Episode 76

Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky

StackOverflow
59 minutes, 27.2mb, recorded 2009-11-24
Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky

In this episode of the Stack Overflow podcast, Joel and Jeff discuss the Stack Overflow Careers philosophy, online community growth patterns, and how to tell if you're Sid Meier or not.

  • Stack Overflow Careers is now fully open for business! Joel explains what it's all about, the proverbial programmer search engine.
  • One thing we have resisted is employer demand for a sort order of CVs by Stack Overflow reputation scores. This is sort of like colleges sorting incoming applications by SAT or ACT scores. We have a brief discussion about how the college admissions process relates (or doesn't) to job "admissions".
  • Joel shares his tips on what makes a CV / resume look good to him. And remember, Joel wrote the book on this stuff! So in theory, at least, he knows what he's talking about! Fog Creek does a lot of hiring every year.
  • Now that we have a so-called "Careers" site on Stack Overflow, any perceived crossover between your professional life and online life is 100% intentional and by design -- as correctly noted by the Cerebral Mastication blog.
  • I am now required by law to link to this amazing and hilarious SO post (on the perils of matching XML with regex) which already has a stunning two thousand upvotes! It went hyper-viral.
  • Should we allow Facebook questions (or other questions specific to a website) on Super User? It's a bit complicated because websites are becoming legitimate "software applications" in today's computing world, and even more so in the future. The line between a traditional software executable and a website is becoming less and less clear.
  • Discussing how you scale a community on Stack Exchange -- is it about having lots and lots of questions, or garnering a solid audience of experts?
  • There appears to be a distinct difference between the early, adolescent, and mature stages of a community. You have to plan for and adapt to each stage; there is no "one size fits all" approach. I'm reminded of Robert X. Cringely's classic essay Commandos, Infantry, and Police.
  • Joel's counterpoint is that maybe you're actually working with Sid Meier. My counterpoint: everyone wants to think they're Sid Meier, but as in Highlander, "There can be only one".
  • Per Joel, programming is not about knowing a programming language any more than being a concert pianist is about knowing how to read music. But is programming anything like creating art or music?
  • Joel is offering a free Fog Creek t-shirt of your choice for the best question asked next week -- so get those (audio only, please!) questions called or mailed in! And leave us a way to reach you.

We answered the following listener questions on this podcast:

  1. Josh from Taiwan: "I'm looking to move from QA into programming. Is it better to know one language really well, or lots less well? Also, does Objective-C pass the Joel Test of knowing C?"

If you'd like to submit a question to be answered in our next episode, record an audio file (90 seconds or less) and mail it to podcast@stackoverflow.com. You can record a question using nothing but a telephone and a web browser. We also have a dedicated phone number you can call to leave audio questions at 646-826-3879.

The transcript wiki for this episode is available for public editing.


This free podcast is from our StackOverflow series.

For The Conversations Network:

  • Post-production audio engineer: Joel Spolsky
  • Website editor: Jeff Atwood
  • Series producer: Jeff Atwood