[HN Gopher] StackOverflow: Sunsetting Jobs and Developer Story b...
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StackOverflow: Sunsetting Jobs and Developer Story by April 2022
Author : password4321
Score : 138 points
Date : 2022-01-21 13:44 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (meta.stackoverflow.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (meta.stackoverflow.com)
| gregdoesit wrote:
| StackOverflow privately announced this shutdown to clients in the
| summer of 2021 with the same date and I tweeted about it in
| November when the deadline of sunsetting was getting close enough
| [1].
|
| Every hiring manager I talked with shared how SO Jobs was the
| best place to reach developers. I reached out to a few people at
| StackOverflow to get a sense of why they are shutting down this
| product that did very well.
|
| I didn't get real answers beyond "we don't think job boards are
| the future" which I don't fully buy, given the success on both
| the employer, and the candidate side. What might be the case is
| the growth in profit was not what Stack Overflow hoped for, and
| this is why they are retiring these parts.
|
| My suspicion is that Stack Overflow expects to make 10x more
| revenue with enterprise branding services (effectively not
| allowing just job posting, but you need to buy a large package
| that has other things bundled that you need to get if you want to
| access something like this job board).
|
| Note that with this change Stack Overflow effectively locks out
| all small and medium-sized businesses from working with them.
| Starting from the middle of 2021, I heard they were not
| onboarding companies with less than 1,000ish employees to the job
| board either.
|
| It makes perfect financial sense for Stack Overflow, if they are
| indeed making the change to maximise revenue collected from
| employers. However, there will be a large gap on the market for
| startups, small and mid-size companies who will not qualify - and
| will not have the budget - for the "employee branding services"
| SO will keep providing (but does not share details on).
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1457665269267116034?...
| VHRanger wrote:
| "we don't think job boards are the future" is a ridiculous
| statement given the online hiring space has had intense growth
| since COVID.
|
| Whatever the reason they shut it down, that's not it
| thrwn_frthr_awy wrote:
| > "we don't think job boards are the future"
|
| Most likely this statement is a proxy for "it doesn't make
| enough money." Which is reasonable, but I think that is more
| difficult to say publicly.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| I don't think it's that ridiculous.
|
| 99% of people use LinkenIn and job postings shared there from
| company job sites. Recruiters I know want fewer things to
| interact with and search. And I've seen great talent from
| good sourcers just using LinkedIn to find people...
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| And 99% of the messages about jobs on LinkedIn are trash,
| from people, who didn't even bother reading your profile or
| are unable to understand what they are reading. Recruiters
| can decide, whether they want to disappear in heaps of
| trash requests, or use a better non-abusive platform, if
| such exists. I have not gotten trash copy&paste requests on
| StackOverflow yet, so at least it has that going for it.
| tfehring wrote:
| I haven't had a great signal-to-noise ratio from
| recruiter DMs on LinkedIn myself. But I think the more
| general point is that the "candidate sees job posting on
| job board and submits an application" hiring pathway is
| mostly dead. LinkedIn recruiting is probably the main
| channel that's replaced it, but college recruiting
| events, referrals, and poaching former colleagues are big
| ones too. The referral pathway in particular seems to
| have exploded lately, Blind and similar sites are full of
| people (successfully) requesting referrals to top tech
| companies from anonymous strangers.
| toyg wrote:
| That's really it - recruiters live and breath LinkedIn. SO
| is for people who actually get their hands dirty and know
| what they're talking about - engineers and their direct
| managers. It seems like the ones actually in control of the
| space are the recruiters.
| techdragon wrote:
| If LinkedIn is the Amazon/Walmart/AliExpress of job
| adverts... which it is... it's insane to think you cannot
| be the Gucci/Tiffany's/Ferrari of job advertising and
| make plenty of money. Just because everyone posts shitty
| jobs to LinkedIn doesn't mean that there's a huge pool of
| people who want a better product experience and value it.
|
| I ghost job offers on LinkedIn because it's a dumpster
| fire. I've applied to jobs on StackOverflow because I
| know I'm cutting through the entire bullshit process.
| Those companies might ghost me, but the point remains
| that it's insane to think there's no value in being a job
| advertising platform people actually want to apply to
| adverts on.
|
| Recruiters in tech are worse than useless, they don't
| know anything and shovel useless candidates into a
| pipeline that has to develop Byzantine things like white
| boarding and other performative hoops to filter the junk
| candidates out. Between Stack Overflow and GitHub I
| shouldn't need more than one interview maybe two if it's
| a large company where you can't get everyone relevant
| into one meeting, and the only point of that meeting
| should be a basic culture fit appraisal and working out
| that Im not a dog or three cats in a trench coat
| pretending to be a human.
| nine_k wrote:
| Hmm, not my experience. (I changed jobs last fall.)
|
| Some recruiters are useless, but those few I worked with
| were very good and clueful, and landed me a great job.
|
| I met some of them on LinkedIn. I had to filter through
| some slack, but the efficiency of that was far from
| negligible.
|
| I also applied to a few jobs via SO Jobs; they were
| reasonably interesting, but none worked, alas. The amount
| of interest which my SO Jobs profile attracted was an
| order of magnitude lower than what I received via
| LinkedIn, and even lower than the number of direct emails
| from people finding my resume on the internet.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Tech in general seems to be all about what is good for
| 90% of users and fuck-all for everyone else. It seems
| like anything servicing the long-tail anywhere gets
| squished. In hiring, in user interface design, in
| features, and in competition. I really, really, _really_
| hate this dynamic.
| nine_k wrote:
| The long tail is well served, as long as it can be done
| at a premium.
|
| A desire to have an electric roadster used to be
| extremely niche, but Tesla Motors had trouble fulfilling
| all the orders for their new and rather raw $70k car. If
| those craving it only had $15k as a rule, that likely
| won't fly.
| blago wrote:
| Interesting how GitHub shut down their job board last August
| too. It sounds like a trend.
| immibis wrote:
| Microsoft owns LinkedIn
| yawnxyz wrote:
| sounds like it's leaving a massive opportunity for someone to
| fill
| hobs wrote:
| I don't think so - I think they are leaving the market
| because their differentiation isn't enough in the marketplace
| to actually sell it enough to be interesting.
|
| While a small group of users liked it, it clearly did not
| have traction in the greater community.
| jc4p wrote:
| love running into old friends on HN, so some very stale
| info from someone who hasn't worked at SO in many years:
| while the job board was differentiated and nice from the
| programmers side, it's really difficult to convince
| recruiters to use a new system with new rules. most (not
| all ofc) just want to spray and pray.
|
| as a job seeker being told "you're gonna have the upper
| hand here" is amazing, as a recruiter it makes it very
| difficult to sell to unless you really own the market.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| It's not a defensible product space. It's incredibly over
| saturated, highly dependent on the job market, has a constantly
| rotating supply side (job seekers only use when they're looking
| for a job), and has little supply side incentive.
| mns wrote:
| We had amazing results with all the postings on SO jobs. All
| developers that we hired through it are still in the company and
| these are some of the best people I ever worked with. It's quite
| a shame, we got few applicants through SO, but great developers,
| while through LinkedIn you have to go through and discard 90% of
| the applications.
| mhzsh wrote:
| This is a shame, I found my current job on StackOverflow along
| with other high quality interviews.
|
| What alternatives are there?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I admit I never understood the StackOverflow love. Narrow
| questions don't seem to get traction, either downvoted in the
| main question area or misinterpreted and closed. More general
| questions are more easily answered by documentation.
|
| And heaven forbid you need a less than normal use case, you'll
| get people who ignore that you have external limitations and
| respond with "Well, I know you asked about using stupid library
| in X, but that's been deprecated and you need to use smart
| library in X, or really just switch programming languages."
| JJMcJ wrote:
| Often a search returns an SO answer as first or even featured
| in side bar result.
|
| That generates traffic and reinforces the dominant position.
|
| But +1 on "stupid library". Most of the time the poster must
| use it, company standard or big legacy system. Once in a while
| it's useful advice.
| synthc wrote:
| I think StackOverflow used to be better, but the moderation now
| is both insanely strict (the question has to be super narrow)
| and inadequate (tons of duplicate questions)
|
| The most highly rated questions, there are some real nuggets,
| would just get closed today.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| In my experience, it's gotten _worse_ but those were always
| issues.
| mds101 wrote:
| Wow, I'm very surprised at this. SO is where I got my current job
| from and IMO it's the best place for searching for jobs in
| software - esp because it was easy to search for specific
| requirements (ex visa sponsorship or remote). Running a job board
| must be much harder than I thought.
| truffdog wrote:
| I'm sad, I really liked Developer Story and used it as a resume
| builder.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| This is a great shame, because StackOverflow had real jobs, it
| had a great search and allowed me to filter out tech that I
| didn't want to work with. I could also block companies as well.
|
| I'm now stuck with linkedin, which is frankly poo
| mandeepj wrote:
| SO can learn a bit from Hired.com - how to run a Jobs portal.
| password4321 wrote:
| > _TL;DR - On March 31, 2022, we will discontinue Stack Overflow
| Jobs and Developer Story. This includes all job listings, saved
| searches, applications, messages, recommended job matches, job
| ads, developer story, saved resumes, and the salary calculator._
|
| > _I wish this post would include some bold warning, like "Hey,
| go to your https://stackoverflow.com/users/story/current and
| export it, because you know, we're killing CVs"._
|
| Too bad, they are shutting down the first place I would have
| looked for a new job.
| linspace wrote:
| I landed an interesting job through StackOverflow several years
| ago.
|
| In recent times I had a look and the first job I see was from
| my first company, which I never thought would be advertising
| there. I phoned my ex-boss to complain: this is like going to a
| party and having your ex girlfriend opening the door.
|
| They are right abou something: it's hard to find interesting
| jobs. Maybe we are asking too much. Maybe we just feel so much
| untapped potential.
| synthc wrote:
| Too bad indeed, StackOverflow is IMO one of the better job
| boards. I really like the UX: searching by 'tech tags',
| filtering on location, salary ranges for many postings.
|
| I got a really nice job through it once by searching for niche
| technologies.
| dabei wrote:
| As an engineering manager I found LinkedIn to be very inefficient
| in finding quality talents at scale. There isn't enough signal to
| gauge which candidate is worth bringing in for interviews. There
| seem to be a large opportunity for new business here.
| illwrks wrote:
| Were you using the recruitment tools?
| dabei wrote:
| Yes, the LinkedIn recruiter account.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I'm confused by what signal SO answered for you, with regard to
| finding quality talents?
| dabei wrote:
| I haven't used the SO recruiting tool. But I'd imagine it
| would let me skim the questions a candidate have been asking
| / answering. So I get a sense of their technical /
| communication skill, and passion about their domain.
| careersaas wrote:
| As an alternative, we at Careersaas
| https://app.careersaas.com/portal have a developer focused job
| search tool. We're also targeting mostly remote roles and
| internships. Definitely a shame to lose SO as so many found jobs
| through their portal.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Although I wasn't particularly impressed with SO Jobs, I see it
| as a concerning step towards job postings becoming even more
| LinkedIn-centric.
| jakub_g wrote:
| I didn't find my job on SO, but it was definitely one of the best
| job boards around, at least the ones with international scope:
|
| - mostly good companies putting their ads
|
| - often salary transparency
|
| - nice visually and on whole UX level
|
| - integration with SO tags and profiles of existing workers
|
| SO was a page that naturally felt to fit this kind of use case.
| I'm kinda sad.
| raman162 wrote:
| 100% agree that it was a well-done product, although I never
| went through the application process, I've read countless
| relevant job postings. I also don't do linked in (feels too
| much like social media) so I'm sad to see this stack overflow
| option leaving.
| sysOpOpPERAND wrote:
| yeah it actually kind of made sense to me having the jobs right
| there. i haven't applied using the job portal yet but it was
| definitely something i was hopeful about. i recently got back
| into coding because of the pandemic and started to make some
| progress, been on a few interviews and hoping to find a company
| that appreciates what i bring to the table. so maybe i will try
| a few openings before they sunset and write a proper blog about
| the experience. regardless, stackoverflow having a job board
| makes sense to me.
| brimble wrote:
| I seem to recall being rejected from their system because I
| hadn't given them and GitHub enough free labor to accrue the
| Internet points that would make me a "real" developer. Merely
| being paid to write software for years and years makes me a
| faker, I guess.
|
| I like that the ads list comp (god, that saves a bunch of
| everyone's time) but I never checked them again after that.
| Dunno if they knocked that off or kept doing it.
| throwaway_dcnt wrote:
| This^ is not me but I am curious. Why is this being
| downvoted?
| brimble wrote:
| Maybe they only did that briefly and people have forgotten,
| and I was just unlucky? Maybe folks think it's fine? Maybe
| framing farming upvotes and stars on GH and SO as giving
| free labor to corporations is rubbing people the wrong way
| (though that seems like a pretty neutral and fair
| characterization of that dynamic, to me)? Dunno.
| lamida wrote:
| I agree. The listing quality is good compare with other job
| boards.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Sad to see Developer Story go, but I suspect very few folks make
| use of it. I know that very few people visit mine[0].
|
| I don't think that employers, these days, actually spend time
| researching applicant _bona fides_ , instead, relying on
| background check contractors (that probably avoid sites directly
| recommended by applicants), and interview-time whiteboard tests.
|
| [0] https://stackoverflow.com/story/chrismarshall
| bilekas wrote:
| Well this sucks.. It really is the best place I've come across.
| Good filtering options, a lot less noise for people searching (no
| unsolicitated) which can be good or bad, but good in my case.
|
| And the notifications that you could define were nice, also
| attaching to your already established profiles is decent too.
|
| Shame to lose it, just wonder was the maintenance costing more
| than the income from it. But that would seem strange!
| monkeybutton wrote:
| I would have thought the behavioural data they collect would set
| them apart from regular job boards. Instead of just matching on
| keywords, you know what users are working with on a day to day
| basis and can show them ads relevant to their skills and
| interest!
| francisofascii wrote:
| So I guess we should all start jotting down the companies
| currently on SO Jobs that we might want to work for in the
| future. Those listings might be all gone even before April.
| minusf wrote:
| This seems a bit tone deaf from SO. maybe it's not a moneymaker
| for them but it's hands down the best job site for techies. Hope
| to never open linked in ever.
| anaerobicover wrote:
| They had slowly and surely shifted from building things for
| actual developers to growth for its own sake. And doubled down
| on this leading up to the acquisition, no reason to expect it
| to stop. Despite they had been profitable for years from their
| ads business. Another great sustainable service to public
| sacrificed on Moloch's altar.
| dmitrybrant wrote:
| Aw, sad. I found my current job (in which I couldn't be happier)
| on SO, and have also posted listings on SO for another employer
| before that. I haven't used it to search for jobs in a while, but
| I recall it being a super simple, no-nonsense experience that was
| generally higher signal-to-noise than most other jobs sites. I
| wonder what site today matches the simplicity and quality of SO
| Jobs?
| z5h wrote:
| What are some good alternatives?
| lordnacho wrote:
| I'm a bit surprised people liked the SO job board. I thought the
| technical product was well done with good UX, but I never see
| many high paying roles on there. Perhaps it just wasn't getting
| traction. Fwiw I think the monthly HN thread has by far the best
| jobs.
| bluedino wrote:
| Were they not making money on this? I figured a large part of
| their revenue came from job listings.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| > As we considered the next stage of growth for us as a company,
| we went back to product fundamentals and asked ourselves: how can
| we leverage our unique position to solve real, meaningful
| problems for our users and customers?
|
| And from his LinkedIn bio: _Lead an amazing global organization
| of Stackers who are passionate about making a difference in our
| community._
|
| This kind of corporate language ("growth for us as a company",
| "leverage our unique position", "passionate about making a
| difference in our community") is how you know SO is run by some
| outside executive who came in after the company was already a
| success.
| illwrks wrote:
| Makes sense, they can't compete with LinkedIn in direct hiring.
|
| Stack overflow = dictionary for developers. Very few would be
| visiting it with a job hunting mindset.
|
| Recruiters/headhunters are predominantly on LinkedIn, they won't
| bother with other platforms. Company employer branding teams will
| use it though as long as the cost isn't as gouging as it was.
| snlzz wrote:
| Is there a mirror of the content somewhere? It sounds like they
| may go the way of "expertsexchange" at some point in the future.
|
| Unlike "expertsexchange", SO is really useful though.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| expert what now?
| mkoryak wrote:
| you must be young.
|
| "experts" "exchange" was a site like stackoverflow but
| created before SO and had horrible ads and that very
| unfortunate name.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| I knew what it was, just saw the opportunity for the joke.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| They publish data dumps on archive.org:
| https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Stack+Exch...
| andrewstuart wrote:
| StackOverflow jobs are extremely overpriced, even if you can find
| what the price is - no wonder they don't value this area of the
| business enough to keep it - who wants to place a job ad at $500?
|
| At $500 an ad a small company needs to justify that purchase -
| especially when finding someone may take six months and 8 ads. Of
| course StackOverflow Jobs won't be the choice for that sort of
| talent search at $500 per ad.
|
| They should have made job ads $50 each and advertised the price
| up front.
|
| It is worth noting that in the current economic conditions job
| ads are dramatically less effective because there is a shortage
| of developers and because recruiters are now contacting
| candidates directly. That said, job ads are not dead - job ads
| need to adjust to the market conditions. Job ads _used to be
| worth $500_ , now they are worth $50 - that's how the recruiting
| market has changed.
|
| At the moment it is extremely hard to find developers - this
| results in lots and lots of job ads.
|
| StackOverflow management are clearly inexperienced/incompetent in
| the recruiting field if they can't capitalise on this in the
| current environment.
|
| What a waste.
| berelig wrote:
| Companies that otherwise spend $20,000 to fill a role.
| Headhunting is a huge overhead
| andrewstuart wrote:
| I know that - I've been a recruiter for 15 years.
|
| But companies do not equate the $20,000 recruiting fee with
| the cost of ads.
|
| Small companies - startups and also large companies and HR
| departments actually look at the price of their recruiting
| tools.
|
| To find someone I would ideally like to advertise across
| every available channel - that means ads on 3 or four job
| sites such as SO, LinkedIn and also local board.
|
| Simply not possible to include SO in that sort of campaign at
| $500/ad.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| Why should they sell ads for $50 if companies are buying ads
| for $500? Recruiters charge $15000 for a single hire, so a
| company could buy 10 ads for $500 and it would still be cheaper
| than going through a recruiter.
| [deleted]
| murukesh_s wrote:
| Hope they revert the decision. From the comments it's apparent
| that SO is doing a great service to employers and job seekers. If
| someone from SO is reading this, please consider keeping it alive
| at least as a service to the tech industry.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| I always was impressed at the quality of SO jobs. Every interview
| and offer I had through SO jobs was a great experience. Developer
| story was kinda lame generally speaking. It had potential but I
| don't think anybody read them nor cared to over a resume.
|
| What I never understood about SO is that there are so many ways
| to help companies & contributors connect. Why stop at job boards?
|
| What if you're a company that really needs a certain type of
| developer and you wanted to send a targeted
| email/notification/etc to those in the top 5% answering those
| questions? I know from being in the top 3% myself I'd love to
| opt-in to this feature.
|
| Or perhaps a referral system in which somebody might come across
| your profile via an answer, comment, etc and would have an option
| to say "Ask if interested in work?". Again, would love to peruse
| offers.
|
| What about a bounty system that allows companies to sponsor / put
| real money on questions instead of imaginary internet points?
| Bounties always were so unrewarding. I'd answer a question for
| $25-50 instead of 50/500 internet points if it didn't take too
| long.
|
| Stack Overflow has somewhat failed the contributors just like
| other big platforms like YouTube/TikTok/etc have in the past. If
| 90% of people consume content on the site, 9% contribute, and 1%
| create, why is there not even consideration for incentivizing
| those in the 10%? Job boards was a start, but sadly now it is an
| end.
| shantara wrote:
| What a shame! It was the website where I found my current job. It
| seemed to be the only tech job search board that was focused on
| its main function, and not on collecting as much personal data as
| possible.
| bluetomcat wrote:
| Same with me. I found my current fully remote job via SO jobs 5
| years ago. Compared to everything else I've used, it was the
| board with the highest quality of employers and candidates.
| Having a profile with 40k reputation has also probably helped
| and has relieved me from putting countless abbreviated
| buzzwords in my CV.
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