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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

#211

Post by whynotmaybe »

rahidz wrote: post #93
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.

Why is this so common with tech companies? I'm not an economist by any means, but I never hear of McDonald's, Honda, Home Depot, etc. etc. pulling these kinds of stunts. They're perfectly happy being large companies that pull a constant year-over-year profit. Meanwhile tech companies seem to deliberately have a lifespan of years, not decades, with rugpulls like this being accepted as the norm.

Because long term companies in tech are seen as "not innovating" or "evil".

Ex : Microsoft (evil), Oracle (not innovating and evil), IBM (not innovating), Apple (evil)

Being a startup is seen as "good" by many people because you're seen as "trying", if you stay long and raise your prices, you're seen as "milking".

Microsoft is creating a lot of innovation by trying and failing (Windows phone) or succeeding (Office 365) but many people here see them as evil because they ask for money.

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

#212

Post by IshKebab »

littlestymaar wrote: post #158
IshKebab wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Salaries presumably. Apparently they have 500 employees, probably on crazy SF salaries. Easily $1-200m/year.

> Apparently they have 500 employee Then it's a management problem: what were those people hired to do, given that the content is generated and curated by community alone? Given that the software running StackOverflow has been working for many years without signifiant changes, they could probably have stuck to ten times less employees and generate substantial profit, but eh that doesn't make a good exit valuation… >…

I agree. $100m-$200m/year on staff costs.

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

#213

Post by agentgumshoe »

danaris wrote: post #180
agentgumshoe wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the simplest way to measure that is by asking 'what would we truly lose if this company disappeared tomorrow?'. With one follow-up question of 'how easily could the important bits actually be replaced?'

No; that kind of thought experiment heavily biases in favor of large organizations. It's much more helpful to ask, "What would we lose if this company were broken up tomorrow into parts no larger than (say) the median company size?"

I think it does the opposite, it makes you think about whether the company is big because of its products/services or other reasons. It's not a yes/no answer, it's a prompt.

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

#214

Post by raincole »

refurb wrote: post #171
orwin wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider a city, paying two gardeners 25k each per year, and an extra 5k for two month. Spending is 55k+oil+chemicals+tool maintenance (that the gardeners usually do). Let's say the annualized cost is 75k. So this service contributions to GDP is 75k. Now, the city wants to show GDP/capita growth. Simple : let's pay a company X that will pay the gardeners. It'll cost 95k. Now the GDP is 95k+ 55k (let's say the gardene…

Where does the extra money come from? Out of thin air?

GDP isn't money. It's production.

There is an assumption behind GDP: people generally pay production for a fair amount of money. The more untrue this assumption is, the less meaningful GDP is.

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

#215

Post by refurb »

raincole wrote: post #214
refurb wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does the extra money come from? Out of thin air?

GDP isn't money. It's production. There is an assumption behind GDP: people generally pay production for a fair amount of money. The more untrue this assumption is, the less meaningful GDP is.

I’m talking in the example ” let's pay a company X that will pay the gardeners. It'll cost 95k.”

Where does that 95k come from?

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

#216

Post by Shawnj2 »

ben_w wrote: post #26
janalsncm wrote: post #3

> In May I wrote about Stack Overflow's business, which lost $42 million over 6 months and had just laid off 10% of its employees. Since then, the company's fiscal year-end results came out. Despite growing revenue, it lost $84 million over the year ending on March 31, 2023. Thank god Wikipedia isn’t run like Stack Overflow. As an end user, they have pretty much the same value proposition: user generated answers to m…

> their median user is a junior dev who really just needs to serialize a Java object and isn’t going to pay or put up with any LLM-generated nonsense. (Un?)Ironically, one of my main uses of ChatGPT is to replace StackOverflow (it's great at turning vague guesses about what I want into fast ideas, and when it's wrong it's still less wrong than the combination of SO content and the search engines connected to it); and…

Honestly LLM generated and moderator edited/vetted answers would make SO vastly more useful

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

#217

Post by amon22 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #70
raincole wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one of my main uses of ChatGPT is to replace StackOverflow I'm pretty sure it's the main usage of almost all the programmers who use ChatGPT.

That and translating short messages into neurotypical-appropriate management-impressing emails, lol. Example, the message "tl;dr": Dear [Recipient's Name], I trust this email finds you well. I am writing to express my appreciation for the time and effort you invested in composing the recent email you sent my way. Your commitment to clear communication is commendable, and I value the insights you often bring to our ex…

You didn't even read this garbage did you

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

#218

Post by playingalong »

ygra wrote: post #9
janalsncm wrote: post #3

> In May I wrote about Stack Overflow's business, which lost $42 million over 6 months and had just laid off 10% of its employees. Since then, the company's fiscal year-end results came out. Despite growing revenue, it lost $84 million over the year ending on March 31, 2023. Thank god Wikipedia isn’t run like Stack Overflow. As an end user, they have pretty much the same value proposition: user generated answers to m…

> Any question could easily include a Reddit-style discussion tab to facilitate discussion. This exists in the form of chat, and extended comment discussions migrate there. 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.

20K+ karma in SO. I have never used SO chat. I don't come to SO to socialize. To me chat means socializing.

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

#219

Post by feoren »

whynotmaybe wrote: post #211
rahidz wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this so common with tech companies? I'm not an economist by any means, but I never hear of McDonald's, Honda, Home Depot, etc. etc. pulling these kinds of stunts. They're perfectly happy being large companies that pull a constant year-over-year profit. Meanwhile tech companies seem to deliberately have a lifespan of years, not decades, with rugpulls like this being accepted as the norm.

Because long term companies in tech are seen as "not innovating" or "evil". Ex : Microsoft (evil), Oracle (not innovating and evil), IBM (not innovating), Apple (evil) Being a startup is seen as "good" by many people because you're seen as "trying", if you stay long and raise your prices, you're seen as "milking". Microsoft is creating a lot of innovation by trying and failing (Windows phone) or succeeding (Office 36…

Ehh ... is Wikipedia seen as "not innovating" or "evil"? Craigslist? They haven't really changed their core model (except for Wikipedia's recent more minimal look, I guess, but that's a pretty small change in the last decade). Wikipedia went the direction that once they had more money than they needed to run it, they started to do other stuff. I think that's great. Once your killer app is hugely successful, stop messing with it. Focus on running it efficiently and reliably with a small crew, and take the ongoing income from that to try other things.

Yes, the companies you listed are viewed negatively, but that's not because they have a sustainable business model. Don't underestimate the many perfectly valid reasons those companies earned their reputations.

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

#220

Post by dmvdoug »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #207
dmvdoug wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll preach it again: people need to learn that satisficing is a good and valuable end-state!

It is a startup wisdom that stagnation (i.e. no growth) means death. The often stated reason why C-level executives are paid so well is that they have to be able to solve the insanely hard problem of finding new growth opportunities for the company over a long(er) period of time; something few people are capable of. Well: by this criterion, many CxOs fail to deserve this huge pay (more precisely: they build Potemkin…

They should bring me to Startup Bootcamp or whatever it is, so I can preach the satisficing gospel.
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