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StackOverflow privately announced this shutdown to clients in the summer of 2021 with the same date and I tweeted about it in November when the deadline of suns
by gregdoesit 5y ago
StackOverflow privately announced this shutdown to clients in the summer of 2021 with the same date and I tweeted about it in November when the deadline of sunsetting was getting close enough [1].
Every hiring manager I talked with shared how SO Jobs was the best place to reach developers. I reached out to a few people at StackOverflow to get a sense of why they are shutting down this product that did very well.
I didn't get real answers beyond "we don't think job boards are the future" which I don't fully buy, given the success on both the employer, and the candidate side. What might be the case is the growth in profit was not what Stack Overflow hoped for, and this is why they are retiring these parts.
My suspicion is that Stack Overflow expects to make 10x more revenue with enterprise branding services (effectively not allowing just job posting, but you need to buy a large package that has other things bundled that you need to get if you want to access something like this job board).
Note that with this change Stack Overflow effectively locks out all small and medium-sized businesses from working with them. Starting from the middle of 2021, I heard they were not onboarding companies with less than 1,000ish employees to the job board either.
It makes perfect financial sense for Stack Overflow, if they are indeed making the change to maximise revenue collected from employers. However, there will be a large gap on the market for startups, small and mid-size companies who will not qualify - and will not have the budget - for the "employee branding services" SO will keep providing (but does not share details on).
[1] https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1457665269267116034?s=20 https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1457665269267116034?...
- VHRanger 5y ago"we don't think job boards are the future" is a ridiculous statement given the online hiring space has had intense growth since COVID. Whatever the reason they shut it down, that's not it
- softwaredoug 5y agoI don’t think it’s that ridiculous. 99% of people use LinkenIn and job postings shared there from company job sites. Recruiters I know want fewer things to interact with and search. And I’ve seen great talent from good sourcers just using LinkedIn to find people…
- toyg 5y agoThat's really it - recruiters live and breath LinkedIn. SO is for people who actually get their hands dirty and know what they're talking about - engineers and their direct managers. It seems like the ones actually in control of the space are the recruiters.
- techdragon 5y agoIf LinkedIn is the Amazon/Walmart/AliExpress of job adverts… which it is… it’s insane to think you cannot be the Gucci/Tiffany’s/Ferrari of job advertising and make plenty of money. Just because everyone posts shitty jobs to LinkedIn doesn’t mean that there’s a huge pool of people who want a better product experience and value it. I ghost job offers on LinkedIn because it’s a dumpster fire. I’ve applied to jobs on StackOverflow because I know I’m cutting through the entire bullshit process. Those companies might ghost me, but the point remains that it’s insane to think there’s no value in being a job advertising platform people actually want to apply to adverts on. Recruiters in tech are worse than useless, they don’t know anything and shovel useless candidates into a pipeline that has to develop Byzantine things like white boarding and other performative hoops to filter the junk candidates out. Between Stack Overflow and GitHub I shouldn’t need more than one interview maybe two if it’s a large company where you can’t get everyone relevant into one meeting, and the only point of that meeting should be a basic culture fit appraisal and working out that Im not a dog or three cats in a trench coat pretending to be a human.
- tomc1985 5y agoTech in general seems to be all about what is good for 90% of users and fuck-all for everyone else. It seems like anything servicing the long-tail anywhere gets squished. In hiring, in user interface design, in features, and in competition. I really, really, really hate this dynamic.
- nine_k 5y agoThe long tail is well served, as long as it can be done at a premium. A desire to have an electric roadster used to be extremely niche, but Tesla Motors had trouble fulfilling all the orders for their new and rather raw $70k car. If those craving it only had $15k as a rule, that likely won't fly.
- thrwn_frthr_awy 5y ago> "we don't think job boards are the future" Most likely this statement is a proxy for "it doesn't make enough money." Which is reasonable, but I think that is more difficult to say publicly.
- bluefirebrand 5y agoI'm wondering if a job board is at odds with their push to be more Business to Business. Companies might not want to partner with them if they are giving an avenue for employees to find other jobs.
- yawnxyz 5y agosounds like it's leaving a massive opportunity for someone to fill
- hobs 5y agoI don't think so - I think they are leaving the market because their differentiation isn't enough in the marketplace to actually sell it enough to be interesting. While a small group of users liked it, it clearly did not have traction in the greater community.
- jc4p 5y agolove running into old friends on HN, so some very stale info from someone who hasn’t worked at SO in many years: while the job board was differentiated and nice from the programmers side, it’s really difficult to convince recruiters to use a new system with new rules. most (not all ofc) just want to spray and pray. as a job seeker being told “you’re gonna have the upper hand here” is amazing, as a recruiter it makes it very difficult to sell to unless you really own the market.
- Varqu 5y agoYes! We run a job board platform in Europe (and just entered the US market last year) Turns out that developers really appreciate a no-bullshit approach with: - mandatory salary brackets - full tech stack and easy filtering - our own dev maturity test (what tests do they write, do they have dedicated QAs, etc) It enables us to quickly grow to over 60'000 monthly visitors (combined) and the companies are also more than happy to advertise. For anyone interested: - US: https://devitjobs.us https://devitjobs.us - Europe: https://devitjobs.uk https://devitjobs.uk, https://swissdevjobs.ch https://swissdevjobs.ch, https://germantechjobs.de https://germantechjobs.de
- blago 5y agoInteresting how GitHub shut down their job board last August too. It sounds like a trend.
- immibis 5y agoMicrosoft owns LinkedIn
- SkyPuncher 5y agoIt's not a defensible product space. It's incredibly over saturated, highly dependent on the job market, has a constantly rotating supply side (job seekers only use when they're looking for a job), and has little supply side incentive.
- Varqu 5y agoThey run the top most visited by developers website. Which means the supply is already there. Companies would do basically everything to reach the developers, so I this would be a perfect match.
- graderjs 5y agoThe reason might be if SO has investors maybe their investors are investing into another job board platform and you know they sort of quietly told them we need you to sunset this to benefit our other portfolio company.