Predictably Irrational and StackOverflow Careers
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Predictably Irrational and StackOverflow Careers
1–10 of 28 posts
Re: Predictably Irrational and StackOverflow Careers
#2From the comments:
> Stack Overflow will make both Spolsky and Atwood enormously wealthy, based upon the volunteer efforts of others. Who will get nothing.
The others won't get nothing. They'll get whatever rewards go along with participating in a forum: the opportunity to demonstrate prowess and be recognized for it, the chance to have specific questions answered in a peer-reviewed medium, and so on. Don't discount the value that people place in these things, even if they aren't being compensated financially.
Re: Predictably Irrational and StackOverflow Careers
#3From the comments: > Stack Overflow will make both Spolsky and Atwood enormously wealthy, based upon the volunteer efforts of others. Who will get nothing. The others won't get nothing. They'll get whatever rewards go along with participating in a forum: the opportunity to demonstrate prowess and be recognized for it, the chance to have specific questions answered in a peer-reviewed medium, and so on. Don't discount…
I thought there was value in Stack Overflow until I accidentally visited the site with Adblock turned off.
Now I don't answer questions there anymore.
Re: Predictably Irrational and StackOverflow Careers
#4From the comments: > Stack Overflow will make both Spolsky and Atwood enormously wealthy, based upon the volunteer efforts of others. Who will get nothing. The others won't get nothing. They'll get whatever rewards go along with participating in a forum: the opportunity to demonstrate prowess and be recognized for it, the chance to have specific questions answered in a peer-reviewed medium, and so on. Don't discount…
Agreed. StackOverflow provides tremendous value to the tech community.
However, the idea of charging participants in that community $100 per year for the privilege of having their resumes searchable by employers seems like a bit of a slap in the face.
Especially since the Careers site doesn't even seem to try to distinguish between employers and recruiters.
Re: Predictably Irrational and StackOverflow Careers
#5From the comments: > Stack Overflow will make both Spolsky and Atwood enormously wealthy, based upon the volunteer efforts of others. Who will get nothing. The others won't get nothing. They'll get whatever rewards go along with participating in a forum: the opportunity to demonstrate prowess and be recognized for it, the chance to have specific questions answered in a peer-reviewed medium, and so on. Don't discount…
I thought there was value in Stack Overflow until I accidentally visited the site with Adblock turned off. Now I don't answer questions there anymore.
You could always turn Adblock back on. I think it's fair for them to make some money to support the site.
Re: Predictably Irrational and StackOverflow Careers
#6From the comments: > Stack Overflow will make both Spolsky and Atwood enormously wealthy, based upon the volunteer efforts of others. Who will get nothing. The others won't get nothing. They'll get whatever rewards go along with participating in a forum: the opportunity to demonstrate prowess and be recognized for it, the chance to have specific questions answered in a peer-reviewed medium, and so on. Don't discount…
I thought there was value in Stack Overflow until I accidentally visited the site with Adblock turned off. Now I don't answer questions there anymore.
It doesn't seem that bad at all. I don't see any ads actually.
Re: Predictably Irrational and StackOverflow Careers
#7Paying to post your CV is a fantastic filtering service to provide to companies looking to hire. Resume spam is even worse than email spam. See also Local Bacon for more evidence on this approach.
While they will make money from the people that post CVs, much, much more money will come from the companies that pay to search those resumes. I'm sure they set the price at wherever they expect the best filtering to be. If you value your time at $50 and SO careers saves you 4 hours of job searching every 2 years, it's worth it. If it finds you a job that pays you $.05 more an hour, it's worth it. It's underpriced because CV owners aren't the primary customers.
About the decoys, the $99 regular price isn't a decoy. They're offering the $29 plan because they need a critical mass of CVs to make it useful to companies looking for talent. They're sharing $268 of their value to early adopters as recognition that the first people in make the service more valuable. Once they have lots of CVs they're in a stronger position and don't need to discount anymore. Simple business economics.
Re: Predictably Irrational and StackOverflow Careers
#8From the comments: > Stack Overflow will make both Spolsky and Atwood enormously wealthy, based upon the volunteer efforts of others. Who will get nothing. The others won't get nothing. They'll get whatever rewards go along with participating in a forum: the opportunity to demonstrate prowess and be recognized for it, the chance to have specific questions answered in a peer-reviewed medium, and so on. Don't discount…
I thought there was value in Stack Overflow until I accidentally visited the site with Adblock turned off. Now I don't answer questions there anymore.
They wouldn't have made it if they couldn't make a living off of it. Relax.
Re: Predictably Irrational and StackOverflow Careers
#9From the comments: > Stack Overflow will make both Spolsky and Atwood enormously wealthy, based upon the volunteer efforts of others. Who will get nothing. The others won't get nothing. They'll get whatever rewards go along with participating in a forum: the opportunity to demonstrate prowess and be recognized for it, the chance to have specific questions answered in a peer-reviewed medium, and so on. Don't discount…
Agreed. StackOverflow provides tremendous value to the tech community. However, the idea of charging participants in that community $100 per year for the privilege of having their resumes searchable by employers seems like a bit of a slap in the face. Especially since the Careers site doesn't even seem to try to distinguish between employers and recruiters.
Spolsky has said that every job that gets posted requires the company name, ditto for companies using Careers. Ergo, it's no use to recruiters because they can go around the posting straight to the company. He (correctly) believes that recruiters destroy value for job seekers and companies and keep markets from working.
About the slap in the face, it's necessary to filter out bad developers who won't get value from posting their CV. The best price isn't always free.
Re: Predictably Irrational and StackOverflow Careers
#10Paying to post your CV is a fantastic filtering service to provide to companies looking to hire. Resume spam is even worse than email spam. See also Local Bacon for more evidence on this approach. While they will make money from the people that post CVs, much, much more money will come from the companies that pay to search those resumes. I'm sure they set the price at wherever they expect the best filtering to be. If…
Sure, it's great for companies filtering out resume spam but how about individuals trying to avoid recruiter spam?
And beside, really good engineers are never short of good offers.
It's standard operating procedure in our industry that when a manager or even a dev leaves, they always try to take the best engineers from their past job with them.
If it's not your first job out of school and you have to rely on throwing your CV in a black hole like SO Careers or Monster and hope to get offers from strangers you're doing something very wrong.