

Will high reputation in Stack Overflow help to get a good job? - bytesong
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/20407/will-high-reputation-in-stack-overflow-help-to-get-a-good-job

======
risotto
Please don't forget that your _real_ reputation is what definitely gets you a
great job.

"Hey bossman, my great friend XXX, who I worked with at YYY, is getting bored
over there. He's a great programmer and would be a great fit for our team and
the infrastructure position we have open."

And bossman will definitely give him an interview and massive bonus points for
the personal recommendation and relationship, and wisely make him a better
offer than some stranger that comes in from StackOverflow or GitHub.

This cuts both ways.

As an engineer, you want a job that a colleague recommends to you, far before
some random posting you see on StackOverflow Careers.

------
AlexC04
I read the article a while back by the chap who got headhunted based solely on
his Stack rep. It made me think "heck. I'd best get started on that".

So I made a conscious effort to answer questions. I loaded up the questions
list and ... nothing. Not an effing thing. All these questions from such a
broad base of so many topics. I didn't know the answer to anything.

 _F_ I thought. Then a little later I asked a question that I needed an answer
to... and I got points. Lots of them. And "badges". And I voted on an answer -
more points and badges.

So I thought WOW I can ask my way up to 100k reputation! Fells a little like
cheating doesn't it?

Then I reconsidered. Actually the 100,000 questions would be just as valuable
as proof of skill, since it's all contributing to your 10,000 hours of
practise (See Malcom Gladwell) - furthermore - as you contribute questions,
you help build the encyclopedia of knowledge and someone else might find your
answer in their "first go".

I think it's really neat that Stack is this odd sort of community where it's
virtually impossible to give more than you get from it but simply by
participating, even as a supplicant, you contribute to the greater good.

Just last night for example I learned about using chrome for profiling in
Javascript. [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4240416/reverse-
engineeri...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4240416/reverse-engineering-
the-dom-javascript-events-whats-going-on) and it was good :)

~~~
city41
Yes but anyone can look at your profile and see your rep was earned via asking
instead of answering. Whether SO rep is relevant or not is debatable, but if
it is, rep earned by answering is almost certainly more valuable.

~~~
AlexC04
I understand where you're coming from - but - I'm of a mixed opinion of
whether that's actually true. Asking a lot of questions might be equally
valuable if they're questions of increasing complexity, that show growth and
development over time.

Back to Malcom Gladwell's "Outliers" (in which he states that the requirement
to master anything seems to be 10,000 hours of practise).

With 10,000 'hours of questions', assuming progression and growth, would you
not find yourself at the same or similar level of mastery as someone who'd
provided 10,000 hours of answers?

Quite frequently nowadays, I find myself at work seeing a question about
something not functioning quite right - (height and width of a graph, cross
browser/OS page performance & display) and I find that I've got an immediate
answer, because I asked the question on stack over the weekend (when I'm doing
my fun projects).

Another interesting point - that I've just noticed this morning, is that I
think there may be an Algorithm in Stack that "bubbles up" questions about
things that you've asked questions about in the past.

My initial attempt to "give back to stack" were met with nowt because I
couldn't find any questions on topics that I have relative expertise on - but
- now that I've asked a number of questions on the things that apply to me
(DOM, jQuery, Ajax, Selenium, PHPUnit etc...) Questions with those tags seem
to be closer to the top of my list.

Maybe you've got to ask enough questions for stack to know what questions to
ask of you.

It's really neat. I actually quite like it there :)

------
Encosia
Data point: As someone with a five-figure Stack Overflow reputation, I have
received zero (0) job offers related to my Stack Overflow account.

~~~
daeken
I also have a five-figure rep on SO and haven't received any job offers.
However, I was just on the hunt for a new job a few weeks ago, and I'm fairly
confident that my rep did help me get in the door in certain situations. No
way to actually know for sure, but it was mentioned.

------
vibragiel
Well it can't hurt.

Of course, you can't fully describe a person by just a number. It's
theoretically possible that a highly reputed Stack Overflow user could be an
awful programmer at work, but I'm sure that the intersection of "highly
reputed SO users" and "people you'd regret to hire for a programmer position"
is a very tiny set.

I think that number contains much more significant information for that kind
of position than whatever you could extract from a CV or an interview.

~~~
troels
From a CV, yes. From an interview?

Maybe I'm just naïve.

~~~
vibragiel
How thorough would an interview need to be to match thousands of thumbs ups by
thousands of tech-savvy (to say the least) people?

~~~
troels
OK, point taken. But it's very different kinds of information that you can
pick up in an interview vs. some kind of metric (Be it SO score or diplomas).

------
ig1
What gets you headhunted is posting intelligent answers to tech questions on
Linkedin Answers. Because that's where the HR people and recruiters hangout.

~~~
TorKlingberg
But do they read tech questions? Is it worth their time trawling for random
technical people there? Even for recruiters outside the San Francisco area?

~~~
ig1
They certainly look at who the top-rated people in each category are, I used
to regularly get calls from recruiters who saw me there (this was in London).

------
tomafro
I wouldn't be swayed either way by a high Stack Overflow rating.

That said, asking and answering technical questions can be really beneficial.
It's much harder to write about something clearly than some people realise,
and a great skill to develop.

Also, rather than the whole reputation, I might take interest in particular
answers: a single solid answer to a difficult question demonstrates a lot more
than many point scoring answers to easier ones.

------
torial
Last year when I was interviewing, I didn't mention my rank (which is so-so),
but mentioned that my answers could be found, and if they wanted to see how I
answered, and determine my competence, they would be able to do so. I believe
that for at least one set of interviews making the additional information
available helped me to get further.

But that was not my "rep"...

------
retube
I doubt it would harm you. I certainly don't expect to get headhunted through
SO (my score is low 4-digits), but I will be putting the link on my CV - as I
probably will my NH profile - I don't have any other online presence (no fb,
no blog, no github, no li). And although my score isn't super-high, I don't
spend a lot of time on the site. I'll ask a question from time to time, and a
couple of times a week see if there's anything I can answer. Hopefully my
profile will give a reasonable overview of my general competence.

------
kls
I don't think it helps at all, maybe a little bit of publicity but I think if
that is your goal, you may be better served to place efforts elsewhere. I
would wager posting on HN has better odds of landing you a job due to exposure
than Stack Overflow. In the end networking is the golden rule for finding
employment. HN or Stack Overflow can be used to that end, you just have to
remember to foster relationships in the community. Doing so will pay far more
dividends that pure knowledge displays.

------
huwigs
A Google recruiter cold-called me -- well, cold-LinkedIn me -- based on my
Stack Overflow responses. I did a phone interview even though I wasn't really
interested in leaving my current job.

That, plus my location requirements, plus a so-so interview, plus the fact
that I wasn't particularly qualified for the job, surely led to the following
"Thanks, but no thanks" followup call.

~~~
AlexC04
oh. this is interesting. Is there a place on Stack or Linkedin where I can tie
my profiles together? I did a quick scan and couldn't see anything (or should
I put it in my stack-bio?).

~~~
huwigs
I don't know of any way to link them. I post using my real name on
StackOverflow, for precisely the reason of "brand management" or what-have-
you. Presumably my name and current employer were unique enough for the
recruiter to put two and two together on his own.

------
ecounysis
It's part of your reputation portfolio which includes personal references,
blogs, open source activities, and whatever else the employer believes to be
predictive of the value you will add to the company. If the employer only
cares about your SO reputation then it will certainly help. More often than
not, I suppose it is only one data point of several which are considered.

------
radioactive21
It would be sad to see someone get a job solely on his/her Stack Overflow
reputation, but I wouldn't object to it helping you get an edge over other
candidates.

If I was an employer looking at a candidate, obviously I am more concern about
the quality of each answer than the quantity of each answer.

------
dangrossman
I wouldn't expect many random job offers from simply being a user on
StackOverflow, but shortly after posting a CV on the StackOverflow Careers
site (which displays your StackOverflow reputation on the CV), I was contacted
by an Amazon.com recruiter.

------
joezydeco
It might not hurt, but as an interviewer I'd be curious to know if you earned
those karma points during office hours.

~~~
raganwald
Did you see Joel Spolsky's note about people spending all day on StackOverflow
when they should be working? He suggests that they're _underemployed_ ,
meaning they have not been given the appropriate balance of challenge and
workload at their current job.

Imagine you have two applicants or roughly equal aptitude/suitability. When
asked why they're looking for a job, both state that they are not being
challenged in their current position.

One seems to have done a lot of posting on SO, HN, and so forth during
business hours. You like their posts but not that they were made during
business hours.

They other has no record of HN or SO posts. Do you assume that the other
person was hard at work at the last job and hire them?

You might be right, but then again, it could be that they were watching the
clock in ways you can't detect so easily. Maybe they read books about
programming. Maybe they read all these sites but didn't contribute. Maybe they
took a lot of smoke breaks.

You _know_ that one of the two did a lot of non-job stuff while being
underemployed, but you also know that you like their posts. I think it's
reasonable to hire them anyways, and also reasonable to pass on them.

But what isn't reasonable, IMO, is to give the candiate with less information
a "free pass" by hiring them without further investigation. I would ask:

"You say you weren't challenged in the last job. You must have had some free
time. What did you do with it?"

If they tell you about all the extra value-add they created for their
employer, great. If they tell you about surfing job boards or reading books
about programming, great. If they stare blankly at you, dig deeper.

This is speculative, of course. YMMV.

~~~
joezydeco
I initially meant the comment one way: that is, the person was probably
spending more time cruising StackOverflow instead of paying attention to work
tasks.

But you have a point. We all have small spaces in the course of a day where
we're not actively engaged in real work (as I am right now). Once can spend it
on Facebook, or one can be looking for things to keep the knives sharp.

~~~
catshirt
I post on HN and spend some time or IRC or similar discussing programming
during "work hours" (though I have bizarre self-inflicted hours). It's
actually become pretty crucial to my work flow; I am able to get some down
time while still keeping the gears running. Short but somewhat-frequent
lurking sessions keep me motivated and on track without burning me out.

