Stack Exchange Raises $40M Led by A16Z to Boost Its Programmer Forums • Hacker News Board

Re: Stack Exchange Raises $40M Led by A16Z to Boost Its Programmer Forums

#41

Post by timdev2 » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 5:59 PM UTC

rattray wrote: post #4

One interesting nugget: more than half of the 200+ employees at Stack Exchange are working on StackOverflow Careers. Has anyone used SO Careers? Opinions?

I posted a employer ad on SO Careers, and also GitHub Jobs. The SO post resulted in a satisfyingly large set of high-quality candidates. I was satisfied with the value.

In contrast, GitHub was surprisingly disappointing. Maybe one or two worthwhile candidates, and a ton of junk. It appears that GitHub's jobs get scraped and posted elsewhere, and the bulk of responses to my ad were low-quality (and that's being generous) candidates responding to those reposted versions.

Re: Stack Exchange Raises $40M Led by A16Z to Boost Its Programmer Forums

#42

Post by dummyfellow » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 6:00 PM UTC

what valuation did they get?

Re: Stack Exchange Raises $40M Led by A16Z to Boost Its Programmer Forums

#43

Post by nhzmju » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 6:00 PM UTC

troymc wrote: post #28

I often ask a question on Google, get taken to a Stack Exchange site, and find that yes, they have my question, but some moderator closed it before it got answered. SE got my traffic, but I didn't get my answer. Isn't that broken?

Having read over 5000( yes really ) questions and searched over 100 with Google, that didn't happen once.

Just to clarify, SE doesn't always have the question, but it always has the answer.

It must be related to the specific field you are searching for; older ones are usually complete. I wouldn't be surprised if a more casual programming field has a larger ratio of closed answers.

Re: Stack Exchange Raises $40M Led by A16Z to Boost Its Programmer Forums

#44

Post by 27182818284 » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 6:01 PM UTC

troymc wrote: post #28

I often ask a question on Google, get taken to a Stack Exchange site, and find that yes, they have my question, but some moderator closed it before it got answered. SE got my traffic, but I didn't get my answer. Isn't that broken?

This is pretty much my experience. The site is read-only for a lot of people. I think I was rejected the other day because I didn't have the 50 reputation to comment on a reply that had other comments on an older question. They need to lessen restrictions that got too strict out of fear of the site becoming worthless. Right now the scales aren't balanced.

Re: Stack Exchange Raises $40M Led by A16Z to Boost Its Programmer Forums

#45

Post by nikhilpandit » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 6:04 PM UTC

rattray wrote: post #4

One interesting nugget: more than half of the 200+ employees at Stack Exchange are working on StackOverflow Careers. Has anyone used SO Careers? Opinions?

In my experience (speaking from the employer point of view), SO Careers has been pretty good. Most of the people who applied were looking to work remotely (which was fine by us), so that might skew the experience (as in, not sure what the response quality would be if we didn't select "remote work ok" given that most of our respondents wanted to work remotely).

Re: Stack Exchange Raises $40M Led by A16Z to Boost Its Programmer Forums

#46

Post by k-mcgrady » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 6:04 PM UTC

gdw2 wrote: post #40

cheald wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide examples of some of those questions? Usually when I encounter that, it's been closed as a duplicate with a link to the original.

When searching for the best tool for the job, I often get pointed to SE and the questions are closed as "not constructive". I seem to recall, however, that they opened a separate site for such discussions?

"Best tool for the job" doesn't sound like something that should be on SO. Far too subjective and likely to result in stupid opinionated arguments that go nowhere.

Re: Stack Exchange Raises $40M Led by A16Z to Boost Its Programmer Forums

#47

Post by nhzmju » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 6:04 PM UTC

gdw2 wrote: post #40

cheald wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide examples of some of those questions? Usually when I encounter that, it's been closed as a duplicate with a link to the original.

When searching for the best tool for the job, I often get pointed to SE and the questions are closed as "not constructive". I seem to recall, however, that they opened a separate site for such discussions?

best tool for the job is off topic on Stack Overflow.

They did open Software Recommendations Stack Exchange.

Closed answers get deleted in some regular interval. If they for some weird reason aren't, you could consider flagging them, there is always a response to that.

Re: Stack Exchange Raises $40M Led by A16Z to Boost Its Programmer Forums

#48

Post by danielweber » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 6:06 PM UTC

mathattack wrote: post #23

"Spolsky says that two-thirds of its revenues today come from recruitment services, via its Stack Overflow Careers site, and one-third from advertising." I found this very interesting. Stack Exchange is an insanely useful service, but I struggled to figure out how they would monetize it. (Similar to Wikipedia) They're received enough money that exit valuation expectations are high. I guess the cash flow projections f…

I worry about exit strategies. Stack Overflow was supposed to be "programming-question forum, done right." We've seen a lot of old people come through with the strategy of "build up critical mass of questions+answers, then enact paywall."

I'll probably always be skeptical that SO is just about to become ruined, unless they explicitly move it into a long-term strategy where the careers board is all they want for revenue.

Re: Stack Exchange Raises $40M Led by A16Z to Boost Its Programmer Forums

#49

Post by Max_Horstmann » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 6:08 PM UTC

rattray wrote: post #4

One interesting nugget: more than half of the 200+ employees at Stack Exchange are working on StackOverflow Careers. Has anyone used SO Careers? Opinions?

I found my current job, which is working on SO Careers, on SO Careers.

Re: Stack Exchange Raises $40M Led by A16Z to Boost Its Programmer Forums

#50

Post by wslh » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 6:10 PM UTC

rattray wrote: post #4

One interesting nugget: more than half of the 200+ employees at Stack Exchange are working on StackOverflow Careers. Has anyone used SO Careers? Opinions?

> more than half of the 200+ employees at Stack Exchange are working on StackOverflow Careers.

So at the end it's all about recruiting like LinkedIn?