Programmer search engine

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/12/02.html

by babakian • 17 years ago

90 86 17 years ago

ed• 17 years ago

Ah, it's literally a "Search engine for programmers."

krallja• 17 years ago

Yeah, the results of the search are programmers. The search engine is not necessarily for programmers to use. Bad title.

sireat• 17 years ago

"Search engine for forty programmers"... my one little digression on HN.

amichail• 17 years ago

So these are people who are unemployed or risking getting fired by looking for a job in public?

Isn't it better to find people who already have a job they like and try to convince them that they would be even happier in your company?

Vindexus• 17 years ago

Why would that be better?

mustpax2• 17 years ago

Posting you resume on a jobs site does not necessarily mean you are actively looking for a job. And I highly doubt an employer would fire someone just for having their resume publicly posted. Besides, if you’re employer is that fickle, maybe you should have your resume out there, just in case.

atamyrat• 17 years ago

Actually the story they are pitching is that when you find someone's resume online and email them job offer, they might not be available. They are trying to solve this problem by showing only people actively looking for jobs in search results. It is similar to Github's "I'm available for hire" checkbox announced couple days ago.

staunch• 17 years ago

What would you think if you saw that one of your employees recently started paying money to receive offers for a new job?

jqueryin• 17 years ago

You can set your CV to private and only searchable by employers. Unless your employer is signed up for SO Careers I don't think you'll have a problem.

Anyways, it can simply be thought of as your personal resume. You don't have to actively be seeking a job to fill out a CV.

bmj• 17 years ago

I think LinkedIn is viewed in a similar fashion. While it's sole purpose is not job seeking, it's clear that it can be very useful for that.

Timothee2• 17 years ago

I'm not sure I understand your first sentence.

Is being unemployed a bad thing? Well, yes it generally is for the unemployed person but it doesn't mean that they're a bad hire. Sure, one could say that if they were really good, they would be busy with multiple projects at the same time, or have people waiting for them as soon as their current job ends for a reason or another. But it sounds a little bit condescending to me to imply that being unemployed means you shouldn't be hired.

As for "people risking getting fired", besides the fact that I doubt that it happens that often (and when it does, one could easily argue that it's a sign that it wasn't a good place to be in the first place), I don't see that as a bad thing for somebody hiring.

joe_the_user2• 17 years ago

Good points but ...

It just often isn't appropriate to have a single, world viewable resume. Job search is a delicate dance. Personnel departments and higher management may want to filter job seekers out an arbitrary criteria ("we want a backend/frontend programmer") while a job seeker may wants to make contact with the project lead and show they he/she is good fit for their process in particular. This kind of thing makes "spinning" your resume important and perfectly legitimate. If just exposing everything worked for programmers, Google would already be a great way to find programmers.

nhashem• 17 years ago

I said it before and I'll say it again -- charging people looking for jobs is ridiculous. I don't know who the kid in Houston looking for an OCaml internship is, but how the heck does he have $100 to spend on this?

mustpax2• 17 years ago

I believe students get SO careers memberships for free. They only charge non-students. I think they mostly want active job searchers, but $100 does sound a bit high if I just want my resume out there.

gizmo• 17 years ago

Considering the job you have has a massive impact on your personal happiness it makes a lot of sense to improve your odds of finding the right company to work for. The cost of careers.stackoverflow is nothing compared to the cost of actually taking an interview (easily 8+ hours). If because of stackoverflow you can get by with one interview less it's easily worth it.

Besides, if you have 3 great offers on the table I'm sure you'll be able able to negotiate a $100/year raise to recoup the careers.stackoverflow investment.

truebosko• 17 years ago

To spend $100 in order to find a better job, I think is worth it. $100 isn't a lot of money, especially when you consider it an investment into your future.

Hoff• 17 years ago

$100? If nothing else, an entrance fee cuts down the numbers of resumé spammers.

scotch_drinker• 17 years ago

No matter how many times you say it doesn't make it right. Charging to look for average crappy jobs? Sure, that's ridiculous. Charging to essentially filter the jobs down to a subset with a high likelihood of being above average and excellent jobs? Well worth $100.

I can get a crappy job off Dice anytime and spending money to do it would be a waste. Spending $100 to have a chance at a great job where I'm actually happy? That's an investment likely to have pretty good returns.

Pistos22• 17 years ago

A couple* facts to bear in mind:

(1) The $99 fee is paid up-front, not when (if!) hired. (2) There is a limited-time price reduction (to $29) for 2009. (3) They advertise a 90-day, no-questions-asked money back guarantee.

http://careers.stackoverflow.com/faq#pricing

* "Our chief weapon is surprise... surprise and fear..."

benmathes• 17 years ago

Yeah, charing for participation is silly. It reduces the number of potential candidates. Headhunters have the equation right: Charge when you actually hook people up.

Not sure how you'd solve the problem of people finding each other on Programmer Search and then just emailing each other externally.

chollida1• 17 years ago

> Yeah, charing for participation is silly. It reduces the number of potential candidates.

I'd call that a feature. It cuts down on the resume spam. By charging $100 you create a filter to reduce the noise. It makes the people with jobs happier because they don't get as much crap and you make he job hunters happier as it's now easier for them to find jobs.

Everyone wins by charging.

marcell• 17 years ago

Technical recruiters make ridiculous amounts of money for moving people between companies. If this is successful it will be very lucrative for FogCreek.

kqr2• 17 years ago

But that's because traditional recruiters usually take a % of the person's salary.

Stackoverflow only charges a subscription fee for searching the database so they probably won't make as much.

  If you are a hiring manager, you can test-drive our search interface any time and get an idea of how many matches you'll find. No surprises here. But if you'd like to view candidate details and make contact, you'll need a subscription:

    * 1 week subscription is $500
    * 1 month subscription is $1,000
    * 6 month subscription is $3,000
    * 1 year subscription is $5,000

brown9-24• 17 years ago

Perhaps it will be so lucrative because employers will get sick of paying percentages of salaries in recruiter's fees and so many of them will sign up for this more-modest subscription fee?

mattmcknight• 17 years ago

The percentages are out of control. 20-25% makes it really hard to even consider using recruiters. I only form relationships with some of them to get an agreement that they won't recruit from my firm.

storborg• 17 years ago

He says, "It would show you CVs right away", but I can't find a way to search candidates without signing up. Am I missing something?

ojbyrne• 17 years ago

It's implied by the last paragraph (the bit about test-driving) that you have to sign up to see the actual CVs.

prewett• 17 years ago

I'm too lazy to look at the site, but I'm wondering how they are solving the problem of people forgetting/not bothering to uncheck the "available" option? I suppose if they charge a small fee, people would have an incentive to delist themselves after they find a job.

brown9-24• 17 years ago

Who is this a problem for? How is it a problem?

cruise02• 17 years ago

I suppose if you're still getting phone calls and emails, you'll be reminded to go uncheck the available box.

ig12• 17 years ago

Won't this have the same problem as linkedin, programmers will delist themselves when they started getting daily calls from desperate recruiters ?

DougBTX• 17 years ago

That probably happens with Stack Overflow anyway, but only people with the JobHunting bit set will come up in search results.

100k2• 17 years ago

Stack Overflow charges quite a bit of money for the right to search for candidates (plans range from $500 for one week access to $5000 for a year) so that should limit the number of inquiries.

Also, you can easily remove yourself from the search results.

ig12• 17 years ago

In the financial sector recruiters can typically make around $50k for placing a single senior dev, paying an annual 5k fee is nothing

earle• 17 years ago

This is interesting Joel is just now discovering this.

As the co-founding CTO of Hotjobs.com, we provided this functionality on the very first version of Hotjobs in 1996, and subsequently ended up purchasing Resumix to provide a very in depth technical solution to allow employers this exact functionality you're describing.

Of course, we had tens of millions of resumes in every possible industry imaginable all searchable through a very robust search interface that did all sorts of fancy lexical analysis and data extraction from random resume formats.

Over the last 13 years, thousands upon thousands of people have been hired through the exact mechanism you're describing.

mgrouchy2• 17 years ago

Not to take anything away from hotjobs, but I would argue that the real value Stack overflow careers offers is the fact that an employer can not only see your CV, but at least somewhat determine your level of expertise through your stack overflow account/reputation.

I imagine Joel believes this has more value then just the data extracted from a resume.

freetard• 17 years ago

> I would argue that the real value Stack overflow careers offers is the fact that an employer can not only see your CV

What stops people from linking to their stackoverflow accounts? Many people already link their CV to their github accounts.

Timothee2• 17 years ago

I think Joel's post's only point was to talk again about the Careers option on StackOverflow, not necessarily that it was new. Well, it was presented as a new thing to show his product under a good light.

KirinDave2• 17 years ago

In the spirit of XKCD Explained:

Joel Spolsky thinks we should all hire people who regularly use his software. He thinks those people are cool and he really likes how their time, effort and reputation on his site are something they can sell to recruiters for additional revenue. This is literally his dream come true.

drp• 17 years ago

You're right. I wonder if this was part of the plan for stack overflow from the beginning. This is an ingenious way to monetize its existing user base while creating incentives for stack overflow users to keep creating valuable content for free.

codexon• 17 years ago

It's possible, but people should note he already had a job board at jobs.joelonsoftware.com.

breck• 17 years ago

Speaking of, I wonder how many millions an open HN job board could make? The people I'd like to hire are stackoverflow, github, and HN users.

joe_the_user2• 17 years ago

That's the story ... explained much the original article.

It's only a very, very roughly a programmer-search engine. It's much more an extension of the stackoverflow community.

brown9-24• 17 years ago

Joel Spolsky thinks we should all hire people who regularly use his software.

I think you have this characterized a bit wrong - he thinks that people that use his website would make for good job candidates.

reconbot• 17 years ago

Take that one step further and I might agree. People who have a high rank on "his website" might would make for good job candidates. Not all programmers may be good at communication or teaching, or any of the behaviors stack overflow, server fault promote. But I agree with the site's founders that they are positive skills to posses. It's not exactly hubris thinking that people active in a programming community might make for good job candidates.

blasdel3• 17 years ago

Yeah, I don't think even he wants to hire anyone managerial enough to love FogBugz for its own sake, much less anyone dull enough to use CityDesk.

kristiandupont• 17 years ago

The tone of your post seems condescending - I really hope that the high number of upvotes is not simply a reflection of how popular is it to dislike Joel.

I think his post is straight forward - this is a neat way to do specific searches for programmers. Programmers who use SO might or might not be cool, but they are now searchable.

KirinDave2• 17 years ago

If my tone is condescending, that's because it is. Don't you know how XKCD Explained works? ;)

I find it supremely unsurprising that Joel has decided to sell the user info he collects at the website he helped create. He is exactly that kind of person, who wouldn't see anything wrong with that. After all, it's his website and the privacy policy is clear, right? (sigh)

But honestly, I don't dislike Joel. I just am irritated by his disproportionate popularity. The man's writing is solid, but his technical and managerial insights are at best mediocre. This is in sharp contrast to someone like Paul Graham, who not only has the writing capabilities but also the background of technical and social achievement to back it up.

richcollins• 17 years ago

I would prefer a programmer search engine based on Github, where people write code, to StackOverflow, where people talk about code.

paydro• 17 years ago

I think it should be a combination of both GitHub and StackOverflow. GitHub is great to see if the person can code, and a very crucial part of hiring. StackOverflow is great to see if a person can communicate, which I think is as important as having the ability to code.

I've come across many programmers that can code well, but had horrible communications skills. It's always difficult to interact with these programmers. I spend more time extracting the meaning of what they're saying rather than getting work done.

jamesbritt• 17 years ago

"StackOverflow is great to see if a person can communicate ..."

... on StackOverflow.

Meanwhile, the great bulk of programmer communication is happening on blogs, mailing lists, and IRC.

You're very right that written and verbal communication is important, but you have to look in the right places for it.

blasdel3• 17 years ago

StackOverflow primarily exposes their addictive game-playing, not their communication skills. The rep/badge bullshit encourages inane responses, and the wiki aspects cover the tracks.

clutchski2• 17 years ago

GitHub showcases communication skills via project documentation (the documentation for bottle[1] is great), commit comments (kangax[2] often has concise, prescient suggestions for changes), and the like.

[1] http://github.com/defnull/bottle/ [2] - http://github.com/kangax

mbrubeck• 17 years ago

Phase 1 is already here: http://github.com/blog/553-looking-for-a-job-let-github-help

eugenejen2• 17 years ago

What happened to people who can write successful products but not yet been open sourced?

This happened to John Carmack, Jamie Zawinski. They are probably too busy in making stuffs work then writing answers on Stack Overflow or committing code to GitHub.

jrockway4• 17 years ago

Some people do both. Why gamble on someone who won't show any of his work when you can just pick someone who does?

ct• 17 years ago

Why would I pay $100 for this instead of using a free website like ComputerJobs.com, Dice.com, Monster.com etc? I'd think the quality of employers would be about the same.

So far I see zero benefits for me but lots of moola for JoS.

benatkin3• 17 years ago

I tried the free trial search, that he uses in his OCaml/Houston example. I find it quite hard to believe that there is a Common Lisp programmer in Bagdad, AZ and a Clojure programmer in Window Rock, AZ.

spolsky• 17 years ago

Well, the OCaml kid is legit, but, no, there are no lisp programmers in Bagdad or Clojure programmers in Window Rock... did someone say there were? Do you need one? Window Rock is a dusty tiny town, seat of the Navajo Nation--I've actually been there, it has one grocery store and a single strip mall.

Maybe you did a search that had 1 result, and then you edited your search, and the Ajax refresh didn't come back fast enough so it still showed one?

benatkin3• 17 years ago

No, I'm not looking for a programmer in either of those cities. I was just testing it out, to see if I could give it anything that wouldn't invite me to sign up and search.

I just didn't notice the number to the right, and clicked the "Show Results" button each time. After I read your reply I tried it again, this time looking for AJAX updates across the entire page, and I saw it. I think I would have found it on my own had the "Display Search Results" button been disabled or hidden when no results were found.

patio11• 17 years ago

try { ... } catch(CodeNotWrittenInTheRightCityException e) { // unreachable }

benatkin3• 17 years ago

Heh. As a telecommuter, I like how it has the telecommuter box checked by default. :)

dnsworks• 17 years ago

This site was clearly developed for large companies having problems hiring because of their size. The lack of an even remotely useable demo made me snicker at the minimum $500/week price point.

Aegean• 17 years ago

500$/week just to see some 900 CVs is a highly offensive price. He should have started low and increased the price gradually.

kgrin• 17 years ago

I've heard somewhere (possibly from Joel himself, to be fair) that it typically costs a company around half a year's salary to hire an employee (between recruiting costs, etc.) $500/week is a drop in a very large bucket for most employers - at least the kind that are doing active recruiting. They're probably spending way more than that just in personnel time to review resumes - and in fact, being able to filter a bit better by quality will save them that much more in the screener's time.

liquidben• 17 years ago

I can't provide episode number, but I can concur anecdotally that this was discussed on the Stack Overflow podcast. It was probably at or around the debut of the jobs subdomain.

Pistos22• 17 years ago

I think this is one strategy. Start with a high price for something, then iterate lower to find the sweet spot -- particularly if your product is new or beta, and you deliberately want to limit your initial user base.

jrockway4• 17 years ago

There should be something that can be added to each user's icon that indicates their hire-ability. Perhaps only for users above a certain reputation.

Programmer search engine

Related Stories