Tuesday, February 1, 2022

Sunsetting Stack Overflow Jobs

Stack Overflow:

On March 31, 2022, we will discontinue Stack Overflow Jobs and Developer Story. This includes all job listings, saved searches, applications, messages, recommended job matches, job ads, developer story, saved resumes, and the salary calculator.

[…]

The problem is often finding the right opportunity and job boards and sourcing are ineffective solutions. The effort it would take us to truly differentiate in this space is not one we could justify.

Exiting this space allows us to refocus on products that build on our core strengths: knowledge reuse and building communities at scale.

Tom Wright (via Hacker News):

The Jobs section of Stack Overflow launched in 2011 and was, at its heart, a jobs board – albeit one that was barely recognisable compared to its peers. Employers could post high-quality job ads linked to helpful company profiles. Candidates could maintain a “developer story” linked to their Stack Overflow profile, indicate their status (active or passive), and could of course browse through the job ads. As well as candidates responding to ads, hiring managers could use a powerful search to identify and message candidates that would likely be a good fit.

The genius of Stack Overflow Jobs was that it was a pure value add, which did not detract at all from the core user experience of the main Stack Overflow Q&A site. It was never forced on anyone and the service on the main site was not degraded for those who opted not to engage with it. On the other hand, Jobs benefited massively from the close integration with the main site. Linked profiles, for example, added a degree of transparency for both parties – candidates could easily demonstrate their communication and technical skills via their interactions on the main site, whilst employers could showcase their team by linking their company profiles to those of their current employees.

Previously:

Update (2022-04-26): Ruffin Bailey:

But then, today, a reason for the change finally hit me: They were already cutting off the small fish in Jobs (see another rant here where StackOverflow Jobs basically told my current medium-sized company to shove it). What might the big companies complain about with the old job listings?

The old StackOverflow Jobs listings required companies to compete on salary. The new “branding-only” listings don’t.

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