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> I'm guessing that revenue from job postings (Careers section) and banner ads did not bring enough money. I've used their jobs platform on both sides (as a de
by klenwell 7y ago
> I'm guessing that revenue from job postings (Careers section) and banner ads did not bring enough money.
I've used their jobs platform on both sides (as a developer looking for work and as a hiring manager) and, regarding job postings at least, I suspect you're right. I've had very limited success with it. And yet it's my favorite platform for hiring or job-searching as a developer. I like it much more than Indeed which, to my chagrin, has proven more effective.
It's free for people looking for jobs and IIRC around $500 - $1500/mo for companies looking to post a listing or two. It still baffles me that it does not have more uptake. I spoke with a room full of about 80 new developers at a code academy recently and asked how many of them used it. There weren't more than 2 or 3 hands.
I suggested to our Sales rep that the hostile reception a lot of first-time question-askers encounter probably isn't doing them any favors. (SO has introduced new features to address this problem.)
Their Marketing team also footgunned themselves, at least as far as our company was concerned. When it came time to extend our first contract, our Sales rep asked if I'd like some t-shirts for our team. I said sure. He said send me your sizes. So I polled my team of 12 and sent him the sizes. He came back and told me that a Marketing Director or someone said there was a new limit of 4. I said, "Hey, you asked me and I got a team full of devs looking forward to a t-shirt. Can you send me one for each?" He said he'd check but came back and said the person calling the shots was firm. They sent the 4 t-shirts. I delayed renewing our subscription 3 or 4 months as a result. We gave them another shot in the future at one of the lower levels. But those shirts would have paid for themselves the moment they sent them.
I still don't know what the Marketing side was thinking. It ended up making me more attentive about paying for the platform. If they had sent the t-shirts, I probably would have just let the subscription ride and continued paying it even if we didn't have an active listing up. Instead, I only renewed when we needed to fill a new position. I'd say it taught me a valuable Sales or Marketing lesson, but isn't this common sense?
Alas, the platform itself continued to perform so weakly in supplying candidates to our postings that I have discontinued using it all together, even though I still recommend young developers sign up and use when looking for jobs.
I think SO deserves to succeed so hopefully the private Q&A will boost revenues.
- asark 7y ago> I spoke with a room full of about 80 new developers at a code academy recently and asked how many of them used it. There weren't more than 2 or 3 hands. I've been a developer for 10+ years and won't use it. I tried it on a whim a couple years ago and my GitHub wasn't cool enough for them so they told me "thanks but no thanks" so I've never looked again, and probably never will (my Github remains uncool, with no sign of that ever changing). I bounced off SO itself for similar reasons, and my lack of participation there probably contributed to their rejecting me. Sign up, find question, have useful comment to make (no good for a full answer, but great clarifying comment on another) get told "sorry you can only post questions and full answers and nothing else until you've spent tons of time giving us free content" and was like "LOL OK [logout]".
- dorgo 7y agoGot new email at work and am starting with reputation 1 at SO. Can't comment anymore. This is hostile and I don't want to write answers any more. They have a lot other privileges which I never cared for. But commenting should not be a privilege. Let's see what comes first: rep 50 or the next new email.
- pintxo 7y agoAlways curious: why are you using a company email instead of a private email for SO? Using company email for something potentially interesting privately or just a potential long-time investment is something I still fail to understand.