StackOverflow is bleeding money and for some reason has over 500 employees, a big number for a Q&A forum with an interface that's barely changed in a decade.
AI has cut into their profits so they're attempting to integrate it into their own search (ask a bot a question and get an answer). Sadly this hasn't helped much and so they've just fired 28% of their staff, only a few months after firing 10%.
Included in the layoffs are community managers (aka paid jannies), who are surely happy to be freed from what must be the worst job in the world (interacting with the insufferable unpaid jannies who hate every decision that their overlords make).
The announcement of the firings is on -197, let's see what the unpaid jannies think:
"The community isn't going anywhere." Well, they might go somewhere else if you keep firing all their beloved community managers and other Q&A teams... everyone left on the Community team now has, what, 3 years of experience with this community or less?
Oh no how can anyone be expected to moderate a Q&A forum with less than 3 years experience?
My favourite SO user Zoe is on strike (before you ask, yes they are) has a lot to say even though they're still meant to be on strike:
why, over the past two firings (and previous rounds), have you eliminated the CMs and other employees who were among the largest advocates for the community and who, in some of the worse periods, were the only communication channel with the company?
All these CMs do is get shit on by people like Zoe, arguing over pointless metadrama that doesn't impact any of the site's actual users in any way.
Someone thinks the world is ending:
It's worth considering that the biggest project that's set back is trust. Trust built over years - lost, points of contact we were familiar with no longer exist.
The practical effects are very much loss, sorrow and frankly a loss in confidence
From our vantage point, things look bleak. Really bleak. This dystopian view is not just a view, it's how we are living this relationship with SO. And this is very real, it's not simply a fleeting moment.
What will become of the development projects that Catija and other devs were involved in? There were some initiatives (such as mod tooling) she was acting as liaison on in the SO mod room.
How can I do it for free without tools?
Stack Overflow became what it is today because it was able to attract top-tier talent across all areas, both as employees and as volunteer content creators on the site. Top talent is choosy about where they work, and will choose to work where they feel respected and working on things they love. I hope that the company treated all laid off employees with the respect and compassion they deserve, and this is one important measure of that.
lol "top-tier" unpaid jannies, sure sure.
Meanwhile millions of people are Googling "how to sort list python" every day and copying the top answer from SO, unaffected by all of this meta-nonsense.
I hate SO jannies so so much, I can't believe SO hasn't realised that it would be easier to get rid of them and hire a small number of paid jannies. The site moderates itself with flags + downvotes, unpaid jannies are irrelevant.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Employment overflow
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
wow this is ridiculous what kind of cesspool of a website has a userbase like that
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
If there ever was such a site surely the jannies would be duly compensated with hazard pay
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
anyone whos ever asked a question on stack exchange knows how insufferable they are
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
They've managed to janny that site into a grave.
Sure, SO is a valuable resource, but next time you look something up check when the question/answer was written. The vast majority of the site is pre-2018 and increasingly out of date, because some r-slur decided that the same question couldn't possibly have a different solution a decade later.
They've been left with a large content archive but only a few regular users, so most new content goes unanswered if the 10 powerjannies don't know the solution.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
What I hate even more than this is the whole "we are not here to do your homework for you" being the only answer to a question on stuff like math/physics stackexchange. Sometimes I have a quick query that could be answered in 30 seconds but the whole "here's a hint, solve the problem yourself" BS means I waste 5+ minutes of my time. The point of answering a question isn't just to benefit the person who asked the question, but all of posterity, and the whole "no homework" BS means lots of questions get half answers and never a full solution, which wouldn't happen if this shit wasn't allowed (someone would have seen the question as having no answers and provided a full one).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
No doubt they'll hold onto that attitude on the way down into the grave
But you know who will do my homework for me?
Chat fricking GPT
Hoist with yer own petard there nerds
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
I always wonder how these guys keep their jobs when they spend all day on SO. There's a guy who you can guarantee will answer any SQL question within 10 minutes, and he does it as his full name.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Find out where he works and report him
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
no bitches
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
Pinning your own comment to make everything about you my god I'm so sick of you STUPID FISH
(thanks for the pin on the post)
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
I'm sure it's of great comfort to you that all the people who hate you now will pretend they loved you if you get 'fired'.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
it's "swept" you dumb fricking zoomer twinks
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Swepter no swepting
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
Swipe left on carpet, right on cockpit.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
ESL-cels
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
lol
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
ChatGPT actually giving you answers 80%, instead of removing your question for [duplicate] of the time was a death sentence for that website.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
"[duplicate], nobody answered this 12 years ago so gtfo"
And they wonder why they're in decline
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
I once had a question removed for. c++ and they marked it as a duplicate for a answered question in python.
Also half the answers were "Why are you trying to do A? You should do B." Motherlover I'm asking about A because I can't do B.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
Chatgpt giving a regurgitated answer from the answers to dozens of [duplicate] questions that you could easily find by searching.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
Very impressed they managed to frick up SO. It's popular enough my non-techie friends know what it is.
My understanding they had a very robust but cheap-ish host setup too. Was unique in that they used IIS or something.
Follower of Christ Tech lover, IT Admin, heckin pupper lover and occasionally troll. I hold back feelings or opinions, right or wrong because I dislike conflict.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
It's that classic breed of idiotic capitalism that plagues tech companies. Instead of sticking with ~10 great employees and saying "we're fine as we are" they keep expanding aimlessly and releasing new half-baked products that fail on arrival (careers, AI, different communities...)
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
That's all capitalism. Why do you think Coca-Cola keeps trying to invent new, shittier flavors of sugar water? All companies are required to grow forever or they're a failure.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Publicly traded companies and their consequences...
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Previously in Somalia, and today in Nigeria and Cameroon, local residents can buy publicly traded shares of piracy operations, funding them and getting a cut of the rewards, and I won't be satisfied until I can purchase shares of the US Military darnit
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Just buy Raytheon shares lol.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
I'm in only if the primary stockholder of one of these is deemed king of the pirates.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Nah, what you'd want is the title Dread Pirate Roberts.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
Because Coca-Cola lost the Global South to Pepsi and keep losing marketshare in the West.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
Low interest rates and their consequences
Follower of Christ Tech lover, IT Admin, heckin pupper lover and occasionally troll. I hold back feelings or opinions, right or wrong because I dislike conflict.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Nooo it's not malinvestment the market totally wants what I'm selling just not enough to pay for it fully but come on just give me more free money
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
"my yahoo answers clone is certainly worth at least 3 billion dollars"
~Joel Splortsky
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
You can't convince me venture captial isn't just r-slurs with a shotgun.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
Craigslist did it right
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
ew
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10369/which-tools-and-technologies-are-used-to-build-the-stack-exchange-network
Follower of Christ Tech lover, IT Admin, heckin pupper lover and occasionally troll. I hold back feelings or opinions, right or wrong because I dislike conflict.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
MS h8ers in SHAMBLES
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Follower of Christ Tech lover, IT Admin, heckin pupper lover and occasionally troll. I hold back feelings or opinions, right or wrong because I dislike conflict.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
I like how I didn't even need any context here to understand what you meant.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
idgi
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Be more online.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
Why does stack overflow have a community
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
I interacted with them once when I told a power user to mind his own business when he kept editing one of my questions to add an irrelevant tag.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
I comment this on every SV layoff threat but somebody has to explain to me how tech companies just grow like a literal cancer. It's a website! All the content is user-generated! What the frick do 500 people do 40 hours per week?
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
I read somewhere that they hired a ton of marketers. Doubt those are the ones being fired tho.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
I dunno, it's more than SO though? It's stack exchange. Bunch of different sites so it's probably largely community managers and not engineering. Probably hired people for each community to answer questions to get them off the ground.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
please please please reddit carry about the janniecide.
You don't need them, just ban people for sitewide rules with ai bots or something
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
What's going on with tech companies lately. Are they all really losing money, or just pooping themselves over The Event which they're expecting to happen soon
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Interest rates as set by the Fed were very low this past decade-ish. This meant debt was cheap so venture caps were throwing cheap money at tech companies hoping one would actually be a good investment eventually Now that interest rates have risen and debt is more expensive, the money tap has stopped and these companies have to tighten the belt and try to actually turn a profit now.
And of course there is the larger context that the stock market is going to any day/week/month now
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Surely this time Drumpf is finished! Any year now...
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
Easy money and good times cause malinvestment, malinvestment causes recessions, and recessions kill off the bad ideas and spare the good.
But we keep intervening with inflationary easy money during the recessions and don't let them fulfill their purpose.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
There's been a culture of waste for a while. Companies hired massive pools of engineers, mostly in the hope that one of those bros would stumble across the next big thing. Once growth starts to decline r&d is the first thing to go.
Couple that with workers doing non-jobs where they do little work and the bloat became extreme. Twitter demonstrated that you can toss all that out and lose very little, so the rest are following suit.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
not the jannies who redirect you to 15-year-old questions where every answer involves jQuery
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
Hahahahahhahah get wrekt by chat gpt you insufferable fricking nerds
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
Anyone who still has "trust" in Stack at this point would have to be a newstrag, surely
https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333965/firing-mods-and-forced-relicensing-is-stack-exchange-still-interested-in-cooper
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
Snapshots:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
Zoe is on strike:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context