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Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%

stackoverflow.blog

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Re: Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%

#121

Post by yaakov »

kcole16 wrote: post #13
syntaxing wrote: post #6

I was kinda confused why covid-19 is effecting StackOverflow. After reading it, a good portion of layoffs is the Talent team with the reason of planned long term hiring freeze so they won't need (edit) this product offering for the near future. Side note, the original title of the posts is "A message from our CEO: The Way Forward"

This is referring to StackOverflow's Talent product, which is a software engineering focused hiring platform. Seems like they furloughed the sales and marketing team for this product, due to an expected slowdown in market-wide hiring.

Yes, this is what happened. Though only a portion of the team related to Talent was furloughed, not the whole team. It is still an active product, but sales has taken a big hit related to the downturn of the overall hiring environment due to Covid19.

Re: Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%

#122

Post by toyg »

novaRom wrote: post #90
SimonPStevens wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their main revenue is from two things. Firstly from their job boards which will be significantly reduced as few companies are hiring. Then secondly from advertising which will also be reduced during times of recession. The product you think of as stack overflow that will probably is really just a way for them to drive the right kind of traffic to those revenue sources.

Very plausible reasons indeed, but is it probably the same for many other companies? Just wondering if a chain reaction has already started.

That chain reaction is called “recession” and yes, it has already started. Expect more and more similar announcements from here to Christmas.

Re: Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%

#125

Post by tim-- »

irrational wrote: post #53
BoysenberryPi wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The post directly says they are seeing growth in their advertising business.

Does stackoverflow have ads? I would imagine that a large percentage of their technically savvy user base would be using an ad blocker.

You would be surprised how much Stack Overflow charges for job pages :)

Re: Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%

#126

Post by throwanem »

egorfine wrote: post #96
wiradikusuma wrote: post #46

I understand they had to do it (I'm sure we—their users—understand), but I can't understand the need for bullshit business-speak. Just say, "Due to circumstances you all familiar with, business is slow, so I have to let go of some people from X department." Putting up bullshit like this is like adding insult to injury. Especially, since their user demographics are mostly people who don't like bullshit.

eps. given the fact that this site is a product for developers, i.e. people specifically allergic to marketingspeak.

It's cute that people think this way, but probably not wise.

How hard do you think you are to bullshit, when you go around telling people how to bullshit you? How do you think so many startups sucker so many skilled engineers into doing so much for so little and odds-on getting screwed at the end of it? How did Stack Overflow bullshit you (probably) and me (for sure, years back) and a million other people into collectively doing millions of dollars of work for them for free?

Re: Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%

#127

Post by Narann »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #75
psankar wrote: post #65

I do not have data to back this claim. But the tone of this blog post makes me feel that, the new CEO is an incompetent person who decided to use the vehicle of the covid virus to announce job cuts that he has planned a long time ago. With the crap ton of marketing buzz in the post, and the casual mention of the layoffs, I don't think the CEO or the new board seem to care all that much about the laidoff employees. Ag…

> new CEO is an incompetent person who decided to use the vehicle of the covid virus to announce job cuts that he has planned a long time ago. Why would that indicate the CEO is incompetent ? Doesn’t it stand to reason that management would and should take advantage of the whatever is happening in the wider scheme of things to advance their narrative, and that doing so is indicative of competence within their frame o…

Layoff peoples can be a competent CEO decision, so is using an event to do so.

But the way you do those layoff is part of the CEO responsibility. And from this perspective, doing so with marketing bullshit sounds bad as your demographics are mostly engineers.

With that, CEO doesn't seems to know what peoples are using its services so it use "generic" (aka marketing) line.

Re: Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%

#129

Post by sradman »

wiradikusuma wrote: post #46

I understand they had to do it (I'm sure we—their users—understand), but I can't understand the need for bullshit business-speak. Just say, "Due to circumstances you all familiar with, business is slow, so I have to let go of some people from X department." Putting up bullshit like this is like adding insult to injury. Especially, since their user demographics are mostly people who don't like bullshit.

The Stackoverflow CEO and/or PR team is guilty of what journalists call “burying the lede” but the following quote from the message is quite good in my opinion:

> This week, we reduced our global workforce by approximately 15%. Most of the affected employees were furloughed, except for employees and contractors in regions where furloughs were unfortunately not an option. These actions primarily affected sales and customer success teams within our Talent business, which is dependent on the hiring environment.

TLDR at the top perhaps? Communication is hard. Enterprise sales and service will suffer as the world comes out of pandemic lockdown. As we go through this “Great Pivot”, we have to embrace the engineering concept of “good enough”. The content in this message could be better but it is good enough given the circumstances.

Re: Stack Overflow reduces global workforce by approximately 15%

#130

Post by jkhaui »

AJRF wrote: post #120

An aside: Anyone else finding themselves adding site:github.com rather than site:stackoverflow.com to their Google searches more now?

Yes. As a frontend developer, my default mode now is to almost always go straight to searching issues in the GitHub repo of an npm package I'm using.

I only end up on SO when googling very generic questions about React, TypeScript or JavaScript (and sometimes CSS). Also, the top Google results from SO are often from ~2017 or earlier which puts me off

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