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Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

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Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#51

Post by busterarm »

alternatex wrote: post #45
miohtama wrote: post #37

StackOverflow peaked in 2014, and has been in decline ever since. This is not related to the recent AI boom, although it may accelerate the decline.

As someone doing full-stack PHP in 2014 I'm not sure about that. SO was filled with bad advice for PHP and JavaScript. It was so bad you could use it as a guidebook for writing outdated insecure code.

Agreed. I've always viewed SO as being just slightly better than w3schools. Worse than useless. It has benefited my career significantly that I never got in the habit of using it.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#52

Post by [deleted] »

busterarm wrote: post #40

Way back in 2014 or whatever it was I was really questioning the decision Fog Creek made to spin out Trello and Stack Overflow. It seemed to only benefit investors and I wondered how the companies could diversify their income streams with such fixed-niche products. At the time having such an opinion was very opposite of mainstream. Even though Trello was acquired, I feel like Fog Creek the company and all of its prod…

[deleted]

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#53

Post by bhouston »

busterarm wrote: post #40

Way back in 2014 or whatever it was I was really questioning the decision Fog Creek made to spin out Trello and Stack Overflow. It seemed to only benefit investors and I wondered how the companies could diversify their income streams with such fixed-niche products. At the time having such an opinion was very opposite of mainstream. Even though Trello was acquired, I feel like Fog Creek the company and all of its prod…

I disagree. StackOverflow grew to be many times the size of Fog Creek software. It was highly successful for a time.

You can not anticipate back then that AI would train on its Q&A and then provide the same service but fully integrated into IDEs. StackOverflow is being destroyed by Copilot and ChatGPT.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#54

Post by chatmasta »

busterarm wrote: post #40

Way back in 2014 or whatever it was I was really questioning the decision Fog Creek made to spin out Trello and Stack Overflow. It seemed to only benefit investors and I wondered how the companies could diversify their income streams with such fixed-niche products. At the time having such an opinion was very opposite of mainstream. Even though Trello was acquired, I feel like Fog Creek the company and all of its prod…

Fog Creek is now known as Glitch, and was acquired by Fastly last year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitch_(New_York_company)

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#55

Post by [deleted] »

kaycebasques wrote: post #34
JAlexoid wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SO is under serious threat from Reddit. Look at your Google results, that are now presenting Reddit much more prominently than a few years ago.

I wonder whether Reddit can be a serious medium/long-term threat. My usage of Reddit has gone to 0 ever since "the incident". I've heard the rumors that overall usage is up but I'm curious about whether the niche of developer content has gone down. The assumption is that developers are more likely to understand and be affected by the incident. Reddit won't be a medium/long-term threat if developers don't continuously…

[deleted]

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#56

Post by ram4jesus »

jayd16 wrote: post #48
makingstuffs wrote: post #21

The way the redundancies were carried out were very disrespectful. People got invited to a meeting and essentially told "You'll lose access in about 30 minutes" -- from a close source who was laid off after literally receiving feedback that they were the most efficient in their department a couple days prior.

What part is disrespectful? Cutting access is pretty normal.

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

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#58

Post by AlbertCory »

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 other behavior would be similarly penalized.

Do you lose some valuable expertise? Undoubtedly, but making an example out of people is a warning to the rest.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#59

Post by corethree »

ram4jesus wrote: post #47
corethree wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grow some skin. Other then the snark it's a good resource. I agree that the snark shouldn't be there but stack overflow is a good resource for lurkers and people who don't care and aren't so hurt by online mistreatment. It's just randos on the internet.

I don't need to grow skin on the internet where mistreatment is abundant. I just don't engage. Offline people can't treat you like shit because then they're gonna get treated like shit. Respect begets respect and good manners beget good manners. The way SO folks talk to you ... I'll just say: try that offline and I'll pull your card no ifs or doubts.

Thats not the point. The point is who cares about the mistreatment. The objective is to get the relevant info. I'm one of the highest ranked people on SO.

And guess what? All I do on SO is ask stupid ass questions. One time someone scolded me, said I should know better for asking a certain question that was against policy of something given that my rank was so high. You know what I said to him?

Nothing. I just didn't give a shit. Stackoverflow is one of the few places on earth where you can ask the dumbest questions with zero consequence. The consequence is just in your head. Better to launch that dumbass question in stackoverflow than on your company slack.

I probably have 10 questions with negative points. My highest ranked question was likely the stupidest one I ever asked.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#60

Post by kalleboo »

JAlexoid wrote: post #28
jf22 wrote: post #16

I'm not surprised. These days, I use SO a lot less often. Github issues, first party documentation, Discords, and Copilot are much better ways to get help.

SO is under serious threat from Reddit. Look at your Google results, that are now presenting Reddit much more prominently than a few years ago.

The the types of technical questions I get SO results for I’ve not once got Reddit results. That said there are other queries for which Reddit is the only answer and SO not capturing this is a failure on their part.
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