
StackOverflow’s Careers 2.0  - phwd
http://careers.stackoverflow.com/
======
johns
I hear they addressed this in the Q&A after their presentation at LAUNCH, but
I'd like to see them pull in more external services. StackOverflow is only one
small part of my online identity. GitHub is much more representative and I'd
like to include things like my Hacker News and Twitter stats as well.

I recently made a rough mockup of what I called 'Devume' to show the concept
behind a living resume for developers: <http://screencast.com/t/FRwVor0hnm> If
anyone wants devume.com and @devume to make it real, it's all yours.

~~~
spolsky
Yes... we didn't have time for GitHub/Blog/Twitter integrations for today's
launch, but that is our absolutely highest priority and of course you can
always add links to those things.

~~~
john_horton
What if there was integration with online labor platforms e.g., a "Hire Joel
on oDesk/Elance/Freelancer etc." button on profiles? More than once I've asked
a question on SO, gotten excellent answers and then wished I could offer one
the responders a short job.

full disclosure - I work at oDesk, but I had this idea before I started.

------
spolsky
Here's our blog post announcing Careers 2.0:

    
    
      http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/careers-2-0-launches/

~~~
joe_the_user
So the executive summary is the first effort didn't work and now you're trying
something different? I would be curious if you've got any postmortem analysis
for the last effort.

But more. I would like to offer a simple theory for why no "making search as
easy as possible" site is going succeed. My explanation is that this is
because _job search is an adversarial process._ It is, at least partially, a
zero sum game. Neither player wants to remove the information-asymmetry on the
part of their opponent in such a game. For example, forcing the other side to
_work_ for information about you is good because it impels the other side to
be _committed_ to you (and the other side concomitantly hates having to work
for their information).

The fact that neither side is very rational either doesn't help. It's in my
interest not to reveal my love of Labrador Retrievers to my potential
employers because it's more likely they will reject me for this than that they
will accept me for it.

Just consider - an employers wants to know everything good and bad about an
employee before they make that employee an offer. A potential employee wants
the opposite - they want to know all the potential jobs available, where each
company is in their search and what offers said companies are willing to make
_before_ they start revealing information about themselves. Then they want the
employer to know all the desirable things about them. Then they want the
employer to know any negative that they'd forced to tell anyway. And they
don't want to describe any potential negatives that the employer won't need to
know. _AND_ what's negative and what's a positive varies from employer to
employer. What potential employees certainly shouldn't want is a "beauty
contest" where they "strut their stuff" to invisible judges. But naturally,
neither side can or should get everything they want here.

The adversarial situation of job search is the ultimate reason for its
clunkiness. It's complex dance involving each side revealing information and
making commitments. The ability of each _to_ make commitments is important to
the process as well as long as the commitment process is reasonably
_symmetrical_ (why my committing to a mere "job search" by paying money is
highly disadvantageous. I only commit to specific employers _after_ they had
_partially_ committed to me). It's a reason that job-shops exist despite
seeming ignorant and irrational. It's the same reason that find "contracting
agents who understands programming" to be the worst to deal with (the
contracting agent isn't there to evaluate you, they're just a mediation a way
for both sides to unveil their information slowly. They work good for only
that).

~~~
john_horton
I think adversarial/zero-sum is the wrong characterization. There are clearly
misaligned interests---companies want to pay less; workers want them to pay
more. However, if both sides are better off under a match than they would be
otherwise (which is why the market exists), then they'll try to match so long
as the search costs, frictions and losses due to bad hires (i.e., adverse
selection) don't swamp the benefits.

Imagine the worst case job market, which is that anyone can hang out a shingle
and say "I'm a highly skilled Python programmer." Suppose 1/2 are good, and
add value +1 to their companies, and 1/2 are bad, and "add" -1 to their
companies if hired. If there is absolutely no way to tell before hand who is
good and who is bad, then no one is getting hired---the expected gain from
hiring is zero. We have complete market failure (this is the "market of
lemons" example).

Now suppose you throw in some signals---schooling, resumes, interviews etc. if
firms can tell w/ probability .8 whether someone is what they say they are.
People now get hired, but even the good ones take a haircut b/c firms still
wrongly hire bad programmers because the signals available--while better than
nothing---are not perfect. I think SO is basically raising .8 to .95 (so to
speak). This is valuable to firms and to workers and I can easily imagine a
world where firms pay to get to .95 (and good workers pay to be evaluated with
the .95 lens).

~~~
joe_the_user
Hmm, your model doesn't consider that some companies might not be able to
benefit from any programmers what-so-ever because of their own incompetence
(some companies are -1 to begin with).

Anyway, job search is certainly not _entirely_ adversarial. But any
negotiating process has to involve a sequence of honest signals from both
sides. If one side can completely control the signaling process, that side can
get the most benefit for the least cost (and the other side would choose a
different frame if they could - and especially the most _valuable_ players
would make this choice).

Thus even though I eventually do want to reveal everything and commit fully to
a potential employer, I expect the process of commitment and revealing will
only happen as the employer also reveals information _AND_ makes commitments
to me. It's a dance. Things that allow the employer to merely get commitment
and information from me without anything in return result in an undesirable
negotiating process.

~~~
john_horton
sure - it's a simple model, but I don't think the presence of ignorant firms
changes the basic insight.

That being said, labor markets are very complex and there's lots of strategic
maneuvering going on. Given the indeterminacy of much of game theory (i.e., it
depends on how you model the scenario), I'm sure you could be right under the
proper assumptions.

But to bring it back to the SO example, it's hard to imagine a scenario where
giving high ability workers the ability to truthfully signal that high ability
hurts. Low ability workers can be hurt i.e., either I know you're bad from
your SO rep, or I start to think "hey - where's your SO profile? you must be
bad." In the pre-SO system, the low ability workers were getting an unearned
rent (assuming the market existed at all) at the expense of the high ability
workers and firms (which is market-killing).

~~~
joe_the_user
If you happen to have one, I think an SO account is a great thing to show
potential employers. But I'd want to know that they were willing and able to
read my answers to questions rather than simply look at my karma.

Having been on SO a bit over time, I know very well that SO karma doesn't
directly measure programming ability. You can get high karma with lots of
random or dubious answers. If someone already has programming ability, they
might be able to tell from someone's SO answers whether the person's real but
raw karma isn't enough.

The further problem is that Joel has been trying to jump from SO being a good
answer site to making SO a job site in it's own. The first iteration was
announced with fanfare and a post with argument for his approach. This version
has appeared with little discussion on his part so I'm not sure what his
reasoning is.

On the general subject of signaling, if an SO account ever became a strong
signal of ability, you can bet there'd be SO "gold farmers" along the lines of
game gold farmers today.

And while I've enjoyed SO for its own sake at times, if creating an SO account
became _mandatory_ for a job search, a lot of skilled people likely find that
an annoying imposition.

Google rightly has a policy against "why manhole covers are round"-type
questions. They're an imposition on a candidate without proving anything. An
employer _asking_ for a SO account would have the same quality.

------
adityakothadiya
For a new user who visits this site for the first time, the "2.0" doesn't make
any sense. Why add version number to your product name? It's fine to write
about it in blog post announcement. But when I visit your site, I don't care
which version it is. I know I'm using latest version that is live.

~~~
rudd
I think the name is "Careers 2.0" as in, this is the new version of how you
manage your career. Before, you searched for jobs on job boards, sending out
your resume, etc. Now, the employers come to you. Careers 2.0.

------
Glide
Strange. It lists jobs near Alexandria, VA just fine on the front page. But
when I click on the More Jobs it tries to find jobs in Egypt.

~~~
alexophile
I hear they have an opening for a librarian that they've been trying to fill
for millenia.

~~~
jacques_chester
They also sacked their fire fighting crew at about the same time.

~~~
alexophile
On a related note, this line form the wikipedia article is priceless: "Caesar
accidentally burned the library down during his visit to Alexandria in 48 BC."
It may be a gross mischaracterization, but I love the image of a Mr. Magoo-
like Caeser bumping into a brazier and burning down the greatest collection of
knowledge in the world.

------
phillytom
Can anyone comment on whether or not they have found advertising on the SO
jobs board to be a good source of candidates? I listed a position there in
December for a systems engineer with EC2 experience and got no responses -
I've had much better luck with Startuply for example.

~~~
dangrossman
I'm not sure why I would look for postings and contact _you_. I just listed my
CV there and employers started contacting _me_ through the site. Do you have
to pay extra for that or something?

~~~
phillytom
It's 350 to list a job in the job section, 500 for the ability to search and
contact people based on their profile (for 1 week).

------
hopeless
It's a shame there's still no decent PDF export option other than the less-
than-ideal print-to-file route. I don't want to have to maintain yet another
copy of my CV.

~~~
spolsky
working on it!

~~~
hopeless
That's very good to hear.

I wonder, did you get any benefits from implementing the hResume microformat?
Was it worth the effort (I don't see many tools using it)?

~~~
robeastham
Mighty CV is in private beta at the moment and is just about to roll out
dynamic PDF generation. It's essentially a big button located on your online
résumé that generates a printer friendly PDF whenever you need it. This PDF
output is also useful for recruitment companies that require a PDF as part of
their registration process, usually they need one for their internal candidate
database. You can sign up for the Mighty CV beta at:

<http://www.mightycv.com>

There is also a LinkedIn importer that creates a new résumé in seconds by
using information that you've already entered in to your LinkedIn profile.
Hacker News profile integration is coming soon and soon after there will be
GitHub and StackOverflow integrations too.

I'd still encourage everyone to check out Careers 2.0 from Joel and his team.
It looks great to me and is a slightly different animal to Mighty CV. For
example there are no plans to integrate job listings as part of the Mighty CV
service. Take a look at some of the other benefits at the site.

------
tomh-
There are still bugs, I cannot change how many years of experience I have with
languages. Currently stackoverflow thinks I have 10 (!) years of C#
experience. That must mean I have designed the language...how can I change
this?

------
baltcode
It seems the site is grinding to a halt with the traffic. I think it's a good
idea. Just the other day I was thinking, what can you really do with
reputation? I think this is going to push the peer-review process to new
limits with more kinds of "attacks".

~~~
carlygeehr
I think this is significant not necessarily for what it is now, but for what
it can evolve into and inspire in other services. I'm excited to see what
comes of this!

------
mtrn
In this case, going with the mainstream is nice: No more fees for job seekers.

------
dabent
I did a test search and found a Erlang/Android job "by the beach." I don't job
surf very often and I'm not currently looking for another day job, but this
has to be one of the coolest job listings I've seen:

[http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/10048/android-
developm...](http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/10048/android-development-
team-leader-voalte)

~~~
abredow
They're just trying to make Sarasota sound a lot more interesting than it
actually is :)

~~~
nepenthe
You won't be surfing in Sarasota but the beaches are in fact a reason to list
"by the beach." Not many beaches (Boracay, Lombok and Sulawesi, some areas of
Phuket) compare to what can be found from Sarasota down to Boca Grande and on
to Sanibel and Captiva.

I live in Sarasota and find it boring. But then most of my time is either
coding or outdoors. I can't think of many more places I'd rather be.

~~~
khafra
Clearwire Wimax covers the Tampa Bay area now; you should take your laptop out
to Fort Desoto and code with inspiration.

 _edit_ : In fact, I may have just talked myself into signing up with
Clearwire; care to start a co-working space just around the bend from the
northernmost parking lot?

------
AndrewHampton
This seems like a great fit for the stack exchange sites in general. They're
building communities of experts in various fields and now you can hire someone
who proven to be an expert in that field by going to careers.[stack exchange
site].com.

------
ghurlman
It lists my first employer under "most recently at" - somebody got their sort
direction wrong.

Edit: Looks fixed. Quick work!

~~~
df07
Whoops, looks like it's just going by the order you're displaying them in
(assuming you'd show newest first). Will fix soon...

~~~
ghurlman
The "years of experience" in the header don't seem to add up either - sent an
email to careers@stackoverflow with details.

~~~
m_myers
Yep, they say they are working on it right now.
[http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/80390/why-does-it-
sa...](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/80390/why-does-it-say-i-
have-0-year-of-java-experience)

------
nestlequ1k
Site seems pretty busted at the moment. I'm sure they'll have it back up
working again soon though.

~~~
phwd
Joel just presented it at the Launch Conference a bit earlier, though that
should not be used as a reason for the timeouts.

------
rhizome
This is excellent, I'm working on something identical for a different demo!
There must be something in the internet-water.

