

Predictably Irrational and StackOverflow Careers - coriander
http://rohbust.blogspot.com/2009/10/predictably-irrational-and-stack.html

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RyanMcGreal
From the comments:

> Stack Overflow will make both Spolsky and Atwood enormously wealthy, based
> upon the volunteer efforts of others. Who will get nothing.

The others won't get nothing. They'll get whatever rewards go along with
participating in a forum: the opportunity to demonstrate prowess and be
recognized for it, the chance to have specific questions answered in a peer-
reviewed medium, and so on. Don't discount the _value_ that people place in
these things, even if they aren't being compensated financially.

~~~
jrockway
I thought there was value in Stack Overflow until I accidentally visited the
site with Adblock turned off.

Now I don't answer questions there anymore.

~~~
coriander
You could always turn Adblock back on. I think it's fair for them to make some
money to support the site.

~~~
jrockway
It's OK to charge people money to answer questions for free? OK, sure...

~~~
confuzatron
Huh? The advertisers are the ones paying money to place ads, they aren't the
ones answering questions.

~~~
jrockway
I am the one answering questions. I have to pay (i.e., look at ads) for the
privilege of doing so. Then, my work is used to lure in eyeballs that look at
the ads.

Just sayin', it's not sustainable. Why shouldn't I get a cut? What do I get
for continuing to answer questions on Stack Overflow (instead of on free
mailing lists, or on my own blog, or in a magazine)?

Karma is nice and all, but the only reason I bother writing here is because
there are no ads.

~~~
confuzatron
Oh come on. You're not 'paying money' because a bitmap is rendered in part of
an html page. Get over yourself.

~~~
jrockway
Why show me said bitmap then?

~~~
confuzatron
You've lost me. At what point are you charged money?

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pchristensen
Paying to post your CV is a _fantastic_ filtering service to provide to
companies looking to hire. Resume spam is even worse than email spam. See also
Local Bacon for more evidence on this approach.

While they will make money from the people that post CVs, much, much more
money will come from the companies that pay to search those resumes. I'm sure
they set the price at wherever they expect the best filtering to be. If you
value your time at $50 and SO careers saves you 4 hours of job searching every
2 years, it's worth it. If it finds you a job that pays you $.05 more an hour,
it's worth it. It's underpriced because _CV owners aren't the primary
customers_.

About the decoys, the $99 regular price isn't a decoy. They're offering the
$29 plan because they need a critical mass of CVs to make it useful to
companies looking for talent. They're sharing $268 of their value to early
adopters as recognition that the first people in make the service more
valuable. Once they have lots of CVs they're in a stronger position and don't
need to discount anymore. Simple business economics.

~~~
dschobel
Sure, it's great for companies filtering out resume spam but how about
individuals trying to avoid recruiter spam?

And beside, really good engineers are never short of good offers.

It's standard operating procedure in our industry that when a manager or even
a dev leaves, they always try to take the best engineers from their past job
with them.

If it's not your first job out of school and you have to rely on throwing your
CV in a black hole like SO Careers or Monster and hope to get offers from
strangers you're doing something very wrong.

~~~
coriander
_good engineers are never short of good offers_

Actually a lot of programmers _suck_ at networking and are terrible at job
hunting.

This is a myth perpetuated by the you-get-what-you-deserve crowd who also
believe that the homeless deserve to be where they are because they didn't
play by the rules.

------
dusklight
It is perhaps more accurate to say that the inflating prices are being used to
artificially create scarcity, manipulating you into wanting to "get in" with a
membership before the deadline.

As for the given reason for charging, "serious" job seekers will pay...
Seriously desperate ones, who haven't been able to get jobs anywhere else. The
best candidates often don't use job boards at all, because they don't need to,
the companies look for them, but by charging, you are guaranteeing that the
top quality candidates will not be participating.

