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.
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wow this is ridiculous what kind of cesspool of a website has a userbase like that
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anyone whos ever asked a question on stack exchange knows how insufferable they are
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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.
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Find out where he works and report him
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no bitches
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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.
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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).
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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
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If there ever was such a site surely the jannies would be duly compensated with hazard pay
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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)
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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'.
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