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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

#281

Post by Rexxar »

orwin wrote: post #104
janalsncm wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

It doesn't work like that at all. You add GVA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_value_added) of each entities. Adding more intermediate entities doesn't increase GDP as the GVA of each entities is reduced.

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

#282

Post by throwaway2990 »

paulmd wrote: post #209
throwaway2990 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SO is constantly being driven off a cliff by bimbos in management. Mods are the worst. Community moderators are ruining SO faster than the CEO.

Yeah, the CEO nailed the problem 5 years ago and tried to fix it. The community was having absolutely none of it - meta overflow more or less had a collective “are we so wrong? no, it’s the questionmakers who are wrong…” and then went right back to it. https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/04/26/stack-overflow-isnt-ve... What do you do with the fact that your core contributors are toxic manchildren who love the ability to…

I guess all the people downvoting are moderators on SO who are upset they killed a community.

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

#283

Post by jasfi »

nerdponx wrote: post #275
jasfi wrote: post #2

Losing money while growing revenue isn't necessarily a bad thing. This can be caused by growth investing, and is often the right thing to do. Amazon is a famous example of this line of thinking.

But what's there to even invest in for SO? Ad tech? Selling some LLM trained on their data? I can think of a whole bunch of silly ideas here, but none of them seem anywhere near comparable to Amazon investing in a vertically integrated supply chain for e-commerce and cloud computing.

I found an article: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200728005330/en/Sta...

They're investing in teams and knowledge management. Sounds like they're going after the Enterprise.

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

#284

Post by starbugs »

paxys wrote: post #261
starbugs wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As SO contributors, _we_ have a say with regard to our future consideration of SO as a destination of our contributions. Since SO is just a platform, it can't survive without _our_ content. People have much more power than they think.

That only works if all SO contributors band together and make decisions as a collective bloc. At the moment you are only speaking for yourself. Most others who add value to the platform are going to keep doing so regardless.

If only there was something to enable lots of people to coordinate easily ... like ... a big computer network?

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

#285

Post by janalsncm »

glimshe wrote: post #119
mrtksn wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/eur/europe/life-expect... USA: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/life... I'm sure there are nuances but according to this particular source European life expectancy went from 75 to 79, US life expectancy went from 78 to 79 with a period of a decline between 2013 and 2018.

The decline in US life expectancy is more complex than a general reduction in quality of life, and mostly unrelated to the US financial culture to leads to unicorns. The American ideal of huge companies that must take over the entire market can be traced at least all the way back to the railway robber barons, and has existed even during periods of immense growth in life expectancy. At the same time, a lot of the incr…

If the US is funding the research, what is it about the US political system which prevents Americans from enjoying those same gains?

I suggest that perhaps it’s a difference in perspective on rights. In Europe, there is a positive right to healthcare. In the US, there is no such right apart from certain circumstances. We turn our nose up at “handouts”. The US expects the free market to handle it instead, which it has. This has led to large portions of the country with few doctors and even fewer affordable ones.

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

#286

Post by 3LazTjBv-f »

tracker1 wrote: post #251
Qem wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet, now that stackoverflow is becoming increasingly hostile to their contributors, I think it would be a good moment to the Wikimedia folks to venture in this area.

I take it you haven't had to deal with many mods on Wikipedia.

Depends on who's fiefdom you encroach upon (and language version). I think SO "culture" is more equalized, even among multiple tags.

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

#287

Post by nerdponx »

jasfi wrote: post #283
nerdponx wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what's there to even invest in for SO? Ad tech? Selling some LLM trained on their data? I can think of a whole bunch of silly ideas here, but none of them seem anywhere near comparable to Amazon investing in a vertically integrated supply chain for e-commerce and cloud computing.

I found an article: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200728005330/en/Sta... They're investing in teams and knowledge management. Sounds like they're going after the Enterprise.

Best of luck to them, I know they've been trying to push a "for teams" product for years but I've never heard of anyone who has even expressed interest in it. Atlassian will be a tough nut to crack. Job board seems like a much better idea, but I'm not the CEO or investors so what do I know?

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

#288

Post by jasfi »

nerdponx wrote: post #287
jasfi wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found an article: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200728005330/en/Sta... They're investing in teams and knowledge management. Sounds like they're going after the Enterprise.

Best of luck to them, I know they've been trying to push a "for teams" product for years but I've never heard of anyone who has even expressed interest in it. Atlassian will be a tough nut to crack. Job board seems like a much better idea, but I'm not the CEO or investors so what do I know?

The job board was also a finished product. They could have automated just about anything manual, and kept it going with a small team. For the brand promotion alone it was worth it to keep it going.

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

#289

Post by IshKebab »

nerdponx wrote: post #276
IshKebab wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Right but the question remains: why do you need 500 people to run a Q&A site with mostly plain text, and some banner ads?

I agree, it's a crazy number of staff.
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