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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

#151

Post by Pigalowda »

chmod775 wrote: post #35
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…

Yeah, I'm surprised that a company whose core product could be run by three people for less than a million USD per year with room to spare for lavish company cars, somehow manages to lose $84 million USD.

Musk can buy it and run it like that. Maybe drop the O and make it SX?

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

#152

Post by agentgumshoe »

charlieyu1 wrote: post #133
imglorp wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the biggest impact on life expectancy in the first world that shows up at this level? Healthcare, walking culture, food options, other?

Hong Kong has one of the highest life expectancy of the world and a major contributing factor is high population density. Paramedics are able (and must) arrive within 12 minutes of an emergency call, which is probably the most important time to keep people alive. Doesn't mean Hong Kong is a decent place to live though.

Have you got a source for that?

But your point is valid, life expectancy is not the same as quality of life.

I'd personally rather live five years less and be in great general health than be slogging through pain and medical bingo for my last 10 years.

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

#153

Post by lacrimacida »

luckystarr wrote: post #43
JimDabell wrote: post #4

I have a hard time feeling sorry for Stack Overflow. They had most developers in the world visiting frequently. They have detailed information on exactly which languages, libraries, toolchains, and platforms those developers use and their pain points. All of their content is given to them for free by volunteers. All of their moderation is done for them for free by volunteers. The only thing they have to serve is text…

I'm a senior dev. The only thing I found useful in the last years was the job market on SO. They closed that down recently. Now I don't even go there at all.

SO are really poorly managed, they almost deserve the outcome and the predicament they’re in.

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

#154

Post by UncleMeat »

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…

I would be extremely confused if I received this email.

First, the request is bizarre. “I don’t have time to read the email you sent me, so rewrite it and resend it” is an extremely strange thing.

Second, this email has about 10x the words it actually needs. This isn’t being polite.

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

#155

Post by M2Ys4U »

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.

>Why is this so common with tech companies?

Venture capital.

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

#156

Post by agentgumshoe »

palata wrote: post #13
mrweasel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not everything needs to be a damn unicorn. More people needs to understand this. It's fine being a small(ish) business that turns a profit and provides a service that's beneficial to society. You don't need to be a billion dollar company to be important or do great work. DHH talked about this 15 years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY

> You don't need to be a billion dollar company to be important or do great work. And importantly: because you are a billion dollar company doesn't mean you bring good to the world. At all.

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?'

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

#157

Post by Someone »

stingraycharles wrote: post #67
luckystarr wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a senior dev. The only thing I found useful in the last years was the job market on SO. They closed that down recently. Now I don't even go there at all.

Why.. why did they closed this down? I remember this was my single most successful place to find good software developers / run job ads. We spent thousands and thousands on these ads, and I always felt this was their chicken that laid golden eggs.

> I always felt this was their chicken that laid golden eggs.

But was it? Did they ever report on whether it brought them any profits? Potentially, its pricing was too low to make a good profit, but increasing it to reach profits or even just break even would have turned too many customers away.

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

#158

Post by littlestymaar »

IshKebab wrote: post #143
littlestymaar wrote: post #116

A few years ago, Stackoverflow bragged about how they hosted their entire infrastructure on a dozen of servers. Today I learn that they are losing $80 million a year? What the hell are they doing with that money?

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…

> Easily $1-200m/year.

What is this supposed to mean?

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

#159

Post by glimshe »

mrtksn wrote: post #132
glimshe wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why do you think that actions of these huge institutions are not impactful to the life quality of the Americans? Also, why do you think that the European live longer thanks to the medicine developed in the USA? Maybe the USA develops medicine thanks to the free and equal opportunity education culture in the Europe? If you look closely to the researchers, you will see that lot's of the people who develop these things…

I don't think most of what you wrote, almost phrase by phrase. You took an extreme version of what I said and rebutted it. Just because I said that the US had major influence in European medicine and life expectancy, you took it as meaning that Europeans are bad scientists and "just drink smoothies". I think nothing of this sort.

It's very safe to say that US-originated science had a major influence in life expectancy worldwide, including Europe. What's so controversial about it? The increase in life expectancy in Europe, then, was "significantly" influenced by US innovations.

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

#160

Post by camillomiller »

mrtksn wrote: post #55
mrweasel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not everything needs to be a damn unicorn. More people needs to understand this. It's fine being a small(ish) business that turns a profit and provides a service that's beneficial to society. You don't need to be a billion dollar company to be important or do great work. DHH talked about this 15 years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY

But the whole "Tech" economy is based on the premise that everything must grow indefinitely and indefinitely means that at some point will be a unicorn. Europe is considered economical failure because there are not enough unicorns, there are lists on Twitter with list of unicorns per country that are supposed to show the decline of Europe. No matter if Europe has some of the best living condition for large group of p…

Thanks for saying this. This is absolutely the case. We forget venture capitalism is absolutely first and foremost a framework built on an ideological system. Founders NEED to be convinced they’ll change the world with their juice press or the game won’t work. The growth myth is part of this as well.
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