
Stack Overflow reducing headcount by 20% - cjCamel
https://twitter.com/AndrewBrobston/status/926141946015420416
======
codeflo
It's undeniable that their main developer Q&A site is a really great thing
that saved me many hours of work. However, it was somewhat hostile to its more
export users from the very beginning: the reputation system favors quickfire
replies to grab the first upvotes, and they seem to put a strong emphasis on
"cookbook" answers where many of the more nuanced discussions were closed as
"opinion based". I think there are some missed opportunities here to make the
Q&A site even more useful.

However, perhaps that wasn't their focus. My impression is the Q&A site was
supposed to be mostly a gateway to their other services, and for that to work,
the Q&A part simply had to be "good enough". It's an interesting strategy that
perhaps didn't work out quite the way they had hoped it would.

~~~
kjxsnht43
I couldn't agree less. First off, they're not going out of business, just
letting 20% go and one would assume refocusing. I think the site is set up to
get good answers and not just the first upvotes as answers stick around and
users can vote answers up or down as they see fit. The first answers on older
questions tend to be very long and in-depth and give a lot of good information
about the pros and cons of the approach they discuss. (If you want something
_really_ in-depth, check out
[https://codereview.stackexchange.com/.](https://codereview.stackexchange.com/.))
The ones that get closed as opinion based are almost entirely asking for
software recommendations or the like. I've rarely seen an objectively
answerable question closed as being opinion-based.

~~~
codeflo
For many of the supposedly "opinion-based" questions, reasonable people will
at least agree on the relevant trade-offs, even if they come to different
conclusions overall. Thus, when a question asks about "pros and cons of
technology X", expert insight into the trade-offs involved could be really
useful to help evaluate your own specific situation. But that kind of more
nuanced question doesn't really fit the simple "one correct answer" model that
Stack Overflow seems to be going for and is thus very likely to be closed.
IMHO, there should be a distinction between "it depends on the circumstances,
and here's why" and "purely opinion based", and Stack Overflow would be more
useful for me personally if the former were allowed.

Edit: Just to check if moderation policies have changed since I last looked, I
did a quick search for questions containing the phrase "pros and cons". As
unfortunately expected, practically all of the questions are closed:
[https://stackoverflow.com/search?q=pros+and+cons](https://stackoverflow.com/search?q=pros+and+cons)

~~~
shagie
While "it depends on the circumstances and here's why" is the ideal answer,
such questions rarely get those answers.

On one of the sister sites to SO, there's a post about pros and cons on their
meta -
[https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions...](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6758/)
\- such questions are often a moderation headache when you get the inevitable
spam and the poor quality answers of "I can't believe anyone didn't mention
XYZ".

Look at [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15142/what-are-the-
pros-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15142/what-are-the-pros-and-
cons-to-keeping-sql-in-stored-procs-versus-code) and start reading through and
consider the one that starts out with "@Keith" responding to a different
answer or "A SQL stored proc doesn't increase the performance of the query"
being the entirety of the answer.

Such questions, when left open can get awful answers that are difficult to
clean up.

Have you considered that there are sites with as laser like of a focus on pros
and cons as SO maintains on Q&A? [https://www.slant.co](https://www.slant.co)
is one such site. [https://www.slant.co/topics/607/~best-java-
ides](https://www.slant.co/topics/607/~best-java-ides)
[https://www.slant.co/topics/440/~best-nosql-databases-for-
we...](https://www.slant.co/topics/440/~best-nosql-databases-for-web-
applications) and so on.

------
danbruc
Why would you fire people on such a short notice? No need to hand over things?
No interest in providing at least some time to look for a new job?

EDIT: To clarify that a bit, I am interested in what the upsides are except
for possibly saving some money. An orderly shutdown usually seems preferable
to me over quickly killing the process, for both sides.

~~~
Ralfp
Depends on country too. In EU our work laws regulate how your employee may be
laid off. My country (poland) says that employee has to be notified about
termination:

\- week ahead if he or she was employed for less than month \- month ahead if
he or she was employed for less than three years \- three months ahead if he
or she was employed for more than three years

This goes both ways however, as employee has to notify his employeer on same
basis that he or she quits. This introduces amount of games to recruitment
process, where company frequently not only has to make bet by deciding to hire
somebody, but also make sure that they'll wont be outbid during the three
months that have to pass for person to change employeer

~~~
jaredklewis
I’m quite surprised to hear one must give their employer notice. Doesn’t
Poland or the EU have laws against forced labor? In the US, for example, all
employment by private corporations is “at will.”

Anyone can quit at a moments notice, for any or no reason at all. For the sake
of one’s colleagues and reputation it is widely considered good practice to
give no less than 2 weeks notice, though this is merely custom.

~~~
pjc50
It's not "forced labour", it's just a contractual term. You certainly _can_
quit on zero notice but you've breached contract and it will cost you.

If you look closely at US startups you'll usually find the founders and senior
staff are on "notice required" contracts of several months.

~~~
future1979
If you make the breach cost infinitely high, how is that not a modern form of
slavery?

~~~
pjc50
It's not infinitely high? In practice the worst it's likely to be is "actual
damages" \- costs directly incurred by you quitting.
[http://employeradvice.org.uk/what-to-do-when-staff-quit-
with...](http://employeradvice.org.uk/what-to-do-when-staff-quit-without-
notice/)

Modern slavery is things like confiscating the passports of your immigrant
workers so they can't escape.

------
mianos
I tried to hire through them recently. It was a joke of a process. More like
the way uaed cars are sold. Don't contact us, we'll contact you. No price
displayed, we negotiate that depending on how much you can afford. The sign up
system simply didn't work, saying I had already signed up but then the next
button simply didn't work. They did get back to me a week later. This
completely change my view. I went from wanting to use them to advertise for
people to work here with like minds to a detractor.

~~~
colmcg
Indeed is doing a good job at hiring in the tech field. Their Prime product is
great (if you live in one of the cities they are running it in).

(Disclaimer: I work @ Indeed, but I've seen friends quickly hired using
Prime.)

~~~
noncoml
It took me a while to understand that by "Indeed" you refer to the company.

------
doublerebel
Surprised no one has mentioned StackOverflow Docs, which was recently shut
down as a failure. I unfortunately panned it at launch but it seems they
devoted significant resources to the dead product.

StackOverflow Sunsetting Documentation:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14917765](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14917765)

Why I think they targeted the wrong market:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12399438](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12399438)

tl;dr:

\- it doesn't make sense to donate open-source docs to an offsite corporate
service that might shut down

\- also, the very common complaint that SO has poor moderation, groupthink
doesn't work for docs like it does for one-topic answers

------
johansch
I remember reaching out to them a bunch of years ago (2012 or so) in order to
ask them to host a stack overflow sub-site for our product (from a sizeable
company). We were willing to pay quite a lot (because they had the premier UX
for this kind of thing), but they weren't at all interested. They just told us
to try to grow things "organically", because they had decided to focus 100% on
open stuff.

We weren't really interested in their google juice, all we wanted was their
actual functionality. Some non-stackoverflow domain would have been fine.

It just seemed like a missed opportunity on their end. I don't think we were
the only company asking for this kind of service...

~~~
gumoro
If I understand correctly, they offer this now, your private instance for your
own product(s) & team(s):

[https://www.stackoverflowbusiness.com/enterprise](https://www.stackoverflowbusiness.com/enterprise)

Edit: while interesting, this (private internal instance for your team) is not
what johansch is after (separate public instance dedicated to your product,
for your users)

~~~
johansch
(Edit) This appears to be for non-public stuff only, though. So an internal
stackoverflow.

Still no solution for a company wanting to host a public stackoverflow
instance for some product.

~~~
gumoro
Ah, yes, right, sorry. I understand now what you were after. Agree there would
have been (is?) an interesting potential there too.

------
JosephLark
It's been interesting watching SO try to monetize.

I wonder: How would people feel if they went the Wikipedia way? It's obviously
a very beneficial site, but not as widely applicable as Wikipedia. I
personally prefer the Wikipedia model of being ad-free and having no
additional product and doing a fundraising drive every so often. PBS as well.

That said, I certainly think given the audience of SO that there are several
opportunities for them, so it'll be interesting to see what works.

~~~
Improvotter
I remember seeing an article here these past few weeks talking about the
business model of Wikipedia and how it's supposedly inherently flawed.
Wikipedia doesn't bring in a lot of cash, but it rather sets a sad tone for
itself how unfortunate that may seem.

Personally I'd be more interested in seeing StackOverflow branch out. What
have they done these past few years? It seems like StackOverflow has remained
stagnant, yet they have so much potential.

~~~
andrewsomething
They've done a lot, but apparently it hasn't been particularly successful.
Their new "Documentation" platform didn't really ever gain traction:
[https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/354217/sunsetting-d...](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/354217/sunsetting-
documentation)

~~~
hehheh
I don't think I ever saw a Documentation page in a search result. Instead, I
saw (and see) dozens of copies of the same SO Q&A content spread across
multiple sites. I wonder if they would have had better success if they
adjusted their SEO strategies and went after the rehosting sites (more?)
aggressively.

~~~
shagie
Google was never pointed at Documentation, so you wouldn't find it there.
There were constant concerns within the meta SO community about the quality of
the content and how embarrassing it would be (not a small fraction of it was
worse than W3Schools of old -
[https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/334638/](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/334638/)
). It could have been rather damaging to the SO brand to have such poor
material shown as examples of what is desired.

------
submeta
Very sorry to hear SO is financially in trouble. Also sorry for the people who
lost their jobs. SO offers a valuable service. Sad to hear they can't monetize
enough.

Edit: Reminds me of the situation of SoundCloud (company offering a service
loved by their consumers, still can't monetize enough to satisfy investors,
let alone cover the costs (huge headcount))

------
TheAceOfHearts
How many people work at StackOverflow?

Seeing this post also made me realize I have no clue how the company makes
money.

~~~
nicodjimenez
I'm sure they make TONS of money from ad revenue. Probably they tried to
generate other revenue streams but it just didn't work out and hence the
layoff.

Here's a crazy idea: what if Stackoverflow developed a search engine for
developers? Usually I get to Stackoverflow posts through Google but perhaps
Stackoverflow can provide a better experience by doing code specific web
crawling.

~~~
brian-armstrong
Inherent conflict here - programmers don't click on ads, fullstop. I can't
imagine a group I'd want to advertise to less.

~~~
stdclass
Do you have any numbers or references on that claim?

~~~
trowawee
So, I don't have a formal study saying that techies are the most likely to ad-
block/least likely to click ads. What we know:

\- Ad-blocker users skew young and wealthy.[1] The developer community as a
whole also skews young and wealthy.

\- If you are aware of the existence of ad-blocking technology, you probably
use it.[2]

\- Via comparison with other sites, you can also make some extrapolations.
Take IGN - not a perfect proxy, but a reasonable one, with a core audience
that is probably fairly demographically similar to the core audience for most
developer-oriented sites. Approximately 40% of their traffic was using ad-
blockers in 2015.[3] A Wired statement posted in 2016 has 20% of their traffic
using ad-blockers.[4]

\- Anecdotal evidence: every dev I've worked with has at least one ad-blocker
installed. The vast majority of dev-adjacent people I've worked with - PMs,
technical writers, designers - have ad-blockers installed.

Put it together and I think it makes a fairly compelling case that techies are
the last audience on earth you'd want to orient your online marketing towards.
I used to hope that something like The Deck[5], which was explicitly targeted
towards "web, design & creative professionals", would be a good solution to
this, and I even permitted their ads on Metafilter, but they shut down last
year, presumably because they just weren't making enough money. They did
everything that people claimed they wanted: the ads were unobtrusive, mostly
text and optimized images, they didn't engage in tracking, they didn't sell
user data (as far as I know), and they still couldn't make it work.

1\. [https://marketingland.com/ad-blocker-usage-highest-among-
key...](https://marketingland.com/ad-blocker-usage-highest-among-key-
advertiser-demos-snake) people-and-high-earners-143546

2\. [https://digiday.com/media/survey-80-percent-know-ad-
blocking...](https://digiday.com/media/survey-80-percent-know-ad-blocking-
use/)

3\. [http://adage.com/article/digital/websites-hit-hardest-ad-
blo...](http://adage.com/article/digital/websites-hit-hardest-ad-
blockers/301767/)

4\. [https://www.wired.com/how-wired-is-going-to-handle-ad-
blocki...](https://www.wired.com/how-wired-is-going-to-handle-ad-blocking/)

5\. [http://decknetwork.net/](http://decknetwork.net/)

~~~
skinnymuch
People can claim all they want about wanting The Deck sort of stuff. But at
the end of the day, those ads are still blocked most of the time. Possibly out
of laziness to completely whitelist it, but the end result is the same. The
ads are blocked like any other. I don't feel as optimistic that people
blocking ads even want The Deck sort of ads. But without a study I'm okay not
being sure.

~~~
trowawee
Yeah, that's what I was trying to get across. I think the revealed preferences
of most people using adblockers is that, while they say they would be ok with
unobtrusive ads, they really don't want any ads at all. And to be honest,
that's not a ludicrous view, because I've found that even on sites that have
ostensibly "unobtrusive ads", all it takes is one bad actor and one slip-up in
the ad network's verification process and unobtrusive ads become obtrusive
and/or start invading your privacy. But we're going to have to find some other
way to pay for content at some point.

Also, thanks for fixing that link.

~~~
skinnymuch
Maybe, but a lot of sites only use Carbon/Deck or Adsense and some of those
click bait native ad networks. I'm not sure if any of the click bait native ad
networks have ever done too much with the issues you listed. I personally
believe it's a bit too privileged to say no to Adsense like ads and native
ads. You're likely to ever get a virus from them. At worst they are mildly
annoying. That's all.

I find the one bad actor excuse to be just that. Another rationale or excuse.

So yeah I think the people just don't want any ads at all. Just like if I
showed people how to block Spotify ads on their desktop and on how to do it on
rooted android or iPhones, many people would stop paying Spotify. I don't tell
my friends about these things for moral reasons, but it's just adding on to
the point. People by and large will go with what's convenient. A simple app
that can block Spotify ads will do for them. While jailbreaking would be too
inconvenient.

------
dep_b
Of all questions I've asked on Stack Overflow, 50% were eventually answered by
myself (and some became pretty popular after that) and 5% was answered by
someone else. 45% is still open.

Good to see them back to a focus. I guess hiring could be a good cash cow but
all of the sub communities are a bit much.

~~~
plesiv
Your first paragraph says more about you than about the site.

~~~
StevePerkins
It's a bit of a humblebrag... but I think he's TRYING to say that meaningful
StackOverflow activity seems to have stagnated in recent years, and he hopes
to see an uptick.

~~~
chrisan
It could also be the "normal" stuff has been asked many times over and he
might be into a very niche/obscure topic.

I have a question that I was my own answer on. It was pretty obscure
(pageant/cygwin specific) and when I finally found the answer I cited the 2
sources I used hoping it would save others time in the future with an easier
google than what I went through

~~~
dep_b
Right. Can't count the hours stack overflow saved for me although I'm
disappointed by the lack of response.

The most popular answers and questions tend to be new things in popular SDK's.
The unanswered things are deeper problems in existing API's. You either get an
answer in a very short term by multiple people or nothing at all.

------
the_common_man
I feel SO must really be run as a non-profit like wikipedia.

------
bsaul
I think an interesting path for stackoverflow would be to provide live
channels for technology support and conversation. A bit like public slacks.

I remember a few technologies that officially said something like "support is
provided through custom stackoverflow tags", but it didn't bring more
functionalities.

A company trying to launch its new technology (i can imagine asp.net core for
example) could have an associated community channel to talk about it, with
automatic links from tags. That would be a nice addition.

~~~
torgoguys
Do you mean something like
[https://chat.stackoverflow.com/](https://chat.stackoverflow.com/)

~~~
bsaul
I was hoping nobody would point me to something like that :D So either my idea
sucks, or they didn't do a good job advertising the feature...

------
legostormtroopr
Good. In the past year they have become very preachy about exact which
political opinions the tech community is allowed to have, and how they are to
express them.

My limit was the "Time to take a stand incident" when Joel effectively
dictated that the developer community of StackOverflow must agree with the
statement.

> Carving up the world into ... nations ... is both morally repugnant and
> frankly stupid

The follow up of mods keeping the post open, backing it up and enforcing that
idea on other questions really hammered home the idea that StackOverflow
belongs to them, regardless of whatever they might say.

There was no room for nuance, just an American-centric political orthodoxy you
must follow or aren't welcome.

[1][https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/342440/time-to-
take...](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/342440/time-to-take-a-
stand/342608#342608)

~~~
buzzcut
Whatever your political views, the ellipses in the quote are deeply
misleading, and in fact make his quote seem to say something Joel emphatically
did not say.

Here is the full quote:

>It’s impossible not to see the parallel: the only way to build a successful
world today is to allow the contributions of everyone. Carving up the world
into us vs. them, building walls, and demonizing religions, nations, and
refugees is both morally repugnant and counterproductive, and it goes so much
against the spirit of Stack Overflow that as a community we must speak out.

~~~
legostormtroopr
That doesn't make it better in my opinion. The politics of nations, strong
border controls and vetting for refugees are nuanced there are pros and cons
to all angles in that debate.

Whereas, Joel dictated that if you supported "carving up the world" you were
against the sprit of Stack Overflow, no matter how that might impact you as a
non-American.

------
pmoriarty
If SO and its related network sites die, what's going to happen to the
millions of questions and answers their users contributed?

Is anyone archiving them and making the archives available in any useful way?

~~~
luis_espinoza
I don't know, but you guys remember the dark times before SO?...omg.

~~~
pmoriarty
Now let's see.. we had Usenet news groups, mailing lists, IRC channels, and
eventually web forums on every programming language, operating system, and
software package under the sun. You could ask questions and get them answered.
What was so cringeworthy about this exactly?

That's not to say that SO doesn't bring value. It has nice tagging and
discoverability through search engines, good moderation, and an achievement
and reputation system that encourages people to make quality contributions.
But the days before it existed weren't so dark.

~~~
corpMaverick
There was something called experts exchange. Remember that? It was horrible.

~~~
justboxing
Funny you brought that up. I think it was Jeff Atwood who joked about how the
domain name read like Expert-Sex-change

StackOverflow was such a welcome relief to this site and Atwood also wrote
about expertsexchange in a blog post.

> I never appreciated how easy Experts-Exchange makes it for us. They are
> almost universally loathed. We don't just have a rival, we have a larger
> than life moustache-twirling, cape-wearing villain to contrast ourselves
> with.

Source: [ 2009 ] [https://blog.codinghorror.com/whos-your-arch-
enemy/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/whos-your-arch-enemy/)

~~~
stefs
i remember that expert-sex-change was blocked by our schools filter. thinking
about it triggers a vague angry feeling, no specific reason other than,
possibly, often repeated disappointment the answer wasn't readable.

------
baud147258
I'll hasard a guess as to why it happened:

-The failure of the documentation (which failed for various reasons)

-VCs who want their return on their precious dollars.

------
rusk
Given some of the pettiness of my interactions with their mods, I kind of felt
they might be a bit overstaffed alright ...

------
jmkni
No notice? That seems a bit weird, no?

------
badhombres
Why?

------
sklivvz1971
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

So sorry to hear this. My thoughts to everyone, it is a very difficult day.

------
holydude
I would advise people to stop comparing US workers rights to their countries.
Just because you think your country gives you extra leverage and protection it
does not mean it is a universally applicable law

~~~
weirdstuff
Compared to the rest of the developed world, the U.S. does have very poor
working conditions. I'd also say a majority of U.S. workers doesn't have a
clue and has little experience to make a comparison anyhow.

I actually like people outside my country reminding my fellow citizens that we
_do_ have it pretty bad and it _is_ in our power to change it if we decide to
do that one day. The message might eventually soak in after some decades have
passed.

