Hard Numbers on Stackoverflow Careers | Hacker News Reader

Hard Numbers on Stackoverflow Careers

cforcoding.com

34 pointsfogus33 comments

First: you're missing all the users with less than 1000 reputation that have paid for CVs. There are actually about 1500 paid CVs in the system.

Is there critical mass? I would say, in major tech/development areas, or for national-footprint employers who relocated candidates, absolutely yes. A company like Google, Microsoft, Pixar will certainly find plenty of good candidates on Stack Overflow.

In smaller cities without big tech industries, and for people who don't want to relocate, mostly the answer is "not yet" although I expect to get there. The little startup in Tulsa that needs an embedded systems programmer but doesn't want to relocate someone... won't find them. The guy in Oklahoma City who won't move elsewhere isn't finding good tech jobs because there aren't any in Oklahoma City, not because we don't have critical mass.

As for the revenue, earning money was never the point of charging job seekers. We charge job seekers a minimal amount because it eliminates a huge number of unserious, unqualified, and other candidates who really don't stand a chance. If it's free, job seekers have an incentive to post their resume everywhere "just in case" which employers hate, because they have to filter through lots and lot of junk. We're actively looking for better ways to do this kind of pre-filtering. I'd like to lower the cost as much as possible without opening the floodgates, and I imagine we'll find creative ways to let high-rep stackoverflow users get a CV without paying very much. Nothing is set in stone.

You might want to check that the practice of charging job seekers is even legal. A lot of english-speaking countries prohibit recruitment services charging job seekers to prevent exploitation of vulnerable people.

To quote from British Law:

"Except in such cases or classes of case as the Secretary of State may prescribe, a person carrying on an employment agency or an employment business shall not demand or directly or indirectly receive from any person any fee for finding him employment or for seeking to find him employment."

(from http://www.opsi.gov.uk/RevisedStatutes/Acts/ukpga/1973/cukpg...)

> earning money was never the point of charging job seekers

Really? Why don't you give all the money to charity then Joel?

That's not a bad idea, actually, I'll talk to Jeff about that.

Actually, if you really make that little money out of it, the publicity stunt of giving it all to charity might be more profitable in the long term than keeping it to yourself.

Translated: Hey Joel, I'll always suspect your motives regardless of what you do even if it's a binary choice so you can't win. What does whether or not Joel is doing this for the money have anything to do with whether or not StackOverflow Careers is a good or bad thing?

The problem sane people have, is that the profit motive is backwards.

The stated purpose is to help geeks get jobs. However, SOC makes more money from geeks not finding jobs.

How else can one respond to that than with doubt? Are we supposed to take their word for it, that they're going to do the best they possibly can in building and operating this service, so that they can make less money?

Exactly, some nice false dichotomies going on here. Also: what's the sin in making money while also helping programmers get better jobs, regardless of whether or not that money is the primary goal or a side effect?

Have you read the article describing the problems implicit in SO careers? Also, look at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=997068 the high post on this thread.

There's nothing wrong with making money in that case, just avoid these kinds of statements:

> earning money was never the point of charging job seekers

Stack Overflow rep is already used to determine when a user can do things like edit questions or moderate - why not use that to determine who might be a "serious" candidate? Just like you have metrics that must be met to moderate questions, why not add one that lets you add your CV for free? Maybe there are breakpoints where it gets cheaper so the only ones paying full price are people with little to no rep at all.

I really like the idea of the site learning who to trust over time - while I wouldn't say it's fully accurate it's working towards the idea at least. This is just another area where you can implement that idea.

Perhaps it could cost 200 rep to file your CV for a year, if you want a "serious people only" barrier

Why not let people put in as much reputation as they want to (minimum 200 or so). The higher payers get listed first.

I don't quite follow how charging money eliminates "…unqualified, and other candidates who really don't stand a chance" from the selection pool.

What does charging a fee have to do with qualification, and what other factor makes them not stand a chance (and which is also mitigated by charging a fee)?

Why not? Look at email spam.

Free = craziness.

Sure, which accounts for the "not serious" candidates but does not, IMO, explain the claim that it will filter "unqualified" candidates or those who "don't stand a chance."

They will self-select out because it will not be worth the marginal cost. If the marginal cost is 0, then it is worth the effort for the perceived long-shot chance. You are right in that this will not eliminate the truly deluded.

I know this is going way off topic, but I've been meaning to ask this somewhere. My knowledge is a little rusty (~8 years back I worked for a software development company that wrote recruitment software), but it was my understanding that, at least under UK law, you were not legally allowed to charge candidates to upload their CV or to search for jobs. Is stackoverflow careers open in the UK? Does this law not exist in the US or other countries?

edit: Sorry, I see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=997197 asking the same question.

The one person who definitely should be hired from Stackoverflow Careers is the one who teaches Jeff how to make back-ups and check that back-ups have been made properly.

Looking at Stackoverflow Careers from a hiring perspective, I don't really understand the point.

If suddenly 20% of my candidates have a CV that includes some "reputation" score, and other information from a programming website, what am I to do with that?

Does it mean they spend time on stackoverflow instead of working? Does it mean they're a genius who knows all? Does it mean they simply ask and answer a lot of simple questions, but are useless on complex matters? Do I really want to try to figure that out?

In the end, I want to do apples to apples comparisons, and I'm not sure how SO Careers fits in there.

Are there suggested Best Practices for how to integrate SO Careers into a candidate search? Perhaps somebody can enlighten me if I'm missing something, but I don't get it.

The score itself doesn't prove anything, but its inclusion on the CV is meant to encourage employers to view the account and see what sort of questions and answers the candidate is posting on the site. It won't let you compare apples to apples, but it's not meant to. It's meant to provide another dimension to assess the candidate, in addition to their work experience, personal projects, GPA, etc. As such, it's not designed to fit in the same slot that Monster.com, Dice, etc fill - and to trying to treat it as such removes a lot of the unique benefit of the site for employers.

> encourage employers to view the account and see what sort of questions and answers the candidate is posting on the site

If a candidate feels that there is a very good, publicly available demonstration of their knowledge (be it a project they're involved in, some open-source software, or participation in a technical forum or mailing list), they already have the ability to simply point that out to me in their cover letter, or other communications.

> It's meant to provide another dimension to assess the candidate

This is precisely the problem. It creates an additional dimension, but one that exists only for a subset of candidates and isn't easy to evaluate fairly. That seems likely to create an imbalanced hiring process.

Why should I pay for that? (or implicitly ask the candidate to pay to give it to me?)

Especially the later question especially, [why should I] "ask the candidate to pay to give it to me?", hangs in the air.

Asking a candidate to effectively pay money to apply isn't "the way to their heart". It isn't necessarily legal or ethical either. Joel has described what high demand there is for the "great programmers". Is it plausible that these same great programmers are going to be paying money to be found?

I like Stackoverflow. I spent a month getting 1000+K reps and then realized I should stop and do some work.

I like the idea of integrated SO to job search. It's just that direction that this integration has been problematic, indeed it could plausibly called evil.

Every candidate has different additional dimensions. People aren't interchangeable cogs.

Also, life isn't fair. I don't see what fairness has to do with anything.

I don't see what fairness has to do with anything.

Uh, I wouldn't want to work for a company which showed blatant unfairness in its hiring. Similarly, most worthwhile companies don't want to show such unfairness. The companies that are unfair in hiring probably would be unfair in their treatment of employees once they get hired, etc..

It's an extra bit of information that you wont get from interviewing someone. A lot of people interview well and are good at talking, but can't program worth a damn and they will waste lots of your time and money. I've seen this happen a lot.

The fact that someone spends time on the website answering questions shows they are passionate about programming and might be helpful people. Generally these are considered good traits.

It would be worthwhile to spend some time figuring this stuff out because it help you make a better choice. Good luck!

If you have a candidate with a good CV and he's given you his stackoverflow account name, then it should take you about 5 minutes to get a good idea of how much time he spends on the site, what kind of questions he asks/answers and how well those questions are asked and answered. What you want to do with information is course totally up to you, but I fail to see why having that information is in any way a bad thing.

I agree that a raw number means very little, but the info gleaned from looking up their stackoverflow account can tell you quite a bit.

Stackoverflow Careers is based on the premise that it's worth $5,000/yr to me, plus $99/yr/candidate for the candidate, to share that information.

Do you really see that much value, versus simply asking all candidates 'Are there any publicly accessible technical forums or mailing lists that you participate on a regular basis? If so, are you willing to share your username?'

I prefer the latter, because it's a question I can ask all candidates, and it doesn't cost me $5,000 to ask. Nor does it cost you $99 to answer.

I guess it's a perspective thing. To me it seems more like you're paying $5000 to get access to CVs by programmers who are dedicated enough to the whole job hunting process and secure enough in their ability that they're willing to pay $100 just to list their CVs. The stack overflow score seems fairly incidental to the whole process.

I think that the candidates who are most secure in their ability won't think that they need to pay $100 to get their CVs seen by good companies.

Again, I'm simply not buying the argument.

The reality is that I'd never just use StackOverflow to find candidates, so these are people who have other ways to find out about the positions, and apply.

I'd rather see the candidate spend the money on an ACM membership (or similar professional development) than spend it simply trying to reach me.

That said, I think I now have a pretty good idea of the value proposition as it might exist for other employers, but it seems clear that the equation doesn't balance for me. Thanks for clarifying your argument, I appreciate it.

I bought ACM membership. They never sent me the monthly CACM on time (8 months before receiving 6 issues in a box(!!!) in the mail, then 1 more 3 months later, still missing 5), and they sold my address and now I receive junk mail advertising academic books.

Joining ACM: just a plain bad idea. Only value is older papers not available ungated on citeseer or elsewhere.

It would be interesting to see what sort of questions the candidate has asked and what sort of answers he/she has given. Just how it's interesting to see some code samples from a previous project.

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