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Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

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Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#71

Post by ram4jesus »

dehrmann wrote: post #64
ram4jesus wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They pushed me out when I was a student in Uni struggling with Java 101. And my experience left me shocked that an industry could be so cruel to people trying to learn the ropes and be just another programmer. Luckily, I persevered, and I give back to the programming community by always being kind to the folks that ask me for help; but I always help others offline and not in hostile web forums.

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 learn and just wanted to pass the Lab; that is an obviously wrong student attitude to have, but whether they cheat or want the answers without learning is between the student and god. I can only try my best to help.

Who cares if someone wants an answer to some test or project? Who cares if their question is not deep enough or poorly written? Just answer their question or don't. You don't need to impose your moral sense of fairness unto them: it's not that deep. And you especially don't need the snark and the putting down of others. Again, the simpler thing is to not engage at all which is obviously not what happened or happens under the sludge and grime of SO answers.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#72

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#73

Post by rgoulter »

dehrmann wrote: post #64
ram4jesus wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They pushed me out when I was a student in Uni struggling with Java 101. And my experience left me shocked that an industry could be so cruel to people trying to learn the ropes and be just another programmer. Luckily, I persevered, and I give back to the programming community by always being kind to the folks that ask me for help; but I always help others offline and not in hostile web forums.

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'd phrase this a bit differently, for the questioner's side of things.

I know from experience that when I'm frustrated, I need to keep trying something smaller (or otherwise get more information) until it becomes clear what's not working.

The kind of steps it takes to ask a good question goes hand in hand with the kind of steps you'd take to solve the problem yourself. (Similarly: with domain knowledge, you know what to look for; without domain knowledge, you don't know what to ask about).

If I put too high a value on other people's time, I'm never going to ask questions, and may be slower than if I'd asked a question at a suitable time. (Whereas, putting too little value on other people's time ... can cause friction).

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#74

Post by JPLeRouzic »

kalleboo wrote: post #33
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.

Even when there aren’t better sources I’ve found that the SO results are just all outdated and don’t cover any newer stuff. Like they’ve lost all their authors or at least they’re not being indexed by Google.

> Even when there aren’t better sources I’ve found that the SO results are just all outdated and don’t cover any newer stuff

I think their algorithm is the problem, answers should be slowly deprecated over time. Who in real life would trust an answer written 10 years ago when languages, OSes and frameworks change every year?

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#75

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

this_user wrote: post #26
wredue wrote: post #3

“Stack overflow did not elaborate” A year after a major hiring push? Guessing it’s the “save money by ridding ourselves of expertise” workflow: 1) hire a bunch of fresh blood who are willing to work long hours for no money for some reason 2) get them trained up 3) lay off the expensive senior people 4) lol ceo big bonus

I think you vastly overestimate the level of planning and forethought that the average management is capable of.

Management is obviously capable of long-term planning - there just aren't incentives in place for that.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#76

Post by ram4jesus »

AlbertCory wrote: post #68
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.…

Yes, indeed, it takes a superhuman amount of patience and empathy. I don't particularly have those, and it sounds like you don't, either. So your course is just to avoid those, not downgrade them.

If people had your level of insight and self-reflection, then SO would be less popular but much more helpful and probably not known for all the needless hostility.

It takes a lot of guts to ask for help. And being put down when you're vulnerable: exposing an ignorance or a lack of understanding, is not a good feeling at all. For me, it always sticks for a long time until I forget it.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#77

Post by bluGill »

kalleboo wrote: post #33
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.

Even when there aren’t better sources I’ve found that the SO results are just all outdated and don’t cover any newer stuff. Like they’ve lost all their authors or at least they’re not being indexed by Google.

Only outdated answers exist anymore. While in theory you can ask a question an get an up to date answer, in practice it is duplicate or off topic and so closed. The answers from 2010 are still there, and good enough even if the technology has moved on.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#78

Post by hitekker »

busterarm wrote: post #61
chatmasta wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fog Creek is now known as Glitch, and was acquired by Fastly last year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitch_(New_York_company)

I'm aware of this but also who cares? It's was down to 14 people. That's a bad exit. Fastly is also kind of a struggling company itself. Many years back, Fog Creek was the first company that I learned of that put up fake job openings to portray more success than they were really having.

Fake job openings feels sketchy. Do you have a source or a link?

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#79

Post by bhouston »

busterarm wrote: post #62
bhouston wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The way we measure success is different. The history of the web is littered with companies that had a big exit and died/became-irrelevant. SO destroyed itself several times over (first by its own moderators and then by the company itself). ChatGPT just nailed the lid shut. Success to me looks like a lot of real users paying a lot of real money. SO never really had that. It tried to be a VC unicorn and was acquired by…

> The way we measure success is different. The history of the web is littered with companies that had a big exit and died/became-irrelevant.

Given a long enough timeline every companies dies or they pivot so extreme that they resemble nothing that they were to begin with.

Re: Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%

#80

Post by AndroTux »

rgoulter wrote: post #65
maldev wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a boomer, how do I find Discords of people coding?

I think Discord is typically used for domain-specific chatting. e.g. the QMK website links to a Discord server; but you'd only join that if you were interested in QMK.

Exactly. And I HATE it! Instead of just being able to use a search engine to find a related issue, I now have to look up the project I'm having a problem with, find their Discord, join it, accept the rules, assign roles, click through their onboarding, and then finally I'll be able to use the builtin search that probably doesn't return an answer anyways so I have to ask the question in an ever moving chat room and hope someone bothers to help me before my question drifts off into oblivion.

For real, though, who though this is a good idea to do project documentation and issue tracking? It's stupid.

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