{"id":802,"date":"2009-12-02T00:13:23","date_gmt":"2009-12-02T00:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/?p=802"},"modified":"2018-04-19T21:54:39","modified_gmt":"2018-04-19T21:54:39","slug":"programmer-search-engine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/2009\/12\/02\/programmer-search-engine\/","title":{"rendered":"Programmer search engine"},"content":{"rendered":"

For as long as I\u2019ve been in the industry, which is, I think, about 74 years now, the problem I\u2019ve had with hiring programmers was not interviewing them<\/a> or deciding if they\u2019re smart\u2014it\u2019s been finding them in the first place. <\/p>\n

What I\u2019ve dreamed about is a programmer search engine.<\/p>\n

The ideal programmer search engine would only include programmers who are actually looking for jobs. If you\u2019ve ever emailed someone based on a resume you found through a traditional search engine, you\u2019ve probably discovered that they\u2019re not actually on the market. <\/p>\n

It would only include people willing to work in your neck of the woods.<\/p>\n

It would show you CVs right away, and, ideally, it would show you something about their programming skills besides the usual resume blahblah<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Well, OK, that day is here<\/a>, and I\u2019m like a kid in a candy store. Nom nom. Announcing the other half of careers.stackoverflow.com: the employer\u2019s side!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span>Right now, there are about 928 candidates on there. That\u2019s a start. What\u2019s more interesting is whether there\u2019s a candidate who meets your needs.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say you\u2019re searching for a full time Java programmer within 40 miles of Palo Alto. Right now there are 11 candidates listed. All but one are active on StackOverflow… one even has reputation over 4000 points.<\/p>\n

Want a bit more choice? Check the box that indicates that you\u2019re willing to relocate. Now there are 80 matches, all of whom have the legal right to work in the states. Candidates have a lot of flexibility indicating where they\u2019re willing to work. Even if you need a Ruby on Rails programmer in Oklahoma City, as long as you\u2019re willing to pay for relocation, you\u2019ve got 7 choices. You\u2019ve got 14 choices in London (with the legal right to work.) If you think that a Python programmer could learn Ruby, you\u2019ve got 51 choices. There are plenty of choices whether you\u2019re hiring in Tel Aviv, Sydney, Silicon Valley, or New York. There are four programmers in Copenhagen right now. No relocation required. All of them highly qualified, actually; any one of them would qualify to interview at Fog Creek.<\/p>\n

Stack Overflow Careers is something of a chicken-and-egg business. We have to get a big audience of programmers and<\/em> a big audience of employers all at the same time, and then it\u2019s like a junior high school dance, with the boys on one side of the gym and the girls on the other side, and for a while you just sit there holding your breath to see if anyone will dance. We invited a few hundred employers as beta testers… these were the companies that have been listing jobs on StackOverflow<\/a> over the last six months, and so far, they\u2019ve found a few dozen candidates that they liked. Once it gets to that point, we\u2019re out of the loop, so we don\u2019t really know how many people are actually finding jobs, but please email me your success stories and failure stories so we can keep working to make it better.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Jeff<\/a> and the StackOverflow crew have done something brilliant: they\u2019ve made it possible to do searches and see how many candidates match even before you have to pay. So if you want to try it out but are afraid that there aren\u2019t students looking for OCaml internships in Houston, you can try it, and find that there is, indeed, one. So, try it out right now<\/a>. There\u2019s no obligation, and we\u2019re happy to give you your money back if you don\u2019t think you got good value.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For as long as I\u2019ve been in the industry, which is, I think, about 74 years now, the problem I\u2019ve had with hiring programmers was not interviewing… Read more “Programmer search engine”<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19,12,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stack-overflow","category-recruiter","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p83KNI-cW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=802"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3326,"href":"https:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802\/revisions\/3326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joelonsoftware.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}