I am pleased to announce that Stack Overflow just added another team member in an officially paid capacity: Kevin Montrose.
You may remember Kevin as the author of the unofficial Stack Exchange API.
I didn't realize at the time that Kevin was graduating from Rice University in Houston, TX and actively looking for employment. But when I finally noticed Kevin had his Stack Overflow Careers CV linked in his profile, even someone as dense as myself was able to put 2 and 2 together -- working on an API is our highest priority, and we're looking to hire exactly the kind of programmers who roll up their sleeves and say "no Stack Overflow API after almost two years? To heck with you guys, I'll just write my own!"
(I'm paraphrasing a little -- I'm sure Kevin didn't actually say that. Or, maybe he did. I don't know.)
Kevin is still a student at Rice until May, so our desire for someone to start part time meshed nearly perfectly with his schedule. Kevin cut his teeth developing a few pending features for careers.stackoverflow.com and we've been quite pleased with the results. He's now actively working with Stack Overflow Associates #00001, #00002, and #00003 to make sure version 1.0 of the Stack Overflow API can be as solid and complete as possible.
As a student, Kevin is working with whatever equipment he has at hand. I made sure that he got upgraded to a nice 30" monitor and a brand new, fully decked out 8 GB, Core i5 laptop. Every team I am on will religiously enforce the Programmer's Bill of Rights.
Congratulations, Kevin. Welcome to the Stack Overflow core team. We're certainly hoping you will want to continue this part-time gig as a full-time gig later this year!
I should also note that big things are happening with Stack Overflow right now, some of which Joel has written about. It's very exciting and I think you'll really like what we reveal, but we can't talk about the details of that yet, unfortunately. I can, however, assure you that we're very likely to expand the core team by several more members in the near future. And yes, we will be eating more of our own careers dogfood -- that is, hiring from the Stack Overflow (and Server Fault) community.
Remember: we're all here to build something we love together!