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Alright, I'm sold. The best developers are also active members of the Stack Overflow community.

That being said, I run a small startup - small enough that I'm both the CEO and lead developer. We're at the point where I need to start doing more of the CEO stuff, and delegate at least some of our development work (as much as it pains me) by hiring some part-time or freelance help from other developers.

Hey, SO can sell me that! The only problem is, I don't have $495/mo to run an ad, or $1000/mo to actively search and recruit.

No problem, I'll just hunt around on one of the bajillion freelancer sites out there. There's just one problem with this strategy - and once again, SO is spot on about it:

Developers are mostly passive job seekers: they’re not always visiting job boards, but they do visit Stack Overflow to get solutions to their coding challenges they encounter daily.

I agree, and strongly believe that SO could give me access to more and possibly higher-quality developers than say, your typical freelance-for-hire directory/profile site.

I also see SO unique as a recruiting resource, because it is a community built by developers, for developers. Freelancing directories seem to be geared towards pressed suits who know nothing or next-to-nothing about software design and development - their target customer is someone who "just wants an app", and the profiles pander to that.

I want a place where developers sell themselves to other developers. Somewhere that I can search for developers based on the deep, well-thought questions they ask about SOLID, or dependency injection, or what really constitutes a RESTful web application, instead of a list of Wordpress plugins they know how to configure (red alert!)

I'm not criticizing SO's pricing structure for large companies looking to hire full-time employees (after all, $495/mo is a drop in the bucket if you can net a team that brings in millions of dollars a year for your company). But, it is a big expense for us if we don't find someone who ends up working out.

If we were at the point where we're ready to bring on a full-time employee, I'd shell out in a heartbeat. In the meantime, what if SO careers provided a more affordable tier for people like me - engineers and developers who are just beginning to see some success in their own companies and are ready to look for some part-time or freelance help?

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  • In chat?
    – user1228
    Commented Apr 15, 2016 at 13:46
  • 15
    On the one hand, I appreciate different sized companies have different budgets. But on the other hand, if a company can't spring for the $500/mo listing, I would wonder if they could afford the developer.
    – Alexander O'Mara
    Commented Apr 15, 2016 at 15:42
  • 3
    @AlexanderO'Mara the problem is that the cost/benefit ends up being disproportionate. $500 will be a more significant chunk of the cost of an hourly worker. At the same time, the return on an hourly developer is generally less than that of a full-time employee.
    – alexw
    Commented Apr 15, 2016 at 16:42
  • At the heart, the question is a lot like the statements we get like "SO should allow software recommendations!" or "SO should let people follow each other". SO (and related properties) are not "all the things" for developers. Nor would we want it to be, because then it would be just like every other crappy site on the internet.
    – Heretic Monkey
    Commented Apr 15, 2016 at 16:45
  • 10
    @MikeMcCaughan the difference here is that my proposal would directly generate more revenue for SO. And I have faith that it could be implemented in a non-crappy way.
    – alexw
    Commented Apr 15, 2016 at 17:00
  • 3
    @alexw you make some good points about your average contract worker. But at the same time, didn't you just say that you want to hire good developers and that that's why you're here? If you run an ad for a month to get an above-average developer you hire for 200 hours, your percentage cost might actually end up being less than if you hired the same guy through a freelancing site.
    – pydsigner
    Commented Apr 17, 2016 at 17:55
  • @pydsigner true, but I have no way to quantify that increase in quality I could expect by choosing SO over a freelancing site. If SO had a comparably priced service, then there'd be no need and the choice would be obvious.
    – alexw
    Commented Apr 17, 2016 at 22:28
  • 6
    @alexw I think you're missing my point. If you hire a freelancer for 200 hours @ $30/h, and the freelancing site takes a 10% cut, the fee you pay is $600, which is more than SO's $495.
    – pydsigner
    Commented Apr 18, 2016 at 14:59
  • 1
    Ahh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, screw those freelancing sites ;-)
    – alexw
    Commented Apr 18, 2016 at 15:04
  • Please SO make freelance site with all kind of management tools.
    – zac
    Commented Jan 14, 2019 at 0:54

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