Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 237 posts

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#201

Post by anonylizard »

rmwaite wrote: post #180
d3w4s9 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose you are just learning C++ language. There is a syntax error or type mismatch. The error message is 50 lines long and it does not make any sense to you. You already spent 10 minutes on it. What do you do now? If there is an experienced C++ developer around who is happy to answer questions, great. Otherwise you are stuck with having to figure it out by using trial and errors and Google-fu. If you post it to a f…

Isn’t it worth considering that the reason ChatGPT can do those things is that it was trained on data from platforms like Stack Overflow? This is hard to quantify but my guess would be that without the SO data it wouldn’t be as useful.

You are correct.

This is why reddit and twitter both locked down their APIs, due to the data being very high quality and immensely valuable for training.

Too bad they all did it too late, no one saw ChatGPT coming. And since all the data was already scraped from Stackoverflow, it no longer has any value for OpenAI. Stackoverflow is rapidly declining in volume, so future data from it is irrelevant.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#202

Post by Aleksdev »

shippintoboston wrote: post #38

It sounds harsh but I have no sympathy for the company or its community. The people running that site turned it into such a hostile and toxic place, to the point they probably pushed a lot of people out of engineering. Just completely condescending and rude jannies who were taking out their anger from being bullied in high school on unsuspecting beginners. They’re getting what they deserve and I’m savoring every seco…

Is it really that bad? I know I have asked some duplicate questions in the past but it’s not like I care. As long as they point me to the answer I’m happy.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#203

Post by Etherlord87 »

IshKebab wrote: post #196
bhandziuk wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical that if you ask a good question and the "duplicate"is so old that it's not relevant anymore that your question would be closed.

I am not. The mods there absolutely love closing questions as duplicate. It has earned that reputation for a reason.

Can you give one example? I keep reading the negative comments about SO, how the moderators are bad, and there's never one example confirming it.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#204

Post by Etherlord87 »

jasonlotito wrote: post #144
passthejoe wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had a nickel for every SO thread that came up in my Google searches that could have answered my question if only the SO moderators had allowed it to be answered, I'd be able to buy a few steak dinners.

This is how it works for me, usually. Q: I have this problem. Mod: This is a dup of this. Me: Goes to read the other ticket. It's from 8 years ago, and the answer was "This is solved in version X." Me, on something many versions after X, and having the hindsight of knowing that no, it was not solved in X, shakes my head. I find the solution someplace else. I do not go back to SO because I can't be bothered to fight a…

So here's how it looks from the other side:

A 'high' (just not a new one) reputation user (not necessarily a moderator) opens a review queue. He sees a new question. He searches the SO if a similar question has been asked. He finds a similar question, and without reading and testing it thoroughly, he marks yours as a duplicate of that.

Now, you couldn't be bothered writing a comment about how the the duplicate flag is wrong, but another user who already spent some time cleaning up the site is supposed to thoroughly analyze both questions to begin with?

People on Stack Exchange tend to try to not be emotional like you, so they don't fight a battle with you. You just resign from a discussion, and then complain how a mistake has been made, that you didn't care to even point out.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#205

Post by ram4jesus »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #110
ram4jesus wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah in my org as soon as you put your two weeks in they send you home for the remainder of the two weeks.

That's a common practice, but very foolish. If your employee is at all trustworthy they don't need to have their access revoked (and if they aren't trustworthy they'll just do the damage before they tell you they are leaving). So your org is robbing themselves of employee time without any actual benefit.

You're preaching to the choir here. The most depressing thing is that people leave, like a forest fire, behind echoes of their impacts but we never really get to give them their flowers. The turnover is so rote and frequent that when the best guy in the team leaves, it's not only just a 'I'm so proud to have ... Thank you guys...' email or slack message, but everyone else is like 'Just Another Monday in Corpo Hell.'

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#206

Post by Etherlord87 »

ram4jesus wrote: post #71
dehrmann wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've answered a lot of Java questions on SO. One of the themes is beginner questions, and a lot are essentially "do my homework for me," poorly researched, or poorly asked. What have you tried? What have you researched? Explain your understanding for why you think what you're doing should work. Even if you're asking good beginner questions that don't already have an answer, you get tired of reading all the bad ones.…

I asked two or three questions in SO back in 2014. And it was an awful experience. I got over my Java block by not just reading my Uni's textbook but by also reading another much older textbook. I got so good at Java that I became a Lab/Teaching Assistant my last two years in college. And I helped folks the best I could in person: always kind, always patient, never blaming the student even if they didn't want to lear…

> I asked two or three questions in SO back in 2014.

Please link them! They should still be there, and we should be able to analyze them. The strength of Stack Exchange is that it is factual, like on Wikipedia, users are discouraged to be emotional and encouraged to to prove their theories.

> who cares if someone wants an answer to some test or project?

A visitor from Google, who doesn't want to search through dozens of "too localized" problems, that don't apply in his case. There are other places to ask such questions, and the strength of SO/SE lies in its ruleset.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#207

Post by Etherlord87 »

bastardoperator wrote: post #162
trey-jones wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "professionals who can't figure this obscure things out" is the best use-case for SO, really. Perhaps being a professional is something to be required. I'm speaking only from my own experience. I have only ever asked a handful of questions on SO (going back to about 2011), and that's because I spend hours and hours trying to figure it out first. So yes, I think I do expect that of other questioners as well. "…

I can agree with you to an extent, but the model doesn't scale and they're getting beat by alternatives that are seemingly better for the majority.

Can you name those alternatives? I don't think SO/SE is being beaten by anything, it has no competition within the set of questions it allows. When it comes to other questions - of course other websites are better for answering the questions that are offtopic on SO/SE.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#208

Post by Etherlord87 »

AlbertCory wrote: post #58
shippintoboston wrote: post #38

It sounds harsh but I have no sympathy for the company or its community. The people running that site turned it into such a hostile and toxic place, to the point they probably pushed a lot of people out of engineering. Just completely condescending and rude jannies who were taking out their anger from being bullied in high school on unsuspecting beginners. They’re getting what they deserve and I’m savoring every seco…

also called schadenfreude . while I agree about SO culture, it's probably the case that most of the laid-off staff took no part in that behavior. The Great Reset 2.0 which might save SO: Everyone whose downvotes exceed a certain threshold has their reputation points reduced to zero. And since "sentiment" is measurable nowadays, the same would be done for anyone whose hostile comments exceed some threshold. Probably o…

> The Great Reset 2.0 which might save SO:

> Everyone whose downvotes exceed a certain threshold has their reputation points reduced to zero.

This could be reasonable or not, depending on the "threshold". SO/SE already have mechanisms (which aren't perfect) to deal with emotional up/down-voting. It already 'punishes' with a 2 rep cost for downvoting an answer. It doesn't for downvoting a question.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#209

Post by rgoulter »

3seashells wrote: post #149
rgoulter wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being polite in answering questions is pro-social. It's a more pleasant interaction when someone is polite. -- Whereas, if you get rude answers, you'll be discouraged from participating. Asking good questions is pro-social. People are going to be more willing to help if the questions are well thought out. -- Whereas, asking in an anti-social way discourages people from helping out. It's still possible to ask question…

You are interpreting ability as a social gesture, taking disability as an insult. Thusyou not participating in the part of society that is learning is a good thing.

There's a difference between "I haven't paid the full effort to figure the answer out myself" and "I haven't paid the effort that makes it easier for you to help me". -- There's no setting in which being rude is going to be more helpful than being polite.

Expectations vary; in some settings, it's going to be more acceptable for questions to be a more raw "I'm stuck and I need help" than in others.

There is an asymmetry: people giving answers are more able to help those who are asking questions. If the people learning don't like the teachers, they'll have to go elsewhere (& learning is harder). If the teachers don't like the students, they don't have to teach.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#210

Post by tabtab »

shippintoboston wrote: post #38

It sounds harsh but I have no sympathy for the company or its community. The people running that site turned it into such a hostile and toxic place, to the point they probably pushed a lot of people out of engineering. Just completely condescending and rude jannies who were taking out their anger from being bullied in high school on unsuspecting beginners. They’re getting what they deserve and I’m savoring every seco…

When a company monopolizes a market, they almost always turn into jerks.
Post reply on HN