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After ChatGPT disruption, Stack Overflow lays off 28 percent of staff

arstechnica.com

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Re: After ChatGPT disruption, Stack Overflow lays off 28 percent of staff

#21

Post by somenameforme »

alex_young wrote: post #7

Seems poorly correlated. It seems unlikely that any significant number of developers quit using SO in favor of blindly trusting ChatGPT. More likely - advertising revenue declined in line with the reduced ad spending across the industry, largely due to expectations of economic recession by ad buyers.

Why do you think it seems unlikely? I've no idea if my usage of SO is typical, but I generally just ended up using it for pretty simple questions - the type that GPT is absolutely phenomenal at answering. The handful of complex, domain specific, questions I tried asking on SO still remain lingering even using their bounty system, or ended up being answered by myself.

Another nice thing is that SO is, ironically, often relatively hostile to asking questions. It seems like every post there's some group of people racing, often recklessly, to try to mark things as duplicates when they're not, asking for code samples even when the question clearly does not require it, etc. And then there's the passive aggressive stuff. It seems like 95% of the SO community is awesome, but that 5% sure is a turn-off from the site. GPT cuts through that layer of nonsense.

Re: After ChatGPT disruption, Stack Overflow lays off 28 percent of staff

#22

Post by politelemon »

alex_young wrote: post #7

Seems poorly correlated. It seems unlikely that any significant number of developers quit using SO in favor of blindly trusting ChatGPT. More likely - advertising revenue declined in line with the reduced ad spending across the industry, largely due to expectations of economic recession by ad buyers.

I'm unable to find it now, there was a post showing that it was in decline before ChatGPT was released. It was discussed right better on HN

Re: After ChatGPT disruption, Stack Overflow lays off 28 percent of staff

#23

Post by proc0 »

I'm thinking that coding is not going to be the most interesting application of current LLMs for a while. Writing code is simultaneously the least time consuming part of product development, and also the most critical. So much of the work is done outside of the IDE, figuring out the problem, deciding on a solution, communicating the solution, etc. Once you do write the code, it's relatively quick and there are enough tools to speed up the process. For AI to truly replace engineers, it needs to be an AGI. I think Stack Overflow should be considering the community component, because as of right now, LLMs are more likely to disrupt creative fields, customer service, and middle management.

Re: After ChatGPT disruption, Stack Overflow lays off 28 percent of staff

#24

Post by isoprophlex »

ramon156 wrote: post #11
balls187 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait Stackoverflow employees chewed you out?

Not the employees, the community

Exactly; I have nothing but sympathy for the affected people but SO-the-community was on the way out anyway. I'm almost 40, I understand, and can tolerate to some extent, someone sometimes going into Linus Torvalds mode.

But it totally does not jive with the 20-somethings that just start their career, and need guidance the most.

Re: After ChatGPT disruption, Stack Overflow lays off 28 percent of staff

#25

Post by alex_young »

somenameforme wrote: post #21
alex_young wrote: post #7

Seems poorly correlated. It seems unlikely that any significant number of developers quit using SO in favor of blindly trusting ChatGPT. More likely - advertising revenue declined in line with the reduced ad spending across the industry, largely due to expectations of economic recession by ad buyers.

Why do you think it seems unlikely? I've no idea if my usage of SO is typical, but I generally just ended up using it for pretty simple questions - the type that GPT is absolutely phenomenal at answering. The handful of complex, domain specific, questions I tried asking on SO still remain lingering even using their bounty system, or ended up being answered by myself. Another nice thing is that SO is, ironically, ofte…

Most of SO’s traffic comes from organic search. While we don’t have data for SO traffic itself, we do know that search traffic is not declining.

While some users use ChatGPT to solve technical problems, it doesn’t seem likely that the search traffic they depend upon is an extreme outlier from search in general.

We do know that SO’s primary ad service is that of tech hiring, something that has cooled significantly in the last year.

Re: After ChatGPT disruption, Stack Overflow lays off 28 percent of staff

#26

Post by aurareturn »

isoprophlex wrote: post #6

Well, I have all the sympathy for the SO people who are stressed out over losing their jobs... but at least a LLM doesn't chew me out when I ask a question that's remotely similar to one asked 7 years ago. And I like the low-latency, interactive rubber ducking experience way better than the slower turnaround on a SO question.

So how will the LLM answer your questions in the future if SO is greatly diminished?

I guess LLMs can learn directly from documentation websites. But there is no human feedback on correct solutions or better ways to do things that SO provides.

Re: After ChatGPT disruption, Stack Overflow lays off 28 percent of staff

#27

Post by Moldoteck »

aurareturn wrote: post #26
isoprophlex wrote: post #6

Well, I have all the sympathy for the SO people who are stressed out over losing their jobs... but at least a LLM doesn't chew me out when I ask a question that's remotely similar to one asked 7 years ago. And I like the low-latency, interactive rubber ducking experience way better than the slower turnaround on a SO question.

So how will the LLM answer your questions in the future if SO is greatly diminished? I guess LLMs can learn directly from documentation websites. But there is no human feedback on correct solutions or better ways to do things that SO provides.

It'll get better and will be able to answer more questions based on sourcecode and documentation?

Re: After ChatGPT disruption, Stack Overflow lays off 28 percent of staff

#29

Post by zaphirplane »

Moldoteck wrote: post #27
aurareturn wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how will the LLM answer your questions in the future if SO is greatly diminished? I guess LLMs can learn directly from documentation websites. But there is no human feedback on correct solutions or better ways to do things that SO provides.

It'll get better and will be able to answer more questions based on sourcecode and documentation?

LLM do no answer, but kind of autocomplete

Re: After ChatGPT disruption, Stack Overflow lays off 28 percent of staff

#30

Post by Moldoteck »

zaphirplane wrote: post #29
Moldoteck wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll get better and will be able to answer more questions based on sourcecode and documentation?

LLM do no answer, but kind of autocomplete

Debatable, but true, still, my point holds, it'll be able to autocomplete bettereven without direct hints / dataset from SO, esp taking into account GitHub & github issues
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