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Stack Overflow reducing headcount by 20%

by cjCamel on 11/2/17, 6:43 PM with 199 comments

• by codeflo on 11/2/17, 8:34 PM

  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.

• by danbruc on 11/2/17, 7:56 PM

  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.

• by mianos on 11/2/17, 8:48 PM

  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.

• by doublerebel on 11/3/17, 1:48 AM

  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

  Why I think they targeted the wrong market:

  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

• by johansch on 11/2/17, 8:04 PM

  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...

• by JosephLark on 11/2/17, 7:59 PM

  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.

• by submeta on 11/2/17, 10:06 PM

  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))

• by TheAceOfHearts on 11/2/17, 8:00 PM

  How many people work at StackOverflow?

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

• by dep_b on 11/3/17, 11:18 AM

  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.

• by the_common_man on 11/3/17, 6:01 AM

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

• by bsaul on 11/3/17, 10:40 AM

  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.

• by legostormtroopr on 11/3/17, 5:36 AM

  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...

• by pmoriarty on 11/2/17, 7:30 PM

  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?

• by baud147258 on 11/3/17, 9:45 AM

  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.

• by rusk on 11/3/17, 11:24 AM

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

• by jmkni on 11/2/17, 9:11 PM

  No notice? That seems a bit weird, no?

• by badhombres on 11/2/17, 7:56 PM

  Why?

• by sklivvz1971 on 11/2/17, 7:26 PM

  (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

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

• by holydude on 11/2/17, 9:29 PM

  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