
Upgrade your career - Anon84
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/11/05.html
======
justlearning
"They’re the elite of the elite of the best programmers out there. They’re the
people who participate in Stack Overflow..."

participating in SO makes you elite? Although, there are many convincing real
case scenarios discussed by few (perhaps fit for 'elite' label), they are
overshadowed by the majority - the badge-gatherers.

What I found (mostly) in SO is more of karmaholics, copying/pasting info from
the web. Imho, it is more of a human-enabled search engine for your questions
- you get a compiled list of filtered result for your questions, instead of
you filtering google results.

~~~
Quarrelsome
The major flaw in StackOverflow is the huge difference in rep you can gain
depending on how many people use the same tech as you do. Answering C#
questions, even insanely easy ones will get you loads of rep (between +100 to
+1000) but that really specific and difficult post about some edge case in a
niche technology will probably get you +10 rep, mebbe +30 if you're lucky.

~~~
DrJokepu
I can't help but completely agree with that. After all, that's how I got most
of my reputation score on StackOverflow. On the other hand, advocates of
smaller but prouder technologies (such as Lisp) are more generous with upvotes
than followers of more "mainstream" languages such as C# or Java.

~~~
scorpion032
No, I can personally testify to what the Op says; In general people in the
Python/django community are quite stingy with up votes.

See S Lott (or Alex Martelli) and Jon Skeet for instance; There are many, many
good programmers in Python tags giving many good answers; but to be only at +2
and an accepted.

In the C# tag on the other hand, or if you yourself, once in a while ask a
question on git or svn, you can notice how many upvotes and points those
questions get.

In general, I tend to up vote liberally, particularly for the Python community
related questions; but there is a limit to number of upvotes as well ;)

------
tom_b
I think there is a reasonable chance that the number of non-"shithole"
employers (using Joel's term from the article) that know the difference or
maybe even care that they are not getting the top 10% of talent is
overestimated.

I hope that StackOverflow Careers site does turn the job market upside down
for the best software developers. I completely respect the idea they are
trying to get across to employers looking for good candidates. But pointing at
some online reputation and technical question forum isn't going to help the
people who wouldn't know a great hacker from a turnip. Which, as discussed
here many times, is the vast majority of people, including other hackers.

I think that it is more effective for hackers to offer up portfolios of
completed work to potential employers. Projects the hacker designed,
implemented, integrated with the work of others, in X time, that serve Y
customers.

I also don't buy the idea that charging people to post their resume/CV before
it will show up in potential employer's searches helps filter so that only
"active, serious job applicants" show up (from the FAQ). Its a bit on the
slimy side - you're charging us for the content you're selling to someone
else?

~~~
roc
The charge stuck out to me too.

My immediate reaction was that making developers pay a fee to be searchable
doesn't seem to be turning the job market on its head at all.

I don't know if there's a non-slimy way to take money from developers when
your stated goal is to help developers make money. It comes off sounding like
any other job-assistance scam, where they take $20 to drop a resume into a
template and spam it to X-hundred companies.

If you only want serious job applicants, you could just require the developer
to check in every now and again.

And if this were really turning the market on its head it would need to
provide developers far more information that they could use to get a leg up
during negotiation and assessment. Developers would need to see things like:
who's looking at their resume, what salary range they're looking in, team
sizes, technologies in use, what search terms brought them to your name, what
other developers they looked at, how many positions they're trying to fill,
etc.

~~~
netcan
_I don't know if there's a non-slimy way to take money from developers when
your stated goal is to help developers make money._

Come one. I dig free too. Maybe it's even better if it's free. But you can't
just disqualify any attempt to charge for a service as slimy. $20 to post a
resume if it might connect you to a job you want is nothing. There is nothing
wrong with charging developers (or anyone else) when your stated aim is to
help them make money. In fact, that is a very normal way of doing business.
Charge money for something that is valuable because it helps you make money.

------
Tichy
"To a hiring manager, the fact that you took the time to help a fellow
programmer with a detailed answer in some obscure corner of programming
knowledge, and demonstrated mastery, is a lot more relevant than the Latin
Club you joined in school."

I wonder how relevant will the fact be that I dared to ask stupid noob
questions about new technologies I am trying to learn. Maybe it's best I stick
to giving Java advice :-/

~~~
brown9-2
You could always ask the "stupid noob" questions under a different identity if
this is something you are worried about.

Although personally I wouldn't really be all that crazy about working for the
kind of employer who cared about this thing ("What? You asked... questions?").

------
EugeneG
My concern is that this takes the fun out of participating in these kinds of
online communities. Learning and helping others for the sake of fun is one
thing, but doing it to beef up a resume is totally different.

~~~
mapleoin
/me goes to create 20 new accounts to ask questions that I can then answer
myself

~~~
swombat
Sounds like a lot more work than just answering a bunch of genuine questions.

~~~
stonemetal
yeah but you are guaranteed 20 up votes and the selected answer points too.
Basically the system is to easy to game since it is completely anonymous.

~~~
tedunangst
If only there were a way to detect accounts that are always upvoted by the
same group of accounts...

~~~
scorpion032
I think they do have a system in place that detects "upvoted answers by same
user, only, so many times"

------
nhashem
I was one of those engineers that hated their job a month ago, so my job
search commenced just around the time Joel and Jeff announced SO Careers.

At first the idea is intriguing. SO has a customer base of engineers, some of
whom are very talented and where there is a rough way of quantifying talent
through the karma points. Why not tap into that for the job market?

I was very tempted to sign up, because as I said, I was sick of my job and
finally ready to move on. But $99/year? I spent a handful of hours on
Craigslist and LinkedIn and within two weeks I had several interviews and two
good offers. And I'm not nearly an all-star, just a guy with 5 years
experience with LAMP (PHP and Perl) that isn't an idiot (or so I'd like to
think).

So is SO Careers really targeted at someone like me? Is it targeted at the
young post-college upstart? (If so, does he even have $100/year?) Is it
targeted at the uber-engineer that has his own FOSS project and is a minor
blog celebrity? (doesn't he have an even easier time picking and choosing his
jobs than I would?)

It doesn't make any sense to me, and what frustrates me most is their
explanation for charging is that "they need to make sure the candidates are
serious." If they want to avoid the "stale resume" (and why do Jeff/Joel keep
using the term 'CV'? are they too good for the word 'resume'?) problem on
existing job boards, charging someone isn't going to make a difference -- a
person is going to get hired and unless he immediately updates his SO careers
profile, his resume is now stale too. Also why would I pay $99/year for
something that I'll probably only use once a year, at most? Just how often am
I looking for a job exactly?

------
brown9-2
Joel do you pay any royalties to this employee whenever you use his photo?
<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/11/05work.jpg>

Because every time I've seen you use it in an article and/or on your site, it
really cracks me up.

~~~
babakian
Hi. I'm that employee (<http://babak.ghahremanpour.com/>). Joel does pay me
for using the photo. He babysits twice a month so my wife and I can enjoy
romantic dinners. I get shoulder rubs when I ask for them. And, he makes me
the best lattes (including latte art). All the other Fog Creekers are
jealous...but, they're not the ones entertaining JoS readers, by being funny
in a picture... :)

~~~
nickelplate
"He babysits twice a month" Really? That's pretty damn cool.

~~~
babakian
No, not really! (Though, he would make a good sitter.) I was trying to be
funny, but I guess I should stick to making silly faces in pictures.

However, he does enjoy making lattes for visitors at Fog Creek HQ, and people
around the office.

~~~
nickelplate
Damn. I just reread your original post and now I feel stupid. _slaps forehead_

------
thirdstation
Were I to pay for this kind of service I'd want to know who's looking at me
(not just how many times). Are the hiring companies vetted in any way?

There has to be more balance in the model. Employers can look at you and see
how your peers (or actually, anyone with an account) rate you. Hiring
companies should be similarly exposed.

As I understood it, we provide the content, we pay for the service, maybe we
get job offers from companies that don't suck. Who's getting the most value
from this arrangement.

(let me state for the record that I really, really like SO. I'm just iffy
about this careers business model)

It would be good to offer the service free to the unemployed (if that could
even be verified). It's terrible practice to charge people for access to a job
if they need the money for food.

Maybe a more fair arrangement would be to offer the service free after X
number of comments or questions contributed. That way, even if you don't get a
job out of it, there's a direct relationship between what you contribute to SO
and what you get (aside from all the free knowledge).

------
plinkplonk
pay for someone to put up my cv on their website?

Anyone I know who is a good developer has more offers than they can manage,
even in these times of recession. In my experience, there is no real need to
put one's cv up on a jobsite to get good offers.

Would any good developer pay to put their cv on SO? I find it difficult to
believe but I could be wrong. If anyone does this, please keep us posted on
how it went.

~~~
natevc2
I agree the best should already have offers.

But the premise of the SO careers is that 75% of the elite are not "delighted"
with their current job.

So for many being happy with the job isn't a priority?

~~~
plinkplonk
Well Joel did say, "They’re the elite of the elite of the best programmers out
there."

What I'm saying that a _good_ programmer has no problems getting offers all
the time , leave alone the "elite of the elite". Why should an "elite of the
elite" programmer pay to get job offers? And how does SO guarantee that anyone
who lists his cv there gets a better offer through SO than he does otherwhise?

Let's make this more concrete.I am decent programmer. Hardly "elite". Suppose
I wanted to apply to an "elite" company, say Google. I'd just pick up the
phone and ring up my friends who work there and ask them to get my cv int teh
right hands. A real "elite" programmer(say Linus) would have no issues getting
a job either. so this seems to be targeted at "less than elite" programmers
who don't have the networks/open source code bases / whatever to get noticed
by the right people. I still don't get exactly what SO charges for. I can put
my cv on dozens of "job sites for free (not that I really would, but
hypothetically I could). I can also add my SO profile url to my cv if I wanted
to.

So unless Joel and CO can get my cv in front of people I couldn't normally
reach what am I paying for exactly?

As I said earlier, I would love to hear from someone who actually got hired
through this site.

~~~
barrkel
I'll make it concrete too. First up though, I'm not particularly unhappy with
my career.

I live in London, and work remotely for a US company, but I'm not from London,
and haven't worked for any other companies in London. (I'm here because of my
girlfriend.) I have no colleagues in London. Most of my contacts are on the
west coast of the US, where it's somewhat awkward to get a job as a non-US
citizen, and doubly awkward if one wants to work remotely.

Now, _if_ I wanted to get a different job, what would I do? The best solution
would probably be a job right here in London, but I have no "in" here. But I
don't see that that lack has any obvious connection to my abilities as a
developer.

~~~
plinkplonk
"The best solution would probably be a job right here in London, but I have no
"in" here."

But this is exactly what I said. SO is targeted at people who don't have an
"in". "Elite " programmers generally get an "in" by their reputation and
contacts, not by paying to list a cv on some website(I don't believe SO can
overcome that lack of "in" any more than any other job site, but that is a
separate point. And anyway, if I am popular on SO I can just add the url to my
cv. Why pay SO?).

If I were in your position (US citizen looking for an "in" in London ) I would
make contacts in the local sw industry asap. Attend local ruby/c++/whatever-
tech-you-are-interested-in interest groups, attend major conferences and so on
_and make friends with talented people_.

Writing /contributing to open source software buys you quite a bit of "in"
with competent people anywhere.

People you know are the ultimate "in", followed closely (for devs) by shipping
products/open source software you wrote.

Anything SO can provide (in addition to a url to your contrinuctions which you
have anyway)is a weak/nonexistent imitation. And you certainly shouldn't (imo)
have to pay for it and (again imo) won't be getting value for money if you
did.

All that said, I do await SO career success stories. I'd love to be proven
wrong. I still maintain that "elite of elite" programmers (to use Joels'
words) won't pay SO (or anyone else) to host their cv.

~~~
barrkel
I'm not a US citizen; but I've attended various interest groups, but to be
frank, most of the folks I've met aren't up to much. Far better are the
contacts I've made while I've been speaking at conferences, and in that case,
it's the speakers who are the contacts, not the plebs who attend.

But like I said, I'm fairly happy with my current job, so I feel no big
pressure to integrate with the local scene.

------
Poiesis
I'm not going to look good on Stack Overflow. I like to spend my spare time
actually programming, you know? It's the difference between being a spectator
and playing the game.

Edit: Of course, a high SO rep might mean that you spend your working hours
answering questions there. Generally you're employed to do something else
[says the HN contributor, midday].

------
coliveira
SO is turning out to be a really nice case study on web business. (1) Create a
community that will provide free content to your web site; (2) charge them for
the privilege of saying to potential customers that they are contributing. :-)

I wouldn't be concerned about paying for this, but what I think that it will
not turn around the market as mentioned. Instead will create another hurdle
for developers. The issue is that after a potential employer contacts you, the
whole interview process will be the same as before. No Hollywood treatment you
can be sure.

Moreover, for many companies search is usually done by HR firms. The SO
interface will be used by these firms in the same way they currently use
linkedin, etc.

I would be much more interested in free web site where you can list your
accomplishments: projects finished, previous jobs, open source developed, so
employers can have an easier way to compare you to your peers.

~~~
richardw
There's also nothing stopping other sites from pointing at your SO profile.

------
megamark16
My goal is to establish a successful company that people will recognize as
being worthwhile and offering a useful product or service. Then if I'm ever in
a position where I'm looking to work for someone else again I can just point
to that and say "I did that". Hopefully that'll be enough street cred to get
me the job.

------
tptacek
What's going to prevent recruiters from seeing these? They're unbelievable
pests.

------
ejames
I just listened to one of the SO podcasts that happens to have more
information about this service. A few things of note (that have come up in
these comments):

The $99/yr is meant to be a nominal fee to keep out the riff-raff, basically
(my metaphor, not Joel's). SO will charge the hiring companies a much larger
amount to get the opportunity to search the database.

It seems like this was actually designed more from the perspective of the
person who is HIRING, not the person being hired. Joel mentions the
frustrations of sorting through a zillion resumes, many of them from people
who are wildly out of their league, and the reality that even a good resume
doesn't really prove that the person is a good coder. Two people with
identical backgrounds might have wildly different qualities as developers.
Looking at resumes isn't enough.

So the $99/yr is a deliberate barrier to entry to reduce spam, and your Stack
Overflow rep/answers are a second way to distinguish the quality of
developers.

The grand unifying theory that makes it work (if it does work) is that
developers want to work for the kind of company that takes enough care to look
at SO answers in order to distinguish great devs from mediocre ones. That's
why you would want to pay the $99 bucks just to have your resume searchable
there. In theory.

Also, as a deliberate, specific method to prevent recruiters from using the
database, you're required to give the name of the company that is hiring in
order to search the database. Recruiters won't do this since the dev could
skip the recruiter and go straight to the company, in which case the recruiter
can't get their commission.

------
jswinghammer
I'm excited to see where this goes. I've always felt like finding a job is
probably the most annoying thing to go through. It'd be nice to have companies
try to find you using parameters that they find useful. I'm not sure where it
will all end up but I'm glad that people are actively working on this problem
in a sane way.

I don't mind paying for the service either. It seems like something I'd want
to have exposure to and support to work towards a good solution to this
problem whatever it turns out to be.

------
socratees
Linking the SO account to career account sounds ridiculous. What if I'm not
interested in SO and not a reputable person there?

~~~
runevault
Then using SO careers isn't a good idea for you? The whole point is people who
want to try and leverage what they do on SO towards easing/improving the job
hunt.

Which if you aren't reputable on the site would tend to imply that isn't a
goal so why would you care?

~~~
socratees
Lets assume if an recruiter looks up my name on Stack Overflow careers, and
they won't find me there because I was busy I didn't have time for Stack
Overflow. Does that mean I'm not a good programmer? does that mean I don't
help my fellow programmers? How long until other sites come up with this point
based resume linking? Sounds like another online game to me now. Except that
you use your points in real life.

~~~
runevault
No matter what you do if a recruiter has foolish assumptions that you don't
happen to meet you are screwed. Just like how in many bigger companies you
have to survive the buzzword mine field to be considered for a position.

All part of dealing with people for the hiring process.

------
dgabriel
I can't imagine paying to have a searchable CV. I already hear from recruiters
about 2 or 3 times a month.

Other people have made a lot of money finding me and placing me with good
employers, or I've sought out specific positions at specific companies I was
interested in. While I can see _some_ value in linking CVs to SO accounts, it
seems like the wrong group is being asked to shell out.

------
richardw
To me, the value is in what a technical team could see about a developer. Are
they narrow-focused, or have a broad range of skills? Do they keep up with
newer technologies? Are they capable of answering tough questions, or do they
just skim the easy ones? Too many people say 5/5 for Java or whatever, but
don't have the first clue.

------
niyazpk
I don't know.

I love StackOverflow. From the first day StackOverflow was announced, I wanted
to be a part of it. I _knew_ that it would be successful and useful to at
least a small group of programmers.

StackOverflow Careers? Not much. Why do they have to defend this careers thing
so much? SO Careers is addressing a real problem, but I don't know if it is
the right solution.

I don't mind paying, (paying back the great SO team is fulfilling) but the
viability of the SO Careers model for an international audience is debatable.
As EugeneG pointed out, we are not participating in SO just for the karma
factor.

~~~
alec
"Why do they have to defend this careers thing so much?"

A career page seems to be the preferred route to go to raise revenue for
programming websites. They're not defending it, they're promoting it. Using a
job board to directly or indirectly raise revenue is done here, on reddit, on
Joel on Software, and now on Stack Overflow. Probably because programmers
often have adblock on and don't generally buy a lot of software.

------
petercooper
You can pay $99 a year to be in a database where potential employers will
contact you? I ended up on a whole ton of those for free back in the 90s.. :-)

I guess you're paying to prove that, yes, you _will_ take their calls.

~~~
Devilboy
I'd pay $99 a year for the opposite - for recruiters to stop calling!

------
dnaquin
great! another way for me to filter out potential employers.

"can you send us your stack overflow account?" "yeah, i'm no longer
interested."

------
timwiseman
At least at first glance, this all seems predicated on hiring managers
browsing CVs at this one site.

This seems fairly unlikely at first glance. Large organizations often have
required procedures that hiring managers must use. Smaller organizations
clearly have more flexibility, but it seems the ones that want to go searching
for talent themselves instead of soliciting applications will probably be
looking for people whose reputations they already know or even already know
personally.

------
omouse
Uh, obscure programming knowledge? Most of the questions on StackOverflow are
about methodologies or about how to do something in some specific programming
language. How obscure is that really?

------
BobN
If nothing else, the SO Careers site provides a convenient place to park your
CV and make it public (if that's what you want) -- for free. I think the
markdown formatting is more than sufficient to get the look you want and
highlight what's important. The linking of up to 10 technologies with job
experience is intuitive.

SO reputation or not, this presentation is at least as good as what even an
"elite" programmers resume would look like.

------
dinkumthinkum
Isn't this the guy that basically said if you have ever had to apply for a
programming job then you are probably a loser that can't program anyway? (some
article about "High Notes")

------
webwright
I really do think there is a LOT more money to be made doing stuff like this
(and Stack Overflow more broadly) than selling Fogbugz. Smart move-- hats off
to Joel.

~~~
nopassrecover
Probably, but I really don't get the impression that Joel is motivated purely
by money. There is a certain genuineness there about wanting to help the best
programmers become better.

------
gcheong
I went to SO Dev Days in San Francisco and I'm certainly not the best of the
best. At least I didn't think so until now.

------
zackattack
I would LOVE to hire someone who spends a lot of time answering other people's
questions on SO.

------
tomjen2
I love how you get a 90 day money back guarantee - when you pay for the next
_three_ years.

