TL;DR:
We believe that all programmers need and deserve jobs they love. Last week, we added a Jobs tab to Stack Overflow in order to help you do just that.
What’s changed?
You’ll no longer need to login to a separate account on a separate site in order to use Stack Overflow Jobs. This means that the family of products we’ve built with the goal of improving programmers’ lives - Q&A, Jobs, and soon-to-be Documentation - will live side-by-side on Stack Overflow. Tim has already summed up the problem that this decision was designed to solve:
Many of you reading this have great jobs that you love, but many more do not, and don't realize that Stack Overflow has a product that could help get them a much better job. Some might have poked at it, but got lost in the hassle of having to sign up all over again and tell us things they thought we already knew about them.
I already have a job I love. Why should I be interested?
You don’t have to be. In Tim’s words, this is our attitude toward bringing Jobs to Q&A:
It's all there when you need it. For many users, it should be a lot easier having all these things in one place. For those who only choose to use Q&A, or Docs, the rest will be waiting patiently out of the way.
If you are interested in a new job - and based on an experiment we ran earlier this year, we learned that 40% of you are - we’d like to help you. Because even though the demand for skilled programmers is on the rise, only 1 in 3 of you told us “I love my job.”
In the last few months, we’ve focused our efforts on several key features designed to help you land the job you love.
1. Better job matches
About a year ago, we began a long-term experiment that used our machine-learning technology to surface more interesting jobs to our users. This drove a 40% increase in overall applications, which was awesome - it meant that we were making it easier for you to find and apply to jobs you found interesting. This experiment taught us that we can help the programmer community by showing relevant jobs without asking anything of the user. But how could we make the experience even better? What about specific criteria that you’re looking for? How could we better empower you in your search for not just a job, but the right job?
We believe that we can serve up even better jobs if we allow you to define your own preferences for important things like tech you’d like to work with, where you’d like to work, and desired compensation. Our matching algorithm uses this information to sort the latest jobs for you, putting the best matches on top. To start seeing jobs that match your criteria, just login and visit the “matches” tab.
2. Better job listings
Last year, we asked you what you care about most when looking for a new job - and this is how you responded:
We’re working hard to get more companies to provide this info in their job listings. So far, we’ve focused on tech stack - and today, about 80% of our jobs offer tech stack data. Now we’ve set our sights on compensation. Currently, about 30% of our job listings provide compensation data - but we’re working hard to bring this closer to 100%.
3. No recruiter spam
If you’re a programmer, you’ve probably never tweeted this:
Because chances are high that you’ve received a message like this:
My associate forward me your contact info. and the hiring VP of Engineering is interested in your technical background for a senior position. The company I’m working for is very successful, profitable and well funded by several top VCs. Also can you please email me your current resume in word so I can forward it to the hiring VP of Engineering so he can review it, the resume he has is a bit dated... The compensation is excellent with great stock options, bonus, 401k and comprehensive package. I can call you with all the details on the position and company, please let me know the best # to call you at.
We’ve taken a few measures to help ensure that Stack Overflow users only receive personalized, high-quality messages from companies - and of course, only after you’ve given us explicit permission.
- Our Job Search Status feature gives you full control over who is allowed to talk to you, whether you want to hear from companies right away or not at all.
- We limit the number of outstanding messages that a company can send. This feature helps us control generic, copy-and-pasted messages to candidates, while encouraging companies to send messages that are relevant to the unique interests and background of each user.
- We refund company subscriptions when we receive reports about bad behavior, and all of our job listings are required to disclose a company name. Furthermore, we seek out opportunities to work with developer-friendly companies that would be appreciated by the Stack Overflow community.
Okay, but how does this affect Q&A?
As Jason neatly summed up:
That ^ is about the extent of the changes to existing Stack Overflow. There's nothing else changing about Q&A. We aren't going to put jobs that look like questions in the middle of a question list, or jobs that look like answers in the middle of the answers for a question, or any other dark pattern garbage. The Jobs tab will be there for you should you need it, and otherwise Stack Overflow is essentially as it was.
We also won’t start hassling you about things that aren’t relevant to your interests. That means we’ll only push relevant Jobs content to users who’ve indicated to us that they’re interested in looking for a job. For everyone else, it’s there when you need it.
Stack Overflow Jobs is now live
Each of us has a different dream job. Some of us want to work quietly from home; others want to build products in offices filled with colleagues and free perks. Some of us want to make more money, while others want to push the first line of code on a product that will eventually be used by millions. Whatever it is that you’re looking for, we hope that your search starts with Stack Overflow.