I like how we only have 1 week to get on this or be charged $99 for only 1 year.
http://careers.stackoverflow.com/faq
Hi Jeff
Do you think that in the future you might have CVs for serverfault or in other words, CVs for server admins?
Agree with Mike Woodhouse. If you don’t like/want/need the service don’t use it.
Couple obvious problems here:
1.) If I really want my employees to know my SO account, I can reference it in my resume.
2.) You’re enforcing a bogus metric for hiring decisions - SO badges. I know you’re saying that the potential employer will read the posts, but lets be honest, that’s not going to happen in a large percentage of cases.
3.) It should be SO Careers Beta, not SO Beta Careers
4.) I’d complain about the price, but I can’t tell if you’re charging for it or not. Twice you say its free, and twice you follow it up with a sentence saying candidates needs to pay. If that’s the case, please be aware that every other site lets candidates post for free. They do this to attract a large user base, which in turn they can leverage in their marketing to companies looking to hire.
The cynicism on a lot of these responses kills me. There is nothing inherently evil, unethical, or even morally questionable about this.
What is being announced is an additional set of features being added to Stack Overflow. The new features (opportunities?) that are being added to the site are completely orthogonal to all pre-existing features that we have come to love and in no way is there a requirement to use the new features to still take advantage of the old features.
Yes, part of the new feature set has a fee associated with it. The decision to use the “fee” based features is in fact also optional and orthogonal to the other public CV feature set part. So, in effect, we are being offered even more than we had before at no charge with an option to do even more at a nominal price.
Its is hard to see how it can get much better than that and still call Stack Overflow a “business”.
Relative to all the debate about pricing, what you could charge, if you should charge for this or that, etc. is somewhat academic at this point, especially for all us not running the Stack Overflow Careers business.
The experiment is now being run and I suspect in the next 4 to 8 weeks, there is going to be a very compelling amount of data available to Jeff and Joel to understand whether or not what has been proposed is actually an effective approach or not to collect a good database of searchable resumes or not.
If you see the introductory offer extended beyond the initial offering window (or some varied promotion) that would mean that the the $29 offer price was in effect too high. If the offer is not extended, the price was probably too low, especially if you see the $99/year raised at some point in the not too distance future.
I am very curious to see what happens and personally wager that $29 is a probably a really good place to start. Translation: I already paid my $29 and I am not even looking for a job now. If I was looking for a job, I would be happy to pay $99 to be in a high quality employer search result…and the less people competing for those jobs the better!
Jeff,
I’ve noticed recently that there’s been a real decline in the quality of posts on this blog. Over the years I’ve always looked forward to the posts here as they’ve proved insightful and have been great launchboards for discussion.
However, just recently it seems you’ve started to become the things you hate. The “Treating User Myopia” post was a good recent example of this, and this post is another. These days you sound more like a marketeer than a developer. I except that’s probably to be expected as you’ve now got your own business and such, but it’s disappointing all the same. This post is nothing more than a piece of advertising. For someone who once moaned about “blogging about blogging” it’s a pity that you’re happy to do “adver-blogging”…
If you want to continue down your present route then at least have the decency to rename this blog. Its relevance to coding started to diminish some time ago as it morphed into a site that moans about users and plugs the SO universe.
Guys, give him a break. He has created an excellent service and he has every right to charge for it. This isn’t open source software. Good things don’t come for free. Deal with it.
I agree that putting up a small hurdle will increase the quality of programmers, and this will also help Jeff differentiate his site from all the other sites where programmers can post their resume for free. It will make his site more attractive to employers when they find out that he charges a small fee to the programmers, so there will be less of the script kiddies out here.
Also, it is free to post your resume but if you want your resume to be searchable by employers, you have to pay a small fee for that, which I think is very reasonable.
Nothing good in the world ever comes free. Deal with it.
this is pretty shameful marketing, Jeff. First, you’re blatantly using your blog as an advertisement. Second, you are engaging in deception. Is it free, or is it $29? You call it free several times, but then give it a price tag. That’s not what free means.
As for responding to the actual substance of your marketing drivel, I’ll be shocked if you find enough rubes willing to pay for an expensive service when there are so many free competitors. It sounds like Joel drank a little too much of his pricing-strategy kool-aid, though.
You all are just crazy for saying you’re leaving the blog.
Jeff is doing a great service to hook up the wealth of great programmers at stack overflow with real jobs or open doors for even better things, I don’t see anything wrong with this, remember it is a recession and there are tons of people out there that need a job!
$29 bucks for 3 years! Come on, you spend that in one night at the bar with your friends sobbing about how you don’t have a job and no-one is hiring. Get over it. Not everything on the internet is free, stop taking the programmers don’t get paid crap mentality and applying it to other things.
@Sentax: The reason people talk about leaving the blog is due to the recent quality of the blog. The blatant self advertisement this posting is has just highlighted this point.
Sure, $29 isn’t a lot, but Jeff can’t seem to clearly state whether it’s a free service or something you have to pay for. I’ve got nothing against him charging (in theory) but it does seem a bit unreasonable for a site that is based on user-generated content wants to charge those users to upload a CV. Sure, charge the employer/recruitment firm, but come on, leave the user alone. SO is nothing without them…
Nice service. However, I don’t see any advantages over linkedin.
And linkedin is free.
When did we stop using resumes and start using CVs? Is it related to the whole Freedom Fries thing?
I’m a bit divided over this as well.
You’ll trim a lot of fat by charging for the service, but not entirely. Stupid people have money too and usually will spend it rampantly if they think it’ll get them more of it.
Then there’s the whole “thanks for your contributions. I’m so happy with the way this is working, that I want you to find jobs. Pay $money, and it’ll help! Honestly!”
I think he should instead have a shifting system based on your performance on sites like Stackoverflow, etc, where the better your rep, the lower it’ll cost you to join, to the point where top talent(or googlefoo) is pretty much already free.
Sure, linking to your SO, etc profile is one thing, but I could just as easily do that on my CV itself. Add some value we can’t get anywhere else!!!
“…outrageously low…”? Only because you say so.
I would not call that nominal. Nominal would be on the order of a few dollars.
If you were that psyched and appreciative of the time we spent on SO you’d drop the price - especially for the people who contribute so much.
There’s not much stopping someone else from just linking to SO’s users and providing a job search with a lower-priced opt-in for users/job seekers. It wouldn’t take much to do.
By the way, is italicizing “substantial” (substantial fees for hiring managers) supposed to make us feel any better about the “nominal” fee we pay? If anything it just creates more resentment at cashing in AND charging us at the same time.
@Sentax and Terminator: I’m not complaining about the fact that someone has a paid service; that’s fine. What I’m complaining about is the hypocrisy of Jeff regularly slamming ‘marketing weasels’ (in fact there was a whole post on this subject very recently) then turning right around and using the exact same techniques when it suits his purposes. Hypocrisy aside, it shows a shocking lack of respect to his audience, as implicit in this post is the assumption that we’re too stupid to notice that it attempts to manipulate us in all the ways that were so carefully spelled out for us on this very blog just a couple of weeks ago.
This would have been fine on your stackoverflow blog. An update about stackoverflow in general would have been fine here. But to promote stackoverflow pay features on codinghorror? Are you kidding?
We get enough spam. Thanks.
I think that it’s a great idea, minus the $29(introductory offer!?) for ‘all’ the community programmers.
I’ll be totally honest with you, we understand that this is a business, that this is your business(and of course Joel’s too). But as everyone’s screaming out loud, please stop acting like a marketeer! Simply stating the plans would’ve sufficed. This blog post makes it appear a little too fruity.
And of course your real business would be from the people seeking the programmers, but then, like always, Joel and you would’ve plotted out some graph and come to a conclusion: “We can, may be squeeze out some more juice by charging these guys too.”
I say totally fair as a business. But you don’t want to be falling down in the eyes of people who’re actually responsible for the success of your business. I know that sound’s fruity too.
And how do you ensure the quality when you’re charging some one $29 to get listed.
I’m seriously amazed at the community, coming forward and helping out the fellow programmers. And some of us really go out of the way. But there are no material benefits that I know, apart from the bragging rights, at least as of now, for the people who really make it a point to help. I really appreciate the community as a whole and thank those guys from the bottom of heart who go out of the way to help.
As my stats would reveal, I’m not one of them. I wish I were. I wish I had the time, the selflessness and the smarts. But for the ones who do, I think they should get some benefits in your business.
I would recommend you to work out a threshold of stackoverflow scores who’d be eligible for posting their CV’s online, and for FREE. This will make the managers get to the really bright ones. This will make you show your appreciation towards people actually running your business. This will make the others in the community (like me) be more proactive.
And if ever, you were to accept this idea, I should get the honors to post my resume for FREE too. :)…I know, but was worth a shot.
And last but not the least.
Keep up the good work guys… Jeff, Joel and the people behind stackoverflow et al. You are really making a difference. And no matter what, we can’t stay mad at you even if you’re gonna charge us $29.
And yes ‘The community’.
Sammy.
Nothing is preventing anyone from creating a completely FREE alternative. Jeff and Joel don’t own exclusive rights to drab gray boxes. Roll your own and link to users’ SO profiles.
Hi Jeff. The CV’s are another great idea. Keep up the good work.
Brian
Jeff -
Love your idea - I am managing a start up that offers something extremely similar in concept, only difference is we focus on college undergraduates. Your description of the “mind-numbing acronym sea of monster.com” is amazingly accurate and not suited for talented individuals searching for career opportunities. You can get lucky on those generic job posting boards, sure, but they are not designed well. A connection platform is the best model I believe and it seems you agree. It’d be great to exchange some ideas if you’d be open to it! Hit me up at jeff at collegejobconnect dot com