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What does Developer story do for me (as opposed to regular bulleted resume format, including that used by SE careers site before) if I'm NOT Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, but a regular, boring, non-opensource developer who is not a unique superstar in my field?

Especially if most of my career - perhaps outside SO participation - has been in a closed-sourced world, so I don't have any way to link to exciting libraries I developed, or to wonderful projects I spearheaded.

You are also what you've worked on; what you've written.
(bluefeet♦'s D.S. Meta post)

Yes, I once single-handedly wrote an ETL product which allowed my company to avoid paying licensing for Informatica's ETL and increased the company's ETL developers' productivity 10x. No, I can't show my work. It's proprietary corporate code.

Yes, I have improved a complex query's LIO performance by 96%, which comprised 3% LIO reduction of a central DB server of a large company. No, I can't put a link to Github changes, without getting arrested (or, worse, fired) for posting company code outside company's VCS.

So, short of including my SO rep, which I already have on my resume, what can I include on my Developer Story to make it any more exciting or useful than my regular bulleted resume or Careers CV? What comparative benefits does Developer Story offer me as a developer and what can I do to realize those benefits?

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    Isn't Developer Story a bulleted time line?
    – TylerH
    Commented Oct 14, 2016 at 14:23
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    It is not for your benefit, it is for SE's paying customers. Resumes are invariably filled with lies, this new format provides many more verifiable facts. And trick questions, designed to let you disclose information that they can't ask you in an interview, like "what is the first computer you used". Tells them how old you are.
    – Hans Passant
    Commented Oct 14, 2016 at 14:25
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    Despite @Hans' cynical comments, I think they've explained what the Developer Story is and how it helps pretty well, here on meta (almost a year old) and on the blog. If you don't like it and don't want to use it, you don't have to. I'd be amazed at how much whining this feature has generated if I hadn't heard it all before for most every change SO has made over the years...
    – Heretic Monkey
    Commented Oct 14, 2016 at 14:47
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    How do people who work primarily on closed source projects get to a point where they do have something to show? Publish articles and/or books, create instructional videos, give seminars, speak at conventions and actually do contribute open source projects that can be put on display. What else but act on the realisation that closed source projects don't help you? SE can't magically make it happen for you with the developer story, if you have no public story to tell.
    – Gimby
    Commented Oct 14, 2016 at 14:56
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    @Gimby - Just to clarify, the question isn't "What can I do to sell myself?" It's "what does Developer Story to to help me sell myself better than CV already does, given that I'm me and not some epic 1 in 1000 developer who presents at conferences and has a blog?".
    – DVK
    Commented Oct 14, 2016 at 15:08
  • 97
    I'd like to hear some ideas about this, too. My open-source credentials are laughable (for not much reason beyond "I have enough commercial work to do daily that I can't bring myself to voluntarily take on more programming projects tyvm") and it gets tiring when other devs assume "no github" = "no experience".
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented Oct 14, 2016 at 19:21
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    @MikeMcCaughan there is nothing cynical in his comment. Only reality. SO is a for-profit company whose main purpose is to generate money. Yes they also created a very helpful product, which is used by many people, and this is what allows them to generate money. So there is no surprise that a developer's story is not actually for a developer, but for a recruiter. Because you are not a consumer in this story, you are the one being consumed (it does not really mean anything bad, because for a lot of people it allows to get a job)
    – Salvador Dali
    Commented Oct 14, 2016 at 19:29
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    @SalvadorDali I don't think the intent of Developer Story is to trick people into revealing more about themselves for the purposes of age discrimination, as implied by Hans' comment. Nor do I believe that resumes are "invariably filled with lies". Those are cynical statements not backed up by any objective studies I've seen.
    – Heretic Monkey
    Commented Oct 14, 2016 at 19:37
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    Item of note. If you already have a military retirement, you can pursue open source projects because you already have an income and even medical. The example is very poor. A better system would be something that provides both a working developer and the employer something tangible and valuable. Something divided into consumable blocks for someone with a full time job as a developer. Perhaps some kind of code based certification system? Write and submit a small system that does X... perhaps using Y libraries. IDK. Then the employer knows you can do it and as a developer you can learn things.
    – user447607
    Commented Oct 14, 2016 at 19:43
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    Pursuant to my last comment what you should NOT do is present problems that someone else wants solved for money. That's just a great way to make developers mad since we do this for a living.
    – user447607
    Commented Oct 14, 2016 at 19:57
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    @MikeMcCaughan I have not seen than Hans' intent was to show that DS trick people in revealing information. He just mentioned that they ask for information that allows to easily guess your age bracket. His main argument was that the DS is not for a developer, but for a recruiter. You want hard science to back up that people lie on the resume, but have you provided the same proofs that people are absolutely truthful in their resume? Based on what I have seen, people are dramatically exaggerate their skills and knowledge on the resume (haven't you noticed something similar).
    – Salvador Dali
    Commented Oct 14, 2016 at 20:59
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    Good lord, in the olden days, the "going somewhere" software houses asked you to take a problem and design it, develop it as part of the interview process.
    – 300baud
    Commented Oct 15, 2016 at 5:39
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    To make things worse, pretty much everyone can say something like this "Yes, I once single-handedly wrote an ETL product which allowed my company to avoid paying licensing for Informatica's ETL and increased the company's ETL developers' productivity 10x. No, I can't show my work. It's proprietary corporate code. ". It struck me the other day that pretty much everyone I know claims to have saved the company at least tens of millions of dollars.
    – Hack-R
    Commented Oct 16, 2016 at 2:52
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    @Hack-R - it's pretty easy to ferret out at the interview if that's true or not. I can lay out the general design for the product and the ROI considerations in about 15 minutes. I can find out if someone is BSing about that in under 5 :)
    – DVK
    Commented Oct 16, 2016 at 4:51
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    @DVK It's always true in the mind of the person who says it. But it's perceptions and assumptions. For instance the person assumes that no one else would've done the same thing, or that if it wasn't for their work things would've happened a certain way, or if they hadn't been hired that another person hired for the same role wouldn't have done the same thing or better, etc, etc. My boss tells me that one of my projects saved the company $50 million / year in promotions, but I know better than to believe that literally. If I got a million dollar bonus then I might believe it.
    – Hack-R
    Commented Oct 16, 2016 at 5:04

3 Answers 3

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35

Developer story might not work for you, but certainly you don't need to be as glamorous as Grace Hopper to benefit from it!

Developer story is a superset of a CV.

  • it contains all the items of a normal CV (employment history, education...)
  • it can be converted to a CV and we provide a link to share it in CV form and to print it as a PDF

Developer Story

For some people, it will never be anything better than a CV, and that's OK. For other people, including yourself, it gives the opportunity to mix in some notable artifacts to give a more rounded view of yourself. In your case you have a number of great answers that you can add to it.

To give a bit more background, since I worked on DS for at least 6 months this year:

  • DS solves a problem that employers have: for each candidate they need to research their internet footprint to understand them better but CVs generally are not very helpful because they contain, at best, only links to blogs/GitHub/Stack Overflow, but not a selection of content. DS aggregates most of it.

  • DS solves a problem for experienced developers that work in B2C sectors where showing the portfolio you have is much more important than showing the faceless agencies you worked for.

  • DS solves a problem for developers stuck in bad jobs, by allowing them to showcase spare time efforts such as GitHub content and land better jobs.

  • DS solves a problem for junior developers that do not have significant work experience by letting them show their other contributions to the field: a thesis? some experimental project? etc.

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    Seems the most relevant point to me is "including SO answers". As such, I wonder if there's any data on how many companies actually legitimately care about hired candidates' SO answers? (aside from SE itself).
    – DVK
    Commented Oct 15, 2016 at 0:35
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    Ironically, my most epic (by rep) answer is a stupid, idiotic, RTFM-and-paste trivial Java answer that took 5 mins to write. I'm a poster child for why view-based rep inflation and bikeshedding is a problem (that answer has 2.5x upvotes of my super-epic, amazing, took-days-of-effort, canonical answer in perl)
    – DVK
    Commented Oct 15, 2016 at 0:38
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    @DVK - that's a very generic problem with the format. It shows what I like to do in my free time. Which is very, very different from what I do to get somebody to pay me a salary. It just isn't very suitable for experienced devs.
    – Hans Passant
    Commented Oct 15, 2016 at 1:06
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    @HansPassant as an experienced dev, you probably submit a CV with your job applications. DS allows you to do that, if that's all you want. What is it that you currently would do that DS prevent you from doing?
    – Sklivvz
    Commented Oct 15, 2016 at 8:34
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    Stay in control of its content of course. I don't twitter, I don't github, don't have a web site, I don't open source, have no blog, never created a video. They pay me to write C++ code, note the complete mismatch with displayed tags. It even shows [asp.net], never once created an asp.net app :) If DS allows attaching a CV then that's a well hidden option, I don't see it. Just plain bad advertising, if you can't get in the door then you can't get a job.
    – Hans Passant
    Commented Oct 15, 2016 at 9:04
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    @HansPassant you don't need to "attach" a CV, because the DS itself can be just a CV. In fact, for users that had a SO Careers CV we made this conversion automatic. To be clear: a DS contains a superset of the information of a CV, but none of the information is compulsory and none of the extra information is mandatory to apply for a job; it has three different views (timeline, traditional CV and traditional CV as a PDF). Does that help?
    – Sklivvz
    Commented Oct 15, 2016 at 9:12
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    For example, my DS is simply imported from my careers CV, without edits: this is the timeline view, this is the traditional CV view.
    – Sklivvz
    Commented Oct 15, 2016 at 9:15
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    The problem with DS is that this fixation on "twitter/blog/github" may be relevant to the media oriented software developer (which the SO staff developers are). But there are developers in many industries where this is far from common practice and would even be viewed with suspicion. I am thinking of closed source, regulated industries like aerospace or energy or health care, or things like embedded development. Frankly the SO staff needs to be a bit less self-referential and recognize that their experiences as developers may not always carry over.
    – paisanco
    Commented Oct 15, 2016 at 16:22
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    @Sklivvz you did say "For some people, it will never be anything better than a CV, and that's OK". That's fair enough, but IMO it's "many", not "some". Jut IMO of course but it seems there is some shared sentiment to that effect.
    – paisanco
    Commented Oct 15, 2016 at 17:05
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    I share many of Hans's concerns here. Although unlike him, I am far from a veteran/experienced developer, I don't have a Twitter, web site, blog,, Facebook, YouTube channel, large open-source presence, etc. etc. In other words, I'm not big into social networking. The only thing I have on the Internet of interest to an interviewer is a Stack Overflow account. :-) And this was already adequately showed off with my old CV. You claim DS doesn't "hurt" anything, but I think it does. It pushes a very strong image of what a "good" programmer looks like, emphasizing what I appear to "lacking".
    – Cody Gray - on strike Mod
    Commented Oct 16, 2016 at 14:41
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    @CodyGray: "It pushes a very strong image of what a 'good' programmer looks like, emphasizing what I appear to 'lacking'." You could say the exact same thing about the CV's emphases on work experience. It suggests that the only "good programmer" is one who has worked on many projects before. The point of the DS view is to allow a user with relatively thin work experience to give more weight to experience gained in other ways.
    – Nicol Bolas
    Commented Oct 17, 2016 at 12:40
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    Everything that you've got in that bubble there that's outside "traditional CV" is something that I've seen on someone's CV, and is something that I'd expect to see on the CV of someone where they have significant accomplishments in one of those other areas.
    – Servy
    Commented Oct 17, 2016 at 13:33
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    @Servy - in Sklivvz's defense, the DS is definitely VERY optimized for displaying that stuff, in ways that are clearly superior to a resume (even from user experience standpoint) - this comes from my actual experience using DS. However, that's largely irrelevant to someone like me who simply doesn't have a trail of public artefacts outside of SO answers.
    – DVK
    Commented Oct 17, 2016 at 14:13
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    "for each candidate they need to research their internet footprint to understand them better" - that's not going to work well if they have enough paid programming work that they don't have time to generate much of an internet footprint. I'm with Cody Gray here.
    – Martin Bonner supports Monica
    Commented Oct 17, 2016 at 14:27
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    @MartinBonner I don't understand your objection. I am just saying that for people who do have a footprint, there's no easy way to share it on a traditional CV, and that for employers who do care about such a footprint, there's value in making life easier for them.
    – Sklivvz
    Commented Oct 17, 2016 at 14:36
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And how does a traditional CV fail to accomplish any of this?

The answer to this seems obvious if you look at the same information displayed in both.

The CV view and the DS view all show the same information. But they present it in a different way. The CV view emphasizes work experience; it's right there at the top. "Public artifacts" are buried way down at the bottom. By the time an employer gets down that far, they've already made most of their decision about whether they'd like to try to hire you or not. Those things, if they exist, would be considered sweeteners at best.

The DS view equalizes things with its timeline view. With the DS view, items that in the CV would be "Public artifacts" and "Experience" are given equal weight.

As such, the DS view is useful for those people whose "Public artifacts" are their strongest suit. While the CV view is probably best for those people for whom work experience is their most important feature.

I don't think it is unreasonable to give users the tools to put their best foot forward. Though personally, I can't say that I think the DS does a great job at that, but it does do a better job for those people than the regular CV view.

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    Which part of the "what if I'm someone without public artifacts" specification in the question leads people to believe an answer centering on said (non-existing) public artifacts as benefits of DS is worth an upvote, is beyond my understanding.
    – DVK
    Commented Oct 17, 2016 at 14:08
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    @DVK: Maybe they realize that a feature that isn't meant to benefit a particular group isn't meant to benefit them. The DS feature is about helping a certain group of people. If you're not a part of that group, fine, but that doesn't make the feature itself wrong.
    – Nicol Bolas
    Commented Oct 17, 2016 at 14:19
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    but the question being asked is very specifically "I'm part of a specific group. How does DS benefit me/that group", not "what benefits does DS have in general". That's like posting an SO answer explaining Swing and Reflection and classes and exceptions to a question "What benefits does Java offer to a developer who needs to parse a text file, compared to Perl". It would be instantly flagged as NAA or VLQ on SO.
    – DVK
    Commented Oct 17, 2016 at 14:20
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    @DVK: Your question has been answered several times, so I'll spell it out. It doesn't benefit you! It's not supposed to benefit you. It's not for you.
    – Nicol Bolas
    Commented Oct 17, 2016 at 14:23
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    exactly. So, what does this answer offer that provides any benefits over existing answers (since there's only one way you can say "no it doesn't" :) Mind you, I don't mind that you posted it, i just don't see why people see fit to upvote what's a NAA
    – DVK
    Commented Oct 17, 2016 at 14:25
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    @DVK: "Not an answer" is not for things that repeat information from existing answers. It's for "answers" that don't actually answer the question. Mine does; it explains where DS is useful and where it is not. While my answer may repeat information from existing answers, perhaps others feel that it explains the idea better.
    – Nicol Bolas
    Commented Oct 17, 2016 at 15:25
  • true. VLQ is probably better as a notional reason to object to the answer. I tend to over-broadly interpret NAA, as my flag rejection history suggests.
    – DVK
    Commented Oct 17, 2016 at 17:53
-1

I don't think it's as useful for an established developer. But as someone new (with a score just over 1/20,000th of yours) and a ton of experience to gain, the Developer Story is a great tool to have on our standard resume to say "hey, here's proof I'm improving myself and making good arguments/answers/points with the knowledge I do have" that will grow and evolve as I do.

https://stackoverflow.com/story/adamjwells

If you look at my developer story, you'll see I've so far had a rough go of things (my first job only lasted 8 months! :( ), but have the ability to make something small stand out (my award and extra learning from the LaunchCode program) that would normally get overlooked by folks. The key thing here is I don't have a degree, and probably never will so now I have a centralized place to say "Hey! Look at this, I can PROVE I can do it!"

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    And how exactly do I see your developer story? Please take note stackexchange, this is not easy to find or see...
    – JonH
    Commented Oct 14, 2016 at 19:21
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    And how does a traditional CV fail to accomplish any of this?
    – Servy
    Commented Oct 14, 2016 at 19:22
  • whoops! I added it to the post.
    – Adam Wells
    Commented Oct 14, 2016 at 19:22
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    @JonH: Not easy to find? Go to the user's SO profile and click "Developer Story"... literally as simple as that.
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented Oct 14, 2016 at 19:23
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    @LightnessRacesinOrbit - Sorry I mistakenly went to his meta profile. I really think meta should still show this information, it is meta SO anyhow.
    – JonH
    Commented Oct 14, 2016 at 19:24
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    @Servy i'm going to add this later, but a regular CV doesn't let me do things like add the SO questions to prove competency, or tack on some books i've been reading at the end of it. Effectively, I'm looking at the Developer story as the 'business casual' to the 'business' of a regular resume.
    – Adam Wells
    Commented Oct 14, 2016 at 19:27
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    @AdamWells The old careers CV did have a section to list SO posts (and of course you can always include that in pretty much any other CV form, if you want to), and you absolutely can mention books you're reading on your CV, if you feel that that's something that potential employers would find useful. This format is no better or worse at conveying that.
    – Servy
    Commented Oct 14, 2016 at 19:30
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    I don't really follow your argument here. In what way is your Developer Story proving that you can do it, and how can it possibly do that any better/different than the old "classic" CV view? The two contain exactly the same information, just organized in a different format.
    – Cody Gray - on strike Mod
    Commented Oct 14, 2016 at 19:44
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    I imagine veteran programmers won't be too interested in a DS unless they like to show off or love mirror talk or are really bored or love social networks.
    – Drew
    Commented Oct 15, 2016 at 1:38

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