
Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15% - nsoonhui
https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/05/07/the-way-forward/
======
wiradikusuma
I understand they had to do it (I'm sure we—their users—understand), but I
can't understand the need for bullshit business-speak.

Just say, "Due to circumstances you all familiar with, business is slow, so I
have to let go of some people from X department."

Putting up bullshit like this is like adding insult to injury. Especially,
since their user demographics are mostly people who don't like bullshit.

~~~
sytelus
When Spolesky brought on this guy, I was shocked. He had no profile or
activity on Stackoverflow. He wasn’t even a developer and his resume indicated
he was just generic management talking head. Given how much Spolesky emphasis
“product person” to be in charge as opposed to white label MBAs, none of that
made any sense. I’d to only imagine he was cashing out and part of the deal
from investors was to place this guy who they trusted to grow “enterprise”
business. Just why every beautiful startup must make their owners billionaires
while getting ruined?

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Just why every beautiful startup must make their owners billionaires while
> getting ruined?_

That's literally there in the definition of a VC-backed business model. You
get a lot of money now, in exchange for some amount of ownership and
_expectation that the business will grow_ , whether it makes sense for it or
not. The investors want a return on their investment, so they absolutely will
push the business past the point of breaking; if they can extract their return
before it burns down, then they win.

Or, in short, from investor PoV, _startups are cattle, not pets_.

~~~
mywittyname
I feel like putting a talking head in charge of SE risks limiting growth. SE
is a business that benefits greatly from leadership that understands their
core demographics.

I'm sure they still still grow, because SE is an incredibly useful product.
But I think a bad leader poses a serious risk of constraining natural growth
by pushing monetization too hard and driving away organic growth.

------
psankar
I do not have data to back this claim. But the tone of this blog post makes me
feel that, the new CEO is an incompetent person who decided to use the vehicle
of the covid virus to announce job cuts that he has planned a long time ago.

With the crap ton of marketing buzz in the post, and the casual mention of the
layoffs, I don't think the CEO or the new board seem to care all that much
about the laidoff employees.

Again, this is my personal feeling and may not be the truth.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
> new CEO is an incompetent person who decided to use the vehicle of the covid
> virus to announce job cuts that he has planned a long time ago.

Why would that indicate the CEO is _incompetent_?

Doesn’t it stand to reason that _management_ would and should take advantage
of the whatever is happening in the wider scheme of things to advance their
narrative, and that doing so is indicative of _competence_ within _their_
frame of reference?

~~~
apk-d
Take a look around this comment section. This move isn't being received well
by _anyone_ and _nobody_ is buying his bullshit. That, and mass layoffs are
typically an excellent indicator of incompetence.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
I think you’re missing my point.

The CEO likely doesn’t give a hoot about HN’s opinion.

They probably care about their bonus and how it all advances themselves on
their career path.

~~~
apk-d
> They probably care about their bonus and how it all advances themselves on
> their career path.

That doesn't sound _anything_ like the priorities of a competent CEO. I think
you're missing my point, too.

------
syntaxing
I was kinda confused why covid-19 is effecting StackOverflow. After reading
it, a good portion of layoffs is the Talent team with the reason of planned
long term hiring freeze so they won't need (edit) this product offering for
the near future.

Side note, the original title of the posts is "A message from our CEO: The Way
Forward"

~~~
kcole16
This is referring to StackOverflow's Talent product, which is a software
engineering focused hiring platform. Seems like they furloughed the sales and
marketing team for this product, due to an expected slowdown in market-wide
hiring.

~~~
syntaxing
Ohh I misunderstood, I thought that's what they call their recruiting team

------
qppo
I don't really know much about this guy or his business, but I can't help but
comment that the tone and phrasing he uses comes off as "I'm an asshole."

I know that's less than civil, but that was just what I gleaned. It struck me
as someone who doesn't care but wants to sound like they do.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Sorry, but can you explain why? Impugning someone’s character like this seems
unfair if you can’t point to anything more concrete than a vague feeling. What
makes you think this guy is an uncaring asshole?

Also, to be clear, this is a quarterly update on the entire business, not a
lay-off announcement. I highly doubt that anything related to the layoffs was
news to anyone in the company. That was likely covered in internal
communications over the past few weeks.

------
kalesh
Have they hired a alien attack movie scriptwriter? - Since then, we have
entered a new era, and societies in every corner of the globe face a historic
challenge. We are reminded that for all of our advances as a civilization,
nature can be a powerful force which we must adapt and innovate around.

------
megadeth
Hate to see this business speak from a company I admire. Bad market to be in
as a software engineer, with so many talented folks available.

------
gforz
Could not finish reading through it. Could have kept it straight to the point
rather than convoluting with unnecessary details.

~~~
acid__
Would it be uncharitable to suggest that perhaps that was the goal?

------
ecmascript
SO has really become a toxic place which is run by politically correct people.
Just look at this corporate speak blog. I don't understand how the corona
virus would impact them so hard they have to cut jobs, seems like a bullshit
reason to just cut people off imo. Every company should be prepared for bad
times.

I have no sympathy for the management. They have obviously done a poor job.

~~~
maltelandwehr
At first, I did not understand either how Corona would affect them. But they
explain it in the article: a big part of their revenue comes from job
listings. Since very few companies are hiring right now, that revenue is down
significantly.

------
alkonaut
How is StackOverflow negatively affected by the Pandemic?

Is it that their customers go under, or see the services as nonessential so
they get less revenue?

It seems like it should be one of those Netflix-type companies that do better
when everyone is remote, than they do otherwise.

~~~
SimonPStevens
Their main revenue is from two things. Firstly from their job boards which
will be significantly reduced as few companies are hiring. Then secondly from
advertising which will also be reduced during times of recession.

The product you think of as stack overflow that will probably is really just a
way for them to drive the right kind of traffic to those revenue sources.

~~~
novaRom
Very plausible reasons indeed, but is it probably the same for many other
companies? Just wondering if a chain reaction has already started.

~~~
toyg
That chain reaction is called “recession” and yes, it has already started.
Expect more and more similar announcements from here to Christmas.

------
davidjnelson
> These actions primarily affected sales and customer success teams within our
> Talent business, which is dependent on the hiring environment.

------
dang
Is there a good third-party article we can change this to? Bad-news press
releases are notoriously difficult to read.

------
adingus
"We're all in this together..." Except you, because you're laid off.

------
kungato
Is it time for SO 2? Lets be real, many articles are out of date with answers
being for older versions, the culture is getting worse and the company is
looking to cash in on the thing. Could we use a blank slate?

~~~
Etheryte
Conceptually, Stack Overflow did something amazing for its time. I agree
however that after all these years there are now visible shortcomings in the
approach, and simply starting the same thing from scratch wouldn't solve the
problems.

The primary format of SO is Q&A. Some Q&A is timeless, as in the answer is
still relevant today as it was 10 years ago. Some Q&A invalidates quickly and
would probably need to be touched up every year or so. How to account for
both?

Another issue SO strongly struggles with is the same entry-level questions
being asked again and again, in different wordings. I wouldn't really put the
onus on the newcomers here, as they're often new to programming to begin with
and thus couldn't know what's a problem other people might have already had,
how to search for things etc. But the tooling to help them avoid those
situations is crucial. Currently, possibly related questions are shown when
writing a new question, but the problem still persists. How to better avoid
this problem? Is this simply a matter of nailing down on the related questions
algorithm or is there a better approach?

And lastly, the company. There are many very real cases where the change in
management has hurt the SO both as a site and a community. I think the answer
lies somewhere between SO, MDN and Wikipedia - with all the ups and downs it
offers. Clearly, making a global knowledge base and then tacking on investor
interest later doesn't work out all that well. To date, I don't think this
problem is really solved, as Wikipedia also has a number of issues it
struggles with. Without addressing this core issue, the rest are more or less
irrelevant with time.

~~~
scarface74
_Some Q &A invalidates quickly and would probably need to be touched up every
year or so. How to account for both?_

I’ve seen answers regarding my two major areas of interest - AWS and .Net Core
being updated by the original authors as new features came out and new
versions of the framework are released.

~~~
Etheryte
While this is one approach, I think it's only a partial solution. Stack
Overflow has a huge user base and many users who were once active are now
either occasional visitors or have moved on completely. I think something akin
to a stale vote would work, because trying to organically out-vote an answer
that has gathered hundreds of votes over the years but is now out of date
doesn't really work. Another alternative is Stack Overflow's "community owned"
answers, but those bring another layer of politics into play.

------
mysterEFrank
I don't get it, how are they affected by COVID

~~~
nrb
According to the post, it’s due to contraction with their talent sourcing
product:

> This week, we reduced our global workforce by approximately 15%. Most of the
> affected employees were furloughed, except for employees and contractors in
> regions where furloughs were unfortunately not an option. These actions
> primarily affected sales and customer success teams within our Talent
> business, which is dependent on the hiring environment.

~~~
CameronNemo
What I find notable is that close to 15% (at least 7.5% if "most" means what
everyone thinks it means) of the workforce is sales and marketing for a
service that is not even core to their business.

~~~
kenneth
Pretty sure that Talent is over 50% of their revenue. The primary way they
monetize Stack Q&A websites is through job placements.

There are other websites that are surprisingly monetizing through this, like
AngelList.

------
cvaidya1986
Assuming there was enough runway for a rainy day, this could be a great time
to invest in some R&D projects that will pay off dividends when the sun starts
to shine again.

~~~
vkou
If those projects are worth investing in, why weren't they invested in before
COVID?

It's not that the engineers have nothing to do - it's that there is little
revenue, and no amount of features they ship is going to change that.

------
ryanwaggoner
Can one of the many commenters decrying this as "bullshit business-speak"
explain to me what is so terrible about this? I'm genuinely asking.

My theory is that this is a good example of why HN discourages editorializing
in titles. The current title here ("Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by
approximately 15%") sets you up to think that this is a layoff announcement by
SO. But from reading the first paragraph, I think this is just an externally-
facing quarterly update on the business overall. I suspect that nothing about
the layoffs here was news to anyone in the company, and they had plenty of
internal communications around it already. And even here, the language about
layoffs seems fine to me:

 _This has been a tough week at Stack Overflow, and taking care of each other
is more important than ever right now. Like companies large and small, we have
had to make difficult choices in order to reflect the market conditions. This
week, we reduced our global workforce by approximately 15%. Most of the
affected employees were furloughed, except for employees and contractors in
regions where furloughs were unfortunately not an option. These actions
primarily affected sales and customer success teams within our Talent
business, which is dependent on the hiring environment.

We made these decisions with great care and only after assessing and
leveraging all other options. We’ve paused all non-critical hiring, suspended
our travel budget for all of Q2 and Q3, and cut marketing and software costs
significantly.

Reducing our headcount was a painful but necessary decision, of no fault of
the employees affected, and one that I take full accountability for as the
CEO. We did this in order to ensure that we can serve our customers and
community in the long-run._

What is the problem with that, specifically?

The rest of the post reads like a perfectly normal update, written in a
slightly formal tone, which seems appropriate to me. If you're running a
business with hundreds of employees, tens of thousands of customers, tens of
millions of readers, and other stakeholders like partners, vendors, and
investors, you probably are going to be a little more formal with your tone.
It takes uncommon skill to write the kind of updates that Buffet or Bezos
manage to pull off. Just because this is anodyne doesn't make it "bullshit" or
this guy "incompetent" or "an asshole".

Can someone point out anything specific that they found so off-putting about
this quarterly update on the business?

~~~
cutemonster
Personally I don't think it was that bad -- however it's so much text and
words so I couldn't read all of it. It could have been 1/4 it's length?

------
cosmodisk
I could probably understand why they did this,as hiring will be non existent
for the upcoming months,but pages upon pages of BS about core values,culture,
viruses,and whatever else comes along just left bad taste in my mouth.

------
sebleon
For a second, I thought this title claimed that stack overflow reduces the
need for software engineers by 15%. Now I’m curious what the actual number
might be, given the productivity boost that it provides...

------
krzyk
I don't get it. It is as if Zoom would announcing job cuts "because COVID-19".

Stackoverflow is an internet service providing answers to questions, why would
they get lower counts of traffic?

~~~
sokoloff
If Zoom had a division that went around doing Zoom room installs in offices, I
can easily imagine them having cuts or furloughs in that group.

------
AJRF
An aside: Anyone else finding themselves adding site:github.com rather than
site:stackoverflow.com to their Google searches more now?

~~~
jkhaui
Yes. As a frontend developer, my default mode now is to almost always go
straight to searching issues in the GitHub repo of an npm package I'm using.

I only end up on SO when googling very generic questions about React,
TypeScript or JavaScript (and sometimes CSS). Also, the top Google results
from SO are often from ~2017 or earlier which puts me off

------
neonate
[https://www.businessinsider.com/stack-overflow-reduces-
workf...](https://www.businessinsider.com/stack-overflow-reduces-workforce-
furloughs-layoffs-2020-5)

[http://archive.md/8mjey](http://archive.md/8mjey)

------
sdepablos
In this time of uncertainty, wouldn't be more humane to just reduce the salary
15% to everyone?

~~~
maltelandwehr
From a business perspective it would be a bad idea. If you have three revenue
streams (Advertising, Enterprise communication product, hiring
product/marketplace), of which two are doing very well and one is not doing
well (hiring) you need to continue investing in what is working and stop
burning money on what is not working. Otherwise you will lose your competitive
edge in the areas that are working well.

In the end, the responsibility of the CEO is not to give every employee the
best life possible but to ensure the long-term success and survival of the
company. If this is ensured, it also means job security for everyone not laid
off!

~~~
teddyuk
This is a one off shock, they don’t need to do this

~~~
nathanaldensr
One of, if not _the_ , _largest_ shocks in history. Already bigger than 2008.
This time in history isn't a minor outlier.

------
bluedino
>> Fireside Chat

How did this term make it to the buzzword bingo? What does it even mean?

~~~
techslave
it’s a quite famous US historical reference.

------
FpUser
So many words for a very simple thing - _we just cutting down headcount_

------
shultays
What is stack overflow's work force? The devs of website? Admins?

------
techslave
don’t understand the complaints. this is a quarterly news update. hence the
tone. there’s nothing wrong with it.

the defect is that the layoffs are just a paragraph in passing. on its face it
appears highly insensitive, but come on. i’ll give benefit of the doubt that
it was dealt with internally much better. it only gets an inch of print in
this report because it’s a very small factor in the general news of the
company.

actually the main defect here is that the HN title is highly editorialized.

------
paulcole
Pretty tone deaf.

> We are facing this situation together.

Well, approximately 85% of you are.

------
ciconia
Fwiw just how many of the people posting negative comments on here are paying
SO users? It's still a business that needs to make money. Just saying...

------
Trasmatta
> This is a key moment in our company’s history, as the whole world is dealing
> with significant uncertainty. Know that you are not alone. We are facing
> this situation together. Our goal is to stay focused on living our core
> values and actively connect with teammates, our community, and our
> customers.

The phrase "We are facing this together" must sound really hollow if you're
one of the people who has been laid off...

~~~
mattigames
It's becoming a meme, like a viral tweet said

> I like how ads have gone from “buy a toyota” to “this is a difficult and
> uncertain time for us all...buy a toyota”

Like when ever company says how we are in this together or how emphatetic they
are in these difficult times it just fills me with dread, the opposite of what
they were aiming for, it's clear that talking about the crisis is now just
another trick in the PR department of almost every single company so there is
no way to make those words not feel empty, so I rather don't hear them say
anything about it at all.

~~~
gorgoiler
“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.”

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_(1976_film)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_\(1976_film\))

This comment isn’t a rebuttal — I agree with you and every time I mull on
these things I am reminded of the memorable saying from the movie _Network_.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore. I'm buying a Toyota!

On edit: wait, I don't even have a driver's license!

------
scarface74
He could have stopped with everything before...

“Despite the impact to our Talent business...”

Why mix in a lay-off announcement with a marketing spiel?

------
ChainsawTom
I definitely read this as Stack Overflow was responsible for there needing to
be 15% less developers/techies.

------
demarq
when the guy firing you says

"We are facing this situation together."

how distant from reality can someone be?

------
chx
Yeah, they brought this guy in to be the hatchet man. Executes just as
expected.

------
kahlonel
That's a whole lot of bullshit for a proactive backlash protection.

------
Markoff
Does this mean more or less rude comments on this toxic website?

------
ykevinator
Who's going to do all the flagging as duplicate now?

------
villgax
SO is gonna be gobbled up by Github Issues altogether.

~~~
adventured
The only certainty with Stack Exchange, is that it's going to end up in the
belly of one of just a few possible tech companies: Microsoft, Oracle, Google,
Salesforce, etc.

They'll slash most of the communities away (even if they initially lie about
their intentions and pretend they won't do that) and keep the focus on the
tech part of the network.

Knowledge services are not great businesses, they're almost entirely
incompatible with the venture capital model. Those that take VC all eventually
get force-liquidated, without exception. Stack Exchange is still pretending to
be a knowledge service. As they took on more venture capital they pivoted to
being primarily HotJobs 3.0. The only way they were going to avoid that
outcome, is to 1) never take major venture capital 2) stay super thin
operationally; they did neither, so they get liquidated, it's only a question
of time now.

The Internet will need to replace Stack Exchange with a new platform in the
near future, as it'll combo rot and most of the communities will be killed off
after SE is sold. I'd advise someone/s out there to get started on replacing
SE right now, as by the time you get a new platform up to speed (assume a few
years), SE as it has been thought of over the prior decade will be on its last
legs and the new platform will be in prime position to step in. And please, do
it right, do not take venture capital, which is a devil's bargain for
knowledge services: they will kill you in the end, guaranteed, every single
time. I've been closely watching this stupid story repeat in the knowledge
space for over two decades now. Go the non-profit route ideally, or
alternatively go with the wikiHow approach and stay thin (it's the sole viable
option to survive long-term as an independent knowledge service business).

~~~
MauranKilom
Codidact ([https://codidact.org](https://codidact.org)) has been born out of
all the recent (and not so recent) drama over at SE. It is looking to do
exactly the things you describe.

------
namelosw
> _Closed. This message is off-topic._

------
yobert
Am I the only one who interpreted this headline as: The global workforce of
programmers would be 15% bigger if it weren't for Stack Overflow. ?

------
noncoml
I have some karma to burn, so here it goes:

Be shitty to people and they will turn their back to you.

I am ashamed to admit it, but I am happy to see companies that embrace being
shitty to users, fall like a house of cards.

Yes, SO embraced being shitty to users and creating a toxic environment for
far too long, despite their latest weak attempts to fix it.

I hope eBay, Paypal and Yelp are next.

Also somewhat Reddit. They are ok for consuming data, but if you try to post
anything it's pretty user hostile.

~~~
all_blue_chucks
You think mean comments are a SO or reddit problem? The fact that anonymous
online discourse gets rude and heated has been known since the days of usenet.

There was even some of this on BBS forums, but that was a more civilized time,
likely because we knew the people we were talking to were within our local
calling area in most cases.

None of this is new. It's a humanity problem, not a technology problem.

~~~
unishark
> None of this is new. It's a humanity problem, not a technology problem.

When you put it that way though, maybe technology can address it by somehow
humanizing the communication more. I bet people are researching ways to do
this.

~~~
MauranKilom
FWIW, StackOverflow have (as mentioned in the blog post) deployed a machine
learning system for detecting unfriendly comments.

------
foobarbecue
Furloughed, mostly

~~~
rdslw
please, don't drink their kool-aid.

it's fired, not furloughed.

it's to be able to not lose ability to generate profit, not "to be able to
serve our customers"

it's to save 85% who we think are more worth, not "we are all in this
together"

~~~
foobarbecue
I'm confused. You think they're lying when they say the employees were
furloughed? They might be lying but I don't see any reason to belive that.
Having been furloughed during government shutdowns myself I understand the
situation a bit.

------
LandR
I find most answers on stack overflow to be useless and a lot are just
garbage.

I feel the whole site needs a big banner "PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS IN PRODUCTION"

------
dep_b
Chance of getting a meaningful reply on any technical question which answer
does not simply involve providing the documentation for the given framework or
language involved:

\- Stack Overflow: 1% \- Reddit: 8% \- The Daily WTF forum: 81%

This is internet is broken. I want the old one back.

~~~
dan-robertson
I think it strongly depends on the tags of the question. In particular I think
you will poor quality answers on popular, high volume tags like JavaScript.

~~~
dep_b
[https://what.thedailywtf.com/topic/27134/how-do-i-parse-
this...](https://what.thedailywtf.com/topic/27134/how-do-i-parse-this-crap-
json)

This is the question I'm talking about. Apart from people posting funny memes
there's some genuine helping going on. Same question on SO: no response. Same
question on Reddit: one serious response.

People can downvote me all they want but I see that decentralized bulletin
boards seem to work a lot better even in 2020.

If I have legitimate professional questions I need to find a forum for it,
because that's where people hang out that are actually interested in the
community instead of rep or likes.

------
teddyuk
I think any company that lays off people at this time are scum, they should be
embarrassed and rescind this.

There are loans available in the us and uk to keep people employed.

I won’t use stack overflow for the rest of may, it isn’t much but fuck them.

They know the people they let go can’t get another job at the moment.

~~~
crummy
How easy is it to get those loans? I know in the US the PPP seems easy to get
the bigger you are, otherwise if you don't have a tight relationship with a
bank you probably missed out.

~~~
teddyuk
If they missed out then the ceo should resign, it is basic business sense

------
s9w
I will totally fulfill that HN clichee of people in disbelief that any tech
company has employees... But: TIL they have 250 of them. It's a fully
automated site, huh.

~~~
freepor
Every site with user-generated content has an army of employees of various
sorts, trying to make sure it doesn't descend into a morass. The natural un-
moderated state of any community site is complete and total garbage.

~~~
twomoretime
One man's trash...

~~~
freepor
Well "trash" is a matter of opinion, but profitability isn't. If a community
is left unmoderated, it gets so toxic and extreme that advertisers won't go
near it with a 10 foot pole.

