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Stack Overflow reducing headcount by 20%
- sklivvz1971 9y ago(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ So sorry to hear this. My thoughts to everyone, it is a very difficult day.
- pmoriarty 9y agoIf SO and its related network sites die, what's going to happen to the millions of questions and answers their users contributed? Is anyone archiving them and making the archives available in any useful way?
- JasonPunyon 9y agoNothing is dying. Our data dumps are live at https://archive.org/details/stackexchange https://archive.org/details/stackexchange as they've always been.
- throwaway2016a 9y agoI had no idea this existed. This is awesome. Thanks for the link.
- denzil_correa 9y agoI wish your older snapshots weren't deleted. Any chance to get them back?
- luis_espinoza 9y agoI don't know, but you guys remember the dark times before SO?...omg.
- CodeCube 9y agobruh, put a trigger warning before bringing that up! faints
- justboxing 9y agoYes. I was there. There wasn't even a google. I would stumble along on deja.com in the late 90s until it died a slow painful death and got scooped up by Google [1] [1] Source: [2002] https://www.cnet.com/news/google-buys-remaining-deja-com-business/ https://www.cnet.com/news/google-buys-remaining-deja-com-bus...
- InclinedPlane 9y agoBahahaha. That wasn't even the worst of it. Imagine this scenario, you have to install linux on a pc. There's no stackoverflow, there's no google. The linux distro you're using doesn't even have a package manager. And currently it doesn't have a working ethernet driver either. Also, it's the only computer that exists in your entire house.
- aeorgnoieang 9y agoConnecting to whatever internet connection I had at the time was always the hardest thing (if all of the other basic hardware was supported). Maybe I was better off in that I was getting my distro (Slackware) along with the giant 'Linux for dummies' book in which it was included. It still never got me far enough to be able to remove my Windows partition.
- rpeden 9y agoI remember installing an early version of Red Hat on a machine that only had a Winmodem, not a real hardware modem that would just work in Linux. Getting a Winmodem to work in Linux was possibly, but not exactly easy. I couldn't afford a better modem at the time, so I just kept hacking away at it and booting back into Windows and searching the web to try to figure it out. This was 1996 or so; there was far less information on the web than there is today, and search engines weren't exactly great at finding what you needed. I think I finally got online from Linux after a week or two. :)
- fooker 9y agoI have not-so-fond memories of trying to troubleshoot PPPoE issues.
- throwaway2016a 9y agoMy first compiler was on a disk and I bought it from a video game store. On the flip side, back then most of the programs I was writing could fit on a few screens and had almost no external dependencies besides libc and the C book was the SO for libc.
- pmoriarty 9y agoNow let's see.. we had Usenet news groups, mailing lists, IRC channels, and eventually web forums on every programming language, operating system, and software package under the sun. You could ask questions and get them answered. What was so cringeworthy about this exactly? That's not to say that SO doesn't bring value. It has nice tagging and discoverability through search engines, good moderation, and an achievement and reputation system that encourages people to make quality contributions. But the days before it existed weren't so dark.
- corpMaverick 9y agoThere was something called experts exchange. Remember that? It was horrible.
- justboxing 9y agoFunny you brought that up. I think it was Jeff Atwood who joked about how the domain name read like Expert-Sex-change StackOverflow was such a welcome relief to this site and Atwood also wrote about expertsexchange in a blog post. > I never appreciated how easy Experts-Exchange makes it for us. They are almost universally loathed. We don't just have a rival, we have a larger than life moustache-twirling, cape-wearing villain to contrast ourselves with. Source: [ 2009 ] https://blog.codinghorror.com/whos-your-arch-enemy/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/whos-your-arch-enemy/
- stefs 9y agoi remember that expert-sex-change was blocked by our schools filter. thinking about it triggers a vague angry feeling, no specific reason other than, possibly, often repeated disappointment the answer wasn't readable.
- jbob2000 9y agoIt's not dying, I think their recent expansions in job/talent advertising isn't paying off as they originally thought.
- hyperanthony 9y agoYeah, and it wasn't too long ago that SO Documentation was shut down as well. Hopefully Channels works out better for them.
- submeta 9y agoI don't see why this person's post is downvoted. That was a good question.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- badhombres 9y agoWhy?
- danbruc 9y agoWhy would you fire people on such a short notice? No need to hand over things? No interest in providing at least some time to look for a new job? EDIT: To clarify that a bit, I am interested in what the upsides are except for possibly saving some money. An orderly shutdown usually seems preferable to me over quickly killing the process, for both sides.
- Selfcommit 9y agoThe transition is being handled with as much dignity as possible - The company is also offering to help place people through USV.
- criddell 9y agoIt wasn't possible to give more notice? Do you know why?
- fourseventy 9y agoI've never heard of a company giving advanced notice of layoffs. Its always just an email the morning of.
- danbruc 9y agoUsually you will get at least a 4 week notice in Germany and this increases to up to 7 months when you worked for more than 20 years for the company. That you get fired effective immediately usually only happen if you really fucked something up.
- dragonwriter 9y agoThe US has much weaker employee protections. Aside from workers in unions and certain protected scenarios, layoffs usually occur with zero notice. (And, often, when associated with public bad financial returns, shortly after management denies any layoffs are coming.)
- JosephLark 9y agoIt's been interesting watching SO try to monetize. I wonder: How would people feel if they went the Wikipedia way? It's obviously a very beneficial site, but not as widely applicable as Wikipedia. I personally prefer the Wikipedia model of being ad-free and having no additional product and doing a fundraising drive every so often. PBS as well. That said, I certainly think given the audience of SO that there are several opportunities for them, so it'll be interesting to see what works.
- Improvotter 9y agoI remember seeing an article here these past few weeks talking about the business model of Wikipedia and how it's supposedly inherently flawed. Wikipedia doesn't bring in a lot of cash, but it rather sets a sad tone for itself how unfortunate that may seem. Personally I'd be more interested in seeing StackOverflow branch out. What have they done these past few years? It seems like StackOverflow has remained stagnant, yet they have so much potential.
- alphaalpha101 9y agoWikipedia doesn't have a business model. It's not a business.
- Deimorz 9y agoI'm not sure where you got the idea that Wikipedia doesn't bring in much. Their annual plan from last year [1] says that they expected to raise over $60M during the year. Unless anything's changed recently, they also try to keep over a year's worth of operating expenses in reserve, which means they're likely also sitting on almost $100M. The complaints I see are usually related more to thinking that they really shouldn't need to spend so much (the FY17-18 plan for expenses is $76.8M [2]), and that their fundraising drives always make it seem like they're on the brink of death when they actually have a huge amount of money in the bank. [1]: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2016-2017/Final#Revenues:_FY_2016-17_annual_plan https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_... [2]: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2017-2018/Final/Financials#Wikimedia_Foundation_financial_tables https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia...
- TheAceOfHearts 9y agoHow many people work at StackOverflow? Seeing this post also made me realize I have no clue how the company makes money.
- h1d 9y agoDo they not make money connecting people to jobs? (Take money from company taking people
- alexobenauer 9y agoI think they've been primarily monetizing with their careers section. The listings, last I checked, are entirely paid, and they have (at least had?) a sales team dedicated to them.
- nicodjimenez 9y agoI'm sure they make TONS of money from ad revenue. Probably they tried to generate other revenue streams but it just didn't work out and hence the layoff. Here's a crazy idea: what if Stackoverflow developed a search engine for developers? Usually I get to Stackoverflow posts through Google but perhaps Stackoverflow can provide a better experience by doing code specific web crawling.
- brian-armstrong 9y agoInherent conflict here - programmers don't click on ads, fullstop. I can't imagine a group I'd want to advertise to less.
- tudelo 9y agoNot true, I've clicked a few on accident.
- brian-armstrong 9y agoAh, fair point. Maybe I should have said "don't click on ads intentionally"
- johansch 9y agoI remember reaching out to them a bunch of years ago (2012 or so) in order to ask them to host a stack overflow sub-site for our product (from a sizeable company). We were willing to pay quite a lot (because they had the premier UX for this kind of thing), but they weren't at all interested. They just told us to try to grow things "organically", because they had decided to focus 100% on open stuff. We weren't really interested in their google juice, all we wanted was their actual functionality. Some non-stackoverflow domain would have been fine. It just seemed like a missed opportunity on their end. I don't think we were the only company asking for this kind of service...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dyeje 9y agoConsidering there are companies that are completely based around selling private StackOverflow clones, I agree.
- NDizzle 9y agoI'm doing project in a similar vein right now, but in a totally different space. We call it the "Spotify model" where you host your stuff intermixed with ours, with the option to query just ours or just yours. Good times - having to write a huge authentication / middleware layer to make sure everything is correct.
- gumoro 9y agoIf I understand correctly, they offer this now, your private instance for your own product(s) & team(s): https://www.stackoverflowbusiness.com/enterprise https://www.stackoverflowbusiness.com/enterprise Edit: while interesting, this (private internal instance for your team) is not what johansch is after (separate public instance dedicated to your product, for your users)
- johansch 9y ago(Edit) This appears to be for non-public stuff only, though. So an internal stackoverflow. Still no solution for a company wanting to host a public stackoverflow instance for some product.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- codeflo 9y agoIt's undeniable that their main developer Q&A site is a really great thing that saved me many hours of work. However, it was somewhat hostile to its more export users from the very beginning: the reputation system favors quickfire replies to grab the first upvotes, and they seem to put a strong emphasis on "cookbook" answers where many of the more nuanced discussions were closed as "opinion based". I think there are some missed opportunities here to make the Q&A site even more useful. However, perhaps that wasn't their focus. My impression is the Q&A site was supposed to be mostly a gateway to their other services, and for that to work, the Q&A part simply had to be "good enough". It's an interesting strategy that perhaps didn't work out quite the way they had hoped it would.
- kjxsnht43 9y agoI couldn't agree less. First off, they're not going out of business, just letting 20% go and one would assume refocusing. I think the site is set up to get good answers and not just the first upvotes as answers stick around and users can vote answers up or down as they see fit. The first answers on older questions tend to be very long and in-depth and give a lot of good information about the pros and cons of the approach they discuss. (If you want something really in-depth, check out https://codereview.stackexchange.com/. https://codereview.stackexchange.com/.) The ones that get closed as opinion based are almost entirely asking for software recommendations or the like. I've rarely seen an objectively answerable question closed as being opinion-based.
- codeflo 9y agoFor many of the supposedly "opinion-based" questions, reasonable people will at least agree on the relevant trade-offs, even if they come to different conclusions overall. Thus, when a question asks about "pros and cons of technology X", expert insight into the trade-offs involved could be really useful to help evaluate your own specific situation. But that kind of more nuanced question doesn't really fit the simple "one correct answer" model that Stack Overflow seems to be going for and is thus very likely to be closed. IMHO, there should be a distinction between "it depends on the circumstances, and here's why" and "purely opinion based", and Stack Overflow would be more useful for me personally if the former were allowed. Edit: Just to check if moderation policies have changed since I last looked, I did a quick search for questions containing the phrase "pros and cons". As unfortunately expected, practically all of the questions are closed: https://stackoverflow.com/search?q=pros+and+cons https://stackoverflow.com/search?q=pros+and+cons
- mianos 9y agoI tried to hire through them recently. It was a joke of a process. More like the way uaed cars are sold. Don't contact us, we'll contact you. No price displayed, we negotiate that depending on how much you can afford. The sign up system simply didn't work, saying I had already signed up but then the next button simply didn't work. They did get back to me a week later. This completely change my view. I went from wanting to use them to advertise for people to work here with like minds to a detractor.
- rwenderlich 9y agoI had the exact same experience recently. I was credit-card-in-hand ready to pay $500+ for a job posting on their site, but there was no way to do so. Then when they finally called me back, they gave me this story of how they were "didn't want to be thought of as a job postings site as they were far more than that" and said the only thing they would sell is subscriptions of multiple job postings a year. I ended up posting on some competing sites - I'm surprised they're willing to lose out on willing customers like this!
- colmcg 9y agoIndeed is doing a good job at hiring in the tech field. Their Prime product is great (if you live in one of the cities they are running it in). (Disclaimer: I work @ Indeed, but I've seen friends quickly hired using Prime.)
- noncoml 9y agoIt took me a while to understand that by "Indeed" you refer to the company.
- jmkni 9y agoNo notice? That seems a bit weird, no?
- holydude 9y agoI would advise people to stop comparing US workers rights to their countries. Just because you think your country gives you extra leverage and protection it does not mean it is a universally applicable law
- weirdstuff 9y agoCompared to the rest of the developed world, the U.S. does have very poor working conditions. I'd also say a majority of U.S. workers doesn't have a clue and has little experience to make a comparison anyhow. I actually like people outside my country reminding my fellow citizens that we do have it pretty bad and it is in our power to change it if we decide to do that one day. The message might eventually soak in after some decades have passed.
- sklivvz1971 9y agoA large portion of the laid off workers were from the EU, under EU law.
- submeta 9y agoVery sorry to hear SO is financially in trouble. Also sorry for the people who lost their jobs. SO offers a valuable service. Sad to hear they can't monetize enough. Edit: Reminds me of the situation of SoundCloud (company offering a service loved by their consumers, still can't monetize enough to satisfy investors, let alone cover the costs (huge headcount))
- doublerebel 9y agoSurprised no one has mentioned StackOverflow Docs, which was recently shut down as a failure. I unfortunately panned it at launch but it seems they devoted significant resources to the dead product. StackOverflow Sunsetting Documentation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14917765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14917765 Why I think they targeted the wrong market: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12399438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12399438 tl;dr: - it doesn't make sense to donate open-source docs to an offsite corporate service that might shut down - also, the very common complaint that SO has poor moderation, groupthink doesn't work for docs like it does for one-topic answers
- legostormtroopr 9y agoGood. In the past year they have become very preachy about exact which political opinions the tech community is allowed to have, and how they are to express them. My limit was the "Time to take a stand incident" when Joel effectively dictated that the developer community of StackOverflow must agree with the statement. > Carving up the world into ... nations ... is both morally repugnant and frankly stupid The follow up of mods keeping the post open, backing it up and enforcing that idea on other questions really hammered home the idea that StackOverflow belongs to them, regardless of whatever they might say. There was no room for nuance, just an American-centric political orthodoxy you must follow or aren't welcome. [1]https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/342440/time-to-take-a-stand/342608#342608 https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/342440/time-to-take...
- baud147258 9y agoI'm happy that I was too busy at the time doing an handover to see that. Seeing the CEO get a pass on all the "Be-Nice" rules and use his site as a political platform...
- baud147258 9y agoThe problem is more how, after creating a website, saying it's open and run by user, profiting (financially) from the work of the community, then saying "I'm above all the rules you users have to follow".
- buzzcut 9y agoWhatever your political views, the ellipses in the quote are deeply misleading, and in fact make his quote seem to say something Joel emphatically did not say. Here is the full quote: >It’s impossible not to see the parallel: the only way to build a successful world today is to allow the contributions of everyone. Carving up the world into us vs. them, building walls, and demonizing religions, nations, and refugees is both morally repugnant and counterproductive, and it goes so much against the spirit of Stack Overflow that as a community we must speak out.
- 9y ago
- the_common_man 9y agoI feel SO must really be run as a non-profit like wikipedia.
- baud147258 9y agoI'll hasard a guess as to why it happened: -The failure of the documentation (which failed for various reasons) -VCs who want their return on their precious dollars.
- bsaul 9y agoI think an interesting path for stackoverflow would be to provide live channels for technology support and conversation. A bit like public slacks. I remember a few technologies that officially said something like "support is provided through custom stackoverflow tags", but it didn't bring more functionalities. A company trying to launch its new technology (i can imagine asp.net core for example) could have an associated community channel to talk about it, with automatic links from tags. That would be a nice addition.
- StevePerkins 9y agoThat's pretty much Gittr, and perhaps a few similar clones.
- torgoguys 9y agoDo you mean something like https://chat.stackoverflow.com/ https://chat.stackoverflow.com/
- bsaul 9y agoI was hoping nobody would point me to something like that :D So either my idea sucks, or they didn't do a good job advertising the feature...
- dep_b 9y agoOf all questions I've asked on Stack Overflow, 50% were eventually answered by myself (and some became pretty popular after that) and 5% was answered by someone else. 45% is still open. Good to see them back to a focus. I guess hiring could be a good cash cow but all of the sub communities are a bit much.
- plesiv 9y agoYour first paragraph says more about you than about the site.
- StevePerkins 9y agoIt's a bit of a humblebrag... but I think he's TRYING to say that meaningful StackOverflow activity seems to have stagnated in recent years, and he hopes to see an uptick.
- chrisan 9y agoIt could also be the "normal" stuff has been asked many times over and he might be into a very niche/obscure topic. I have a question that I was my own answer on. It was pretty obscure (pageant/cygwin specific) and when I finally found the answer I cited the 2 sources I used hoping it would save others time in the future with an easier google than what I went through
- dep_b 9y agoRight. Can't count the hours stack overflow saved for me although I'm disappointed by the lack of response. The most popular answers and questions tend to be new things in popular SDK's. The unanswered things are deeper problems in existing API's. You either get an answer in a very short term by multiple people or nothing at all.
- rusk 9y agoGiven some of the pettiness of my interactions with their mods, I kind of felt they might be a bit overstaffed alright ...