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

#61

Post by Shog9 » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 6:18 PM UTC

avinassh wrote: post #34

scottc wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a great experience about 3 years ago. It was amazing. First, SO Careers 1.0 came to a halt, they made a few changes in 2.0, they changed it to an invite-only system as opposed to a premium subscription service. They best part of all, they reimbursed everyone who had previously paid. Here was the blog post about it: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/careers-2-0-launches/ It was great, I was getting several r…

Is it important to have high SE rep points for getting noticed from recruiters? (I have started using recently, have only 1k rep)

Not really. The usual guidelines are "have a portfolio of some sort" - IOW, something you can use to demonstrate what you know instead of just leaning on a sad list of keywords. That can be a nice SO profile, but could also be a solid open source project or well-written blog.

If you do plan on showing off your SO profile, don't get hung up on rep - well-written answers that demonstrate mastery of a subject are a lot more useful than an arbitrary number.

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

#62

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

wbeange wrote: post #10

more investment = more traffic = more reputation for me :)

More reputation for everyone which keeps everyone at the same level as they were. But the investment is awesome nonetheless. :)

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

#63

Post by jgh » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 6:21 PM UTC

cheald wrote: post #30

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?

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.

This is an example I ran into recently: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16317075/read-anonymous-j...

Although the question was framed badly it could have simply been edited to be more clear about what it was asking and what the answers are answering. It was helpful to me and I'm sure it's been helpful to others as well.

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

#64

Post by mattmanser » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 6:21 PM UTC

danielweber wrote: post #48

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 reven…

You probably didn't follow the early years. I just can't ever see them taking the site-with-a-dash's monetization strategy.

It's exactly why they made it in the first place, they repeatedly rubbished expert's exchange in the podcasts and even went so far as to creative commons the content, you can download all the questions and answers if you want.

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

#65

Post by smackfu » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 6:22 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?

More often, I find a question that is closed and frozen in time that does have answers, because the answerers were faster than the moderators. For instance, "Where can I download Spring?" The top Google result is a StackOverflow page that is closed as off-topic.

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

#66

Post by dale-cooper » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 6:22 PM UTC

cheald wrote: post #30

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?

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.

Very often when searching (with google) for subjective things you'll find a closed stackoverflow link high up in the results. I know stackoverflow isn't appropiate for those questions but i still keep going to those results. I understand their position, it's just annoying. This is an example of something i found today: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4674609/looking-for-a-ric...

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

#67

Post by Shog9 » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 6:25 PM UTC

danielweber wrote: post #48

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 reven…

Good discussion of that here: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/79435/what-is-stack-... (includes an answer from... a guy behind one of those paywall sites).

Worth keeping in mind that, because everything contributed is licensed to us via CC-BY-SA, we essentially have to compete against our own content - if we make the user experience awful, there are plenty of other sites willing to take the same information and present it better.

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

#68

Post by ciupicri » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 6:26 PM UTC

psp wrote: post #33

ceejayoz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except you don't have to browse to page four of a giant thread to find out a posted solution doesn't work, and you can update an old answer when the information becomes outdated, etc.

Stale is stale wherever you put it - page four or on top. Technology moves so fast that that responses from 2009 to HTML/JS question should be just ignored no matter how green the accepted checkmark.

If the API has really changed that much you can ask another similar question mentioning that you're interested in the new stuff, not the old one from the previous question.

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

#69

Post by rla4 » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 6:26 PM UTC

Max_Horstmann wrote: post #49

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.

yay! me too!

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

#70

Post by jordanpg » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 6:27 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?

There is an ongoing religious war among avid SO users (don't know about the rest of SE) about what kinds of questions should be allowed.

Roughly, there are two camps. Those who say that any well-formed, non-dup question of interest should be let in and those who think it's a stop of last-resort after checking all conceivable documentation and scouring the internet.

I believe the latter viewpoint is pretty run-of-the-mill developer machismo, and it makes me chuckle every time the first google hit directs me to a SO post with 1000 upvotes that has been closed as "off-topic".

It seems self-evident to me that in the year 2015, the internet has allowed me to make more valuable use of my time quickly searching for answers rather than scouring documentation. Docs have a time and a place, but are not needed for quick dips into the myriad techs you need to use to write a typical app these days.