and assessment. Developers would need to see things like: who's looking at their resume, what salary range they're looking in, team sizes, technologies in use, what search terms brought them to your name, what other developers they looked at, how many positions they're trying to fill, etc.
[+] [-] Tichy|16 years ago|reply
I wonder how relevant will the fact be that I dared to ask stupid noob questions about new technologies I am trying to learn. Maybe it's best I stick to giving Java advice :-/
[+] [-] brown9-2|16 years ago|reply
Although personally I wouldn't really be all that crazy about working for the kind of employer who cared about this thing ("What? You asked... questions?").
[+] [-] steerpike|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EugeneG|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mapleoin|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spolsky|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] richardw|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nhashem|16 years ago|reply
At first the idea is intriguing. SO has a customer base of engineers, some of whom are very talented and where there is a rough way of quantifying talent through the karma points. Why not tap into that for the job market?
I was very tempted to sign up, because as I said, I was sick of my job and finally ready to move on. But $99/year? I spent a handful of hours on Craigslist and LinkedIn and within two weeks I had several interviews and two good offers. And I'm not nearly an all-star, just a guy with 5 years experience with LAMP (PHP and Perl) that isn't an idiot (or so I'd like to think).
So is SO Careers really targeted at someone like me? Is it targeted at the young post-college upstart? (If so, does he even have $100/year?) Is it targeted at the uber-engineer that has his own FOSS project and is a minor blog celebrity? (doesn't he have an even easier time picking and choosing his jobs than I would?)
It doesn't make any sense to me, and what frustrates me most is their explanation for charging is that "they need to make sure the candidates are serious." If they want to avoid the "stale resume" (and why do Jeff/Joel keep using the term 'CV'? are they too good for the word 'resume'?) problem on existing job boards, charging someone isn't going to make a difference -- a person is going to get hired and unless he immediately updates his SO careers profile, his resume is now stale too. Also why would I pay $99/year for something that I'll probably only use once a year, at most? Just how often am I looking for a job exactly?
[+] [-] brown9-2|16 years ago|reply
Because every time I've seen you use it in an article and/or on your site, it really cracks me up.
[+] [-] babakian|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thirdstation|16 years ago|reply
There has to be more balance in the model. Employers can look at you and see how your peers (or actually, anyone with an account) rate you. Hiring companies should be similarly exposed.
As I understood it, we provide the content, we pay for the service, maybe we get job offers from companies that don't suck. Who's getting the most value from this arrangement.
(let me state for the record that I really, really like SO. I'm just iffy about this careers business model)
It would be good to offer the service free to the unemployed (if that could even be verified). It's terrible practice to charge people for access to a job if they need the money for food.
Maybe a more fair arrangement would be to offer the service free after X number of comments or questions contributed. That way, even if you don't get a job out of it, there's a direct relationship between what you contribute to SO and what you get (aside from all the free knowledge).
[+] [-] plinkplonk|16 years ago|reply
Anyone I know who is a good developer has more offers than they can manage, even in these times of recession. In my experience, there is no real need to put one's cv up on a jobsite to get good offers.
Would any good developer pay to put their cv on SO? I find it difficult to believe but I could be wrong. If anyone does this, please keep us posted on how it went.
[+] [-] natevc2|16 years ago|reply
But the premise of the SO careers is that 75% of the elite are not "delighted" with their current job.
So for many being happy with the job isn't a priority?
[+] [-] Poiesis|16 years ago|reply
Edit: Of course, a high SO rep might mean that you spend your working hours answering questions there. Generally you're employed to do something else [says the HN contributor, midday].
[+] [-] coliveira|16 years ago|reply
I wouldn't be concerned about paying for this, but what I think that it will not turn around the market as mentioned. Instead will create another hurdle for developers. The issue is that after a potential employer contacts you, the whole interview process will be the same as before. No Hollywood treatment you can be sure.
Moreover, for many companies search is usually done by HR firms. The SO interface will be used by these firms in the same way they currently use linkedin, etc.
I would be much more interested in free web site where you can list your accomplishments: projects finished, previous jobs, open source developed, so employers can have an easier way to compare you to your peers.
[+] [-] richardw|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] megamark16|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ejames|16 years ago|reply
The $99/yr is meant to be a nominal fee to keep out the riff-raff, basically (my metaphor, not Joel's). SO will charge the hiring companies a much larger amount to get the opportunity to search the database.
It seems like this was actually designed more from the perspective of the person who is HIRING, not the person being hired. Joel mentions the frustrations of sorting through a zillion resumes, many of them from people who are wildly out of their league, and the reality that even a good resume doesn't really prove that the person is a good coder. Two people with identical backgrounds might have wildly different qualities as developers. Looking at resumes isn't enough.
So the $99/yr is a deliberate barrier to entry to reduce spam, and your Stack Overflow rep/answers are a second way to distinguish the quality of developers.
The grand unifying theory that makes it work (if it does work) is that developers want to work for the kind of company that takes enough care to look at SO answers in order to distinguish great devs from mediocre ones. That's why you would want to pay the $99 bucks just to have your resume searchable there. In theory.
Also, as a deliberate, specific method to prevent recruiters from using the database, you're required to give the name of the company that is hiring in order to search the database. Recruiters won't do this since the dev could skip the recruiter and go straight to the company, in which case the recruiter can't get their commission.
[+] [-] jswinghammer|16 years ago|reply
I don't mind paying for the service either. It seems like something I'd want to have exposure to and support to work towards a good solution to this problem whatever it turns out to be.
[+] [-] socratees|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] runevault|16 years ago|reply
Which if you aren't reputable on the site would tend to imply that isn't a goal so why would you care?
[+] [-] dgabriel|16 years ago|reply
Other people have made a lot of money finding me and placing me with good employers, or I've sought out specific positions at specific companies I was interested in. While I can see some value in linking CVs to SO accounts, it seems like the wrong group is being asked to shell out.
[+] [-] richardw|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] niyazpk|16 years ago|reply
I love StackOverflow. From the first day StackOverflow was announced, I wanted to be a part of it. I knew that it would be successful and useful to at least a small group of programmers.
StackOverflow Careers? Not much. Why do they have to defend this careers thing so much? SO Careers is addressing a real problem, but I don't know if it is the right solution.
I don't mind paying, (paying back the great SO team is fulfilling) but the viability of the SO Careers model for an international audience is debatable. As EugeneG pointed out, we are not participating in SO just for the karma factor.
[+] [-] alec|16 years ago|reply
A career page seems to be the preferred route to go to raise revenue for programming websites. They're not defending it, they're promoting it. Using a job board to directly or indirectly raise revenue is done here, on reddit, on Joel on Software, and now on Stack Overflow. Probably because programmers often have adblock on and don't generally buy a lot of software.
[+] [-] petercooper|16 years ago|reply
I guess you're paying to prove that, yes, you will take their calls.
[+] [-] Devilboy|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dnaquin|16 years ago|reply
"can you send us your stack overflow account?" "yeah, i'm no longer interested."