StackOverflow privately announced this shutdown to clients in the summer of 2021 with the same date and I tweeted about it in November when the deadline of sunsetting was getting close enough [1].
Every hiring manager I talked with shared how SO Jobs was the best place to reach developers. I reached out to a few people at StackOverflow to get a sense of why they are shutting down this product that did very well.
I didn't get real answers beyond "we don't think job boards are the future" which I don't fully buy, given the success on both the employer, and the candidate side. What might be the case is the growth in profit was not what Stack Overflow hoped for, and this is why they are retiring these parts.
My suspicion is that Stack Overflow expects to make 10x more revenue with enterprise branding services (effectively not allowing just job posting, but you need to buy a large package that has other things bundled that you need to get if you want to access something like this job board).
Note that with this change Stack Overflow effectively locks out all small and medium-sized businesses from working with them. Starting from the middle of 2021, I heard they were not onboarding companies with less than 1,000ish employees to the job board either.
It makes perfect financial sense for Stack Overflow, if they are indeed making the change to maximise revenue collected from employers. However, there will be a large gap on the market for startups, small and mid-size companies who will not qualify - and will not have the budget - for the "employee branding services" SO will keep providing (but does not share details on).
99% of people use LinkenIn and job postings shared there from company job sites. Recruiters I know want fewer things to interact with and search. And I’ve seen great talent from good sourcers just using LinkedIn to find people…
That's really it - recruiters live and breath LinkedIn. SO is for people who actually get their hands dirty and know what they're talking about - engineers and their direct managers. It seems like the ones actually in control of the space are the recruiters.
If LinkedIn is the Amazon/Walmart/AliExpress of job adverts… which it is… it’s insane to think you cannot be the Gucci/Tiffany’s/Ferrari of job advertising and make plenty of money. Just because everyone posts shitty jobs to LinkedIn doesn’t mean that there’s a huge pool of people who want a better product experience and value it.
I ghost job offers on LinkedIn because it’s a dumpster fire. I’ve applied to jobs on StackOverflow because I know I’m cutting through the entire bullshit process. Those companies might ghost me, but the point remains that it’s insane to think there’s no value in being a job advertising platform people actually want to apply to adverts on.
Recruiters in tech are worse than useless, they don’t know anything and shovel useless candidates into a pipeline that has to develop Byzantine things like white boarding and other performative hoops to filter the junk candidates out. Between Stack Overflow and GitHub I shouldn’t need more than one interview maybe two if it’s a large company where you can’t get everyone relevant into one meeting, and the only point of that meeting should be a basic culture fit appraisal and working out that Im not a dog or three cats in a trench coat pretending to be a human.
Tech in general seems to be all about what is good for 90% of users and fuck-all for everyone else. It seems like anything servicing the long-tail anywhere gets squished. In hiring, in user interface design, in features, and in competition. I really, really, really hate this dynamic.
The long tail is well served, as long as it can be done at a premium.
A desire to have an electric roadster used to be extremely niche, but Tesla Motors had trouble fulfilling all the orders for their new and rather raw $70k car. If those craving it only had $15k as a rule, that likely won't fly.
Hmm, not my experience. (I changed jobs last fall.)
Some recruiters are useless, but those few I worked with were very good and clueful, and landed me a great job.
I met some of them on LinkedIn. I had to filter through some slack, but the efficiency of that was far from negligible.
I also applied to a few jobs via SO Jobs; they were reasonably interesting, but none worked, alas. The amount of interest which my SO Jobs profile attracted was an order of magnitude lower than what I received via LinkedIn, and even lower than the number of direct emails from people finding my resume on the internet.
And 99% of the messages about jobs on LinkedIn are trash, from people, who didn't even bother reading your profile or are unable to understand what they are reading. Recruiters can decide, whether they want to disappear in heaps of trash requests, or use a better non-abusive platform, if such exists. I have not gotten trash copy&paste requests on StackOverflow yet, so at least it has that going for it.
I haven't had a great signal-to-noise ratio from recruiter DMs on LinkedIn myself. But I think the more general point is that the "candidate sees job posting on job board and submits an application" hiring pathway is mostly dead. LinkedIn recruiting is probably the main channel that's replaced it, but college recruiting events, referrals, and poaching former colleagues are big ones too. The referral pathway in particular seems to have exploded lately, Blind and similar sites are full of people (successfully) requesting referrals to top tech companies from anonymous strangers.
I'm wondering if a job board is at odds with their push to be more Business to Business. Companies might not want to partner with them if they are giving an avenue for employees to find other jobs.
It's not a defensible product space. It's incredibly over saturated, highly dependent on the job market, has a constantly rotating supply side (job seekers only use when they're looking for a job), and has little supply side incentive.
The reason might be if SO has investors maybe their investors are investing into another job board platform and you know they sort of quietly told them we need you to sunset this to benefit our other portfolio company.
I don't think so - I think they are leaving the market because their differentiation isn't enough in the marketplace to actually sell it enough to be interesting.
While a small group of users liked it, it clearly did not have traction in the greater community.
love running into old friends on HN, so some very stale info from someone who hasn’t worked at SO in many years: while the job board was differentiated and nice from the programmers side, it’s really difficult to convince recruiters to use a new system with new rules. most (not all ofc) just want to spray and pray.
as a job seeker being told “you’re gonna have the upper hand here” is amazing, as a recruiter it makes it very difficult to sell to unless you really own the market.
I always was impressed at the quality of SO jobs. Every interview and offer I had through SO jobs was a great experience. Developer story was kinda lame generally speaking. It had potential but I don't think anybody read them nor cared to over a resume.
What I never understood about SO is that there are so many ways to help companies & contributors connect. Why stop at job boards?
What if you're a company that really needs a certain type of developer and you wanted to send a targeted email/notification/etc to those in the top 5% answering those questions? I know from being in the top 3% myself I'd love to opt-in to this feature.
Or perhaps a referral system in which somebody might come across your profile via an answer, comment, etc and would have an option to say "Ask if interested in work?". Again, would love to peruse offers.
What about a bounty system that allows companies to sponsor / put real money on questions instead of imaginary internet points? Bounties always were so unrewarding. I'd answer a question for $25-50 instead of 50/500 internet points if it didn't take too long.
Stack Overflow has somewhat failed the contributors just like other big platforms like YouTube/TikTok/etc have in the past. If 90% of people consume content on the site, 9% contribute, and 1% create, why is there not even consideration for incentivizing those in the 10%? Job boards was a start, but sadly now it is an end.
yeah it actually kind of made sense to me having the jobs right there. i haven't applied using the job portal yet but it was definitely something i was hopeful about. i recently got back into coding because of the pandemic and started to make some progress, been on a few interviews and hoping to find a company that appreciates what i bring to the table. so maybe i will try a few openings before they sunset and write a proper blog about the experience. regardless, stackoverflow having a job board makes sense to me.
100% agree that it was a well-done product, although I never went through the application process, I've read countless relevant job postings. I also don't do linked in (feels too much like social media) so I'm sad to see this stack overflow option leaving.
I seem to recall being rejected from their system because I hadn't given them and GitHub enough free labor to accrue the Internet points that would make me a "real" developer. Merely being paid to write software for years and years makes me a faker, I guess.
I like that the ads list comp (god, that saves a bunch of everyone's time) but I never checked them again after that. Dunno if they knocked that off or kept doing it.
Maybe they only did that briefly and people have forgotten, and I was just unlucky? Maybe folks think it's fine? Maybe framing farming upvotes and stars on GH and SO as giving free labor to corporations is rubbing people the wrong way (though that seems like a pretty neutral and fair characterization of that dynamic, to me)? Dunno.
> As we considered the next stage of growth for us as a company, we went back to product fundamentals and asked ourselves: how can we leverage our unique position to solve real, meaningful problems for our users and customers?
And from his LinkedIn bio: Lead an amazing global organization of Stackers who are passionate about making a difference in our community.
This kind of corporate language ("growth for us as a company", "leverage our unique position", "passionate about making a difference in our community") is how you know SO is run by some outside executive who came in after the company was already a success.
What a shame! It was the website where I found my current job. It seemed to be the only tech job search board that was focused on its main function, and not on collecting as much personal data as possible.
Same with me. I found my current fully remote job via SO jobs 5 years ago. Compared to everything else I've used, it was the board with the highest quality of employers and candidates. Having a profile with 40k reputation has also probably helped and has relieved me from putting countless abbreviated buzzwords in my CV.
Hope they revert the decision. From the comments it's apparent that SO is doing a great service to employers and job seekers. If someone from SO is reading this, please consider keeping it alive at least as a service to the tech industry.
I'm a bit surprised people liked the SO job board. I thought the technical product was well done with good UX, but I never see many high paying roles on there. Perhaps it just wasn't getting traction. Fwiw I think the monthly HN thread has by far the best jobs.
As an engineering manager I found LinkedIn to be very inefficient in finding quality talents at scale. There isn’t enough signal to gauge which candidate is worth bringing in for interviews. There seem to be a large opportunity for new business here.
I haven’t used the SO recruiting tool. But I’d imagine it would let me skim the questions a candidate have been asking / answering. So I get a sense of their technical / communication skill, and passion about their domain.
We had amazing results with all the postings on SO jobs. All developers that we hired through it are still in the company and these are some of the best people I ever worked with. It's quite a shame, we got few applicants through SO, but great developers, while through LinkedIn you have to go through and discard 90% of the applications.
This is a great shame, because StackOverflow had real jobs, it had a great search and allowed me to filter out tech that I didn't want to work with. I could also block companies as well.
Sad to see Developer Story go, but I suspect very few folks make use of it. I know that very few people visit mine[0].
I don’t think that employers, these days, actually spend time researching applicant bona fides, instead, relying on background check contractors (that probably avoid sites directly recommended by applicants), and interview-time whiteboard tests.
Aw, sad. I found my current job (in which I couldn't be happier) on SO, and have also posted listings on SO for another employer before that. I haven't used it to search for jobs in a while, but I recall it being a super simple, no-nonsense experience that was generally higher signal-to-noise than most other jobs sites. I wonder what site today matches the simplicity and quality of SO Jobs?
StackOverflow jobs are extremely overpriced, even if you can find what the price is - no wonder they don't value this area of the business enough to keep it - who wants to place a job ad at $500?
At $500 an ad a small company needs to justify that purchase - especially when finding someone may take six months and 8 ads. Of course StackOverflow Jobs won't be the choice for that sort of talent search at $500 per ad.
They should have made job ads $50 each and advertised the price up front.
It is worth noting that in the current economic conditions job ads are dramatically less effective because there is a shortage of developers and because recruiters are now contacting candidates directly. That said, job ads are not dead - job ads need to adjust to the market conditions. Job ads used to be worth $500, now they are worth $50 - that's how the recruiting market has changed.
At the moment it is extremely hard to find developers - this results in lots and lots of job ads.
StackOverflow management are clearly inexperienced/incompetent in the recruiting field if they can't capitalise on this in the current environment.
Why should they sell ads for $50 if companies are buying ads for $500? Recruiters charge $15000 for a single hire, so a company could buy 10 ads for $500 and it would still be cheaper than going through a recruiter.
But companies do not equate the $20,000 recruiting fee with the cost of ads.
Small companies - startups and also large companies and HR departments actually look at the price of their recruiting tools.
To find someone I would ideally like to advertise across every available channel - that means ads on 3 or four job sites such as SO, LinkedIn and also local board.
Simply not possible to include SO in that sort of campaign at $500/ad.
> TL;DR – 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.
Too bad indeed, StackOverflow is IMO one of the better job boards.
I really like the UX: searching by 'tech tags', filtering on location, salary ranges for many postings.
I got a really nice job through it once by searching for niche technologies.
I landed an interesting job through StackOverflow several years ago.
In recent times I had a look and the first job I see was from my first company, which I never thought would be advertising there. I phoned my ex-boss to complain: this is like going to a party and having your ex girlfriend opening the door.
They are right abou something: it's hard to find interesting jobs. Maybe we are asking too much. Maybe we just feel so much untapped potential.
So, basically, these are the last few dying gasps before we completely cede recruiting to spammers on LinkedIn? Ones that use insanely ignorant heuristics for who they allow into the funnel, creating a completely chaotic and non-transparent market full of lemons on both the supply and demand side?
Wow, I'm very surprised at this. SO is where I got my current job from and IMO it's the best place for searching for jobs in software - esp because it was easy to search for specific requirements (ex visa sponsorship or remote). Running a job board must be much harder than I thought.
It might be a good idea to archive current job offers in your local area. I always checked if a company had anything posted on SO Jobs. It was a clear indicator that engineering and development had priority. It also spoke a lot about their culture and work environment.
So I guess we should all start jotting down the companies currently on SO Jobs that we might want to work for in the future. Those listings might be all gone even before April.
Well this sucks.. It really is the best place I've come across. Good filtering options, a lot less noise for people searching (no unsolicitated) which can be good or bad, but good in my case.
And the notifications that you could define were nice, also attaching to your already established profiles is decent too.
Shame to lose it, just wonder was the maintenance costing more than the income from it. But that would seem strange!
Makes sense, they can't compete with LinkedIn in direct hiring.
Stack overflow = dictionary for developers.
Very few would be visiting it with a job hunting mindset.
Recruiters/headhunters are predominantly on LinkedIn, they won't bother with other platforms. Company employer branding teams will use it though as long as the cost isn't as gouging as it was.
As an alternative, we at Careersaas https://app.careersaas.com/portal have a developer focused job search tool. We're also targeting mostly remote roles and internships. Definitely a shame to lose SO as so many found jobs through their portal.
I would have thought the behavioural data they collect would set them apart from regular job boards. Instead of just matching on keywords, you know what users are working with on a day to day basis and can show them ads relevant to their skills and interest!
This seems a bit tone deaf from SO. maybe it's not a moneymaker for them but it's hands down the best job site for techies. Hope to never open linked in ever.
They had slowly and surely shifted from building things for actual developers to growth for its own sake. And doubled down on this leading up to the acquisition, no reason to expect it to stop. Despite they had been profitable for years from their ads business. Another great sustainable service to public sacrificed on Moloch's altar.
I admit I never understood the StackOverflow love. Narrow questions don't seem to get traction, either downvoted in the main question area or misinterpreted and closed. More general questions are more easily answered by documentation.
And heaven forbid you need a less than normal use case, you'll get people who ignore that you have external limitations and respond with "Well, I know you asked about using stupid library in X, but that's been deprecated and you need to use smart library in X, or really just switch programming languages."
I think StackOverflow used to be better, but the moderation now is both insanely strict (the question has to be super narrow) and inadequate (tons of duplicate questions)
The most highly rated questions, there are some real nuggets, would just get closed today.
Every hiring manager I talked with shared how SO Jobs was the best place to reach developers. I reached out to a few people at StackOverflow to get a sense of why they are shutting down this product that did very well.
I didn't get real answers beyond "we don't think job boards are the future" which I don't fully buy, given the success on both the employer, and the candidate side. What might be the case is the growth in profit was not what Stack Overflow hoped for, and this is why they are retiring these parts.
My suspicion is that Stack Overflow expects to make 10x more revenue with enterprise branding services (effectively not allowing just job posting, but you need to buy a large package that has other things bundled that you need to get if you want to access something like this job board).
Note that with this change Stack Overflow effectively locks out all small and medium-sized businesses from working with them. Starting from the middle of 2021, I heard they were not onboarding companies with less than 1,000ish employees to the job board either.
It makes perfect financial sense for Stack Overflow, if they are indeed making the change to maximise revenue collected from employers. However, there will be a large gap on the market for startups, small and mid-size companies who will not qualify - and will not have the budget - for the "employee branding services" SO will keep providing (but does not share details on).
[1] https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1457665269267116034?...