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Stack Overflow's CEO Doesn't Understand Stack Overflow

jlericson.com

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Re: Stack Overflow's CEO Doesn't Understand Stack Overflow

#71

Post by newaccount74 »

luckystarr wrote: post #43
JimDabell wrote: post #4

I have a hard time feeling sorry for Stack Overflow. They had most developers in the world visiting frequently. They have detailed information on exactly which languages, libraries, toolchains, and platforms those developers use and their pain points. All of their content is given to them for free by volunteers. All of their moderation is done for them for free by volunteers. The only thing they have to serve is text…

I'm a senior dev. The only thing I found useful in the last years was the job market on SO. They closed that down recently. Now I don't even go there at all.

Stack Overflow job ads were the best part of the site. They were affordable enough for small companies to run them, and they were the only place that actually showed compensation info front and center. They didn't have the most job ads, but they had really good ones.

Screw them for closing that.

Re: Stack Overflow's CEO Doesn't Understand Stack Overflow

#72

Post by matsemann »

luckystarr wrote: post #43
JimDabell wrote: post #4

I have a hard time feeling sorry for Stack Overflow. They had most developers in the world visiting frequently. They have detailed information on exactly which languages, libraries, toolchains, and platforms those developers use and their pain points. All of their content is given to them for free by volunteers. All of their moderation is done for them for free by volunteers. The only thing they have to serve is text…

I'm a senior dev. The only thing I found useful in the last years was the job market on SO. They closed that down recently. Now I don't even go there at all.

I'm a senior dev. Which means my knowledge and experience is often on higher level stuff. Hence I often need to look up details I don't bother to remember. I'm not ashamed to say I search for lots of stuff, and often get results from SO.

If anything, pretending to be completely knowledgeable "since one's a senior" is quite junior behavior.

Re: Stack Overflow's CEO Doesn't Understand Stack Overflow

#74

Post by theteapot »

fabian2k wrote: post #52
theteapot wrote: post #37

[flagged]

Right now the moderators are prohibited by SE to remove AI-generated answers unless the users admit using AI themselves unprompted. You can see the policy here ( https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/391626/historical-p... ), and this policy is the main reason for the moderator strike. This policy is very likely to be replaced soon, but that isn't final and the details aren't public yet.

Well that sucks. I've asked ChatGPT (v3) for help with a programming task a couple of times. It made weirdly specific shit up about how an API was structured, which is way worse than a plain wrong answer. Then it tried to gas light me when questioned the response declaring itself totally correct. Then it eventually backed down and apologized. Never solved my problems. It was a weird experience, but enough for me to conclude I'd prefer to just use a search engine on openly available human generated content than some weird rip-off transformation of that content.

Re: Stack Overflow's CEO Doesn't Understand Stack Overflow

#75

Post by nottorp »

dijksterhuis wrote: post #51
nottorp wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That being said, any question that requires extensive discussion is likely not a very good fit for SO because it's probably ambiguous, unclear or otherwise hard to answer exactly. So basically SO isn't a tool to improve your skills but one to turn you into a copy/paste monkey?

I mean, if you can copy/paste my answer here into your codebase, I would be very surprised. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52206576/write-spark-dat...

I'm surprised you didn't get a mod complaining there's nothing to copy/paste in there :)

Re: Stack Overflow's CEO Doesn't Understand Stack Overflow

#76

Post by cx0der »

andrefuchs wrote: post #64

ChatGPT and Discord communities replaced SO for me. It's way faster to get answers.

While that was a perfect outcome for you, but when someone else needs the same or similar question answered they have to ask ChatGPT or find a relevant Discord to ask again.

This was the original problem that Stackoverflow was supposed to solve, and did do at the beginning.

Re: Stack Overflow's CEO Doesn't Understand Stack Overflow

#77

Post by mcv »

starbugs wrote: post #34
vouaobrasil wrote: post #7

The author is wrong. The CEO perfectly understands Stack Overflow. What the author of this blog doesn't understand is that the CEO is pursuing a perfectly valid strategy: maximize its short-term gains by squeezing it unsustainably with the latest hype, and take the money, and run. The good of the community and the well-being of the users are completely irrelevant in this strategy.

I think it's about time that we no longer accept this strategy as valid.

Valid according to the type of capitalist economy the rich, powerful and money hungry want: one where everything revolves around shareholder value, rather than societal value. In that economy, it doesn't matter how destructive your business model is, as long as the shareholders get value out of it.

Friedman's idea that corporations that maximising shareholder value has clearly been the single most destructive ideal that has plagued this planet for the past half century, but to too many people in power it is still the rule.

It's also the reason why we still keep burning coal and oil, despite knowing that we're destroying our planet that way.

Re: Stack Overflow's CEO Doesn't Understand Stack Overflow

#78

Post by mcv »

kortilla wrote: post #62
bloopernova wrote: post #14

If I were the semi benevolent dictator of the world, I'd make a law that said: all middle managers up to the CEO must spend 20% of their time doing entry level work in the company. Same with politicians. If you are insulated from what your company does, or constituents do, you can't effectively wield the power granted to you. Which leads me to an even more unpopular "authoritarian" opinion: the richest people are the…

> There should be no billionaires. This just means, “people shouldn’t be able to own large companies”. You’re going to need strong evidence that relinquishing ownership of any successful company to the government (or whoever you give the absconded shares to) is a way to run a sustainable company. What large country (50m+) has successfully eliminated billionaires without eliminating most of their own economy?

Or maybe companies should never get that big. Keep them small and human scale. Large companies represent an unreasonable concentration of wealth and therefore power. I think they're fundamentally a threat to democracy.

Re: Stack Overflow's CEO Doesn't Understand Stack Overflow

#79

Post by janalsncm »

mrtksn wrote: post #55
mrweasel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not everything needs to be a damn unicorn. More people needs to understand this. It's fine being a small(ish) business that turns a profit and provides a service that's beneficial to society. You don't need to be a billion dollar company to be important or do great work. DHH talked about this 15 years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY

But the whole "Tech" economy is based on the premise that everything must grow indefinitely and indefinitely means that at some point will be a unicorn. Europe is considered economical failure because there are not enough unicorns, there are lists on Twitter with list of unicorns per country that are supposed to show the decline of Europe. No matter if Europe has some of the best living condition for large group of p…

Between 2009 and today, the US doubled GDP while life expectancies fell. In the EU, GDP is stagnant but life expectancy went up.

Those who say Europe’s economy is a failure should at least consider what the purpose of an economy should even be.

Re: Stack Overflow's CEO Doesn't Understand Stack Overflow

#80

Post by arp242 »

matsemann wrote: post #72
luckystarr wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a senior dev. The only thing I found useful in the last years was the job market on SO. They closed that down recently. Now I don't even go there at all.

I'm a senior dev. Which means my knowledge and experience is often on higher level stuff. Hence I often need to look up details I don't bother to remember. I'm not ashamed to say I search for lots of stuff, and often get results from SO. If anything, pretending to be completely knowledgeable "since one's a senior" is quite junior behavior.

Also: sometimes I need to work with stuff I'm not so familiar with; no one is "senior" across the board. Even though I did Ruby full-time for a few years, it's been a while and I forgot a lot of basic boring stuff so I will end up searching things like "Ruby remove whitespace from string" (trim? strip? chop? chomp? delete? What were the differences again?)

And even inside my main expertise, I will sometimes search for an answer just to verify that my thinking is correct and that I didn't miss anything (which is not a strong guarantee that I didn't, but better than nothing).

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