Comment by rossdavidh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rossdavidh | Hacker News Reader

So, years ago I "used" Stack Overflow a lot. Now, rarely, if by "use" you mean "ask and answer questions". But, I find answers to my questions on it every day, and it is still far superior to other sources.

I've noticed a pattern in my attitude towards SO: when I ready an article about it on Hacker News, I get mad. When I'm actually on it, I get detailed, multiple answers to my question, written before I ever got there.

My suspicion is that many people noticed that a high rank on Stack Overflow was one way to generate a reputation that might get you freelance work, and then discovered that too many other people were trying to do the same thing, so it became competitive and trollish...for them. But all I want to do is find an answer to my question, that is more clear (and with better examples) than the one in the software's actual documentation (which reads like it was written for a textbook or maybe an AI, rather than the kind of answer you actually get from asking somebody for help).

SO still works, better than ever, for finding out the answer to your question. It just doesn't work as a social network or an interview/job board/advertising site. But, you know, I don't think that's a problem for me, and really, there are other websites out there for that.

Just look for the answer to your question, it's probably there, and if it isn't then it likely is not available anywhere else on the internet either, including the software documentation. Used this way, the SO internal politics is a non-issue.

Do you have any evidence (anecdotal or empirical) that people actually hire based on StackOverflow rankings? I'm sure it's happened in a few cases, but it seems backwards to me. If somebody came into an interview talking about their high SO rank or Reddit karma, I'd wonder if they would actually be focused on their work.

To me, hobbies and online activity aren't really credentials unless you've really built a strong personal brand that directly relates to your job.

Employers that don't look at GitHub and Stack Overflow activity when hiring are being silly. Unfortunately, it's the status quo. I mean, I actually wrote a book published by Apress that rarely gets brought up in interviews.

I once interviewed a guy who listed an academic paper on his résumé. I skimmed the paper, and asked him a soft question about it in the interview (I was just curious about some non-essential detail). He looked surprised said no-one had ever mentioned it before (and answered my question just fine, of course).

As a hiring manager, I rarely look at GitHub and never look at Stack Overflow or Kaggle, or whatever. All these tell me is that you don’t have any hobbies outside of coding.

As for GitHub in particular, it let’s me know if your project was something substantial, or merely an exercise for a class.

GitHub, your book, all that stuff takes time and effort to read, and quite frankly it isn’t worth it. You’re still going to need to go through the interview process so I can figure out if you’re competent. Reading some 1000 line random GitHub repo is hard, and it’s just not worth it.

I don't know about employment, but Stack Overflow has become one of the main lead gens for our 2-person software development consultancy. I monitor the tags that are relevant to our niche and try to answer any sensible questions that come along. (And try to help out people with less sensible questions where I can too.)

This presumably only works if you you cover some obscure-ish, deeply technical niches, not for more run-of-the-mill stuff. If your clients are non-technical, they won't find you on Stack Overflow. If your clients are companies that develop software themselves but need specialist skills for a project, it can work.

Note that I don't think my actual SO score[1] is in any way of importance. I suspect it's more important that:

- The answers are actually well written, in-depth and helpful.

- I have a reasonably recogniseable avatar image. I have been told by eventual clients that they kept running into my SO answers while they were trying to solve their problem themselves. Presumably this pattern is much more noticeable if there is a human face staring back at them from the bottom of the answer.

- Friendly comment exchanges probably help. Being an arse in SO comments probably won't help your chances of being hired by the person who asked the question or had the same problem and found your answer via a web search.

[1] At around 14000, my reputation score puts me in the top 3%, but if the stats in the article are correct, that doesn't even put me in the top third of the 8% of many-question-answerers. (I have answered 518 questions.) Mind you, my mean answer score is probably about 2, with the median squarely at 1; niche topics mean few people read my answer, and even fewer upvote them. My only gold badge is for voting on 600 questions, but I have bronze badges coming out of my ears.

I get loads of recruiter's messages via SO.

In general they are of much higher quality (as in, the person actually read about me and offered an interview because of what they saw) than other sources.

Perhaps ironically, even LinkedIn is a place where I receive a lot of spam recruitment messages.

I think it makes no sense comparing SO ranking to Reddit karma (unless maybe you're applying to a social coordinator position). SO rankings generally imply tangible useful knowledge in the technical space.

So, the evidence I have (anecdotal) is not so much that people actually are hiring, as that people are using SO to try to get leads. Whether or not that actually works, I don't know, but the competition for high rank relative to others undercuts the cooperative spirit.

One of my previous employers reached out to me on StackOverflow, telling me that my profile got them interested in me. I went through their interview process and accepted their offer. The project turned out to be quite interesting and working for them was one of the most positive experiences I had.

FWIW every job I've had in my 7-year career came from connections that stated though Stack Overflow. No one's hiring on the basis of reputation score, but many employers do reach out to users who have repeatedly demonstrated their technical communication and knowledge.

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