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Will high reputation in Stack Overflow help to get a good job?

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Re: Will high reputation in Stack Overflow help to get a good job?

#21

Post by raganwald »

joezydeco wrote: post #14

It might not hurt, but as an interviewer I'd be curious to know if you earned those karma points during office hours.

Did you see Joel Spolsky's note about people spending all day on StackOverflow when they should be working? He suggests that they're underemployed, meaning they have not been given the appropriate balance of challenge and workload at their current job.

Imagine you have two applicants or roughly equal aptitude/suitability. When asked why they're looking for a job, both state that they are not being challenged in their current position.

One seems to have done a lot of posting on SO, HN, and so forth during business hours. You like their posts but not that they were made during business hours.

They other has no record of HN or SO posts. Do you assume that the other person was hard at work at the last job and hire them?

You might be right, but then again, it could be that they were watching the clock in ways you can't detect so easily. Maybe they read books about programming. Maybe they read all these sites but didn't contribute. Maybe they took a lot of smoke breaks.

You know that one of the two did a lot of non-job stuff while being underemployed, but you also know that you like their posts. I think it's reasonable to hire them anyways, and also reasonable to pass on them.

But what isn't reasonable, IMO, is to give the candiate with less information a "free pass" by hiring them without further investigation. I would ask:

"You say you weren't challenged in the last job. You must have had some free time. What did you do with it?"

If they tell you about all the extra value-add they created for their employer, great. If they tell you about surfing job boards or reading books about programming, great. If they stare blankly at you, dig deeper.

This is speculative, of course. YMMV.

Re: Will high reputation in Stack Overflow help to get a good job?

#22

Post by torial »

Last year when I was interviewing, I didn't mention my rank (which is so-so), but mentioned that my answers could be found, and if they wanted to see how I answered, and determine my competence, they would be able to do so. I believe that for at least one set of interviews making the additional information available helped me to get further.

But that was not my "rep"...

Re: Will high reputation in Stack Overflow help to get a good job?

#23

Post by ig1 »

TorKlingberg wrote: post #19
ig1 wrote: post #8

What gets you headhunted is posting intelligent answers to tech questions on Linkedin Answers. Because that's where the HR people and recruiters hangout.

But do they read tech questions? Is it worth their time trawling for random technical people there? Even for recruiters outside the San Francisco area?

They certainly look at who the top-rated people in each category are, I used to regularly get calls from recruiters who saw me there (this was in London).

Re: Will high reputation in Stack Overflow help to get a good job?

#24

Post by huwigs »

A Google recruiter cold-called me -- well, cold-LinkedIn me -- based on my Stack Overflow responses. I did a phone interview even though I wasn't really interested in leaving my current job.

That, plus my location requirements, plus a so-so interview, plus the fact that I wasn't particularly qualified for the job, surely led to the following "Thanks, but no thanks" followup call.

Re: Will high reputation in Stack Overflow help to get a good job?

#25

Post by joezydeco »

raganwald wrote: post #21
joezydeco wrote: post #14

It might not hurt, but as an interviewer I'd be curious to know if you earned those karma points during office hours.

Did you see Joel Spolsky's note about people spending all day on StackOverflow when they should be working? He suggests that they're underemployed , meaning they have not been given the appropriate balance of challenge and workload at their current job. Imagine you have two applicants or roughly equal aptitude/suitability. When asked why they're looking for a job, both state that they are not being challenged in thei…

I initially meant the comment one way: that is, the person was probably spending more time cruising StackOverflow instead of paying attention to work tasks.

But you have a point. We all have small spaces in the course of a day where we're not actively engaged in real work (as I am right now). Once can spend it on Facebook, or one can be looking for things to keep the knives sharp.

Re: Will high reputation in Stack Overflow help to get a good job?

#26

Post by catshirt »

joezydeco wrote: post #25
raganwald wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you see Joel Spolsky's note about people spending all day on StackOverflow when they should be working? He suggests that they're underemployed , meaning they have not been given the appropriate balance of challenge and workload at their current job. Imagine you have two applicants or roughly equal aptitude/suitability. When asked why they're looking for a job, both state that they are not being challenged in thei…

I initially meant the comment one way: that is, the person was probably spending more time cruising StackOverflow instead of paying attention to work tasks. But you have a point. We all have small spaces in the course of a day where we're not actively engaged in real work (as I am right now). Once can spend it on Facebook, or one can be looking for things to keep the knives sharp.

I post on HN and spend some time or IRC or similar discussing programming during "work hours" (though I have bizarre self-inflicted hours). It's actually become pretty crucial to my work flow; I am able to get some down time while still keeping the gears running. Short but somewhat-frequent lurking sessions keep me motivated and on track without burning me out.

Re: Will high reputation in Stack Overflow help to get a good job?

#27

Post by dangrossman »

I wouldn't expect many random job offers from simply being a user on StackOverflow, but shortly after posting a CV on the StackOverflow Careers site (which displays your StackOverflow reputation on the CV), I was contacted by an Amazon.com recruiter.

Re: Will high reputation in Stack Overflow help to get a good job?

#28

Post by ecounysis »

It's part of your reputation portfolio which includes personal references, blogs, open source activities, and whatever else the employer believes to be predictive of the value you will add to the company. If the employer only cares about your SO reputation then it will certainly help. More often than not, I suppose it is only one data point of several which are considered.

Re: Will high reputation in Stack Overflow help to get a good job?

#29

Post by AlexC04 »

city41 wrote: post #11
AlexC04 wrote: post #2

I read the article a while back by the chap who got headhunted based solely on his Stack rep. It made me think "heck. I'd best get started on that". So I made a conscious effort to answer questions. I loaded up the questions list and ... nothing. Not an effing thing. All these questions from such a broad base of so many topics. I didn't know the answer to anything. F I thought. Then a little later I asked a question…

Yes but anyone can look at your profile and see your rep was earned via asking instead of answering. Whether SO rep is relevant or not is debatable, but if it is, rep earned by answering is almost certainly more valuable.

I understand where you're coming from - but - I'm of a mixed opinion of whether that's actually true. Asking a lot of questions might be equally valuable if they're questions of increasing complexity, that show growth and development over time.

Back to Malcom Gladwell's "Outliers" (in which he states that the requirement to master anything seems to be 10,000 hours of practise).

With 10,000 'hours of questions', assuming progression and growth, would you not find yourself at the same or similar level of mastery as someone who'd provided 10,000 hours of answers?

Quite frequently nowadays, I find myself at work seeing a question about something not functioning quite right - (height and width of a graph, cross browser/OS page performance & display) and I find that I've got an immediate answer, because I asked the question on stack over the weekend (when I'm doing my fun projects).

Another interesting point - that I've just noticed this morning, is that I think there may be an Algorithm in Stack that "bubbles up" questions about things that you've asked questions about in the past.

My initial attempt to "give back to stack" were met with nowt because I couldn't find any questions on topics that I have relative expertise on - but - now that I've asked a number of questions on the things that apply to me (DOM, jQuery, Ajax, Selenium, PHPUnit etc...) Questions with those tags seem to be closer to the top of my list.

Maybe you've got to ask enough questions for stack to know what questions to ask of you.

It's really neat. I actually quite like it there :)

Re: Will high reputation in Stack Overflow help to get a good job?

#30

Post by AlexC04 »

huwigs wrote: post #24

A Google recruiter cold-called me -- well, cold-LinkedIn me -- based on my Stack Overflow responses. I did a phone interview even though I wasn't really interested in leaving my current job. That, plus my location requirements, plus a so-so interview, plus the fact that I wasn't particularly qualified for the job, surely led to the following "Thanks, but no thanks" followup call.

oh. this is interesting. Is there a place on Stack or Linkedin where I can tie my profiles together? I did a quick scan and couldn't see anything (or should I put it in my stack-bio?).
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