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After reading this old post on Stack Overflow meta. It seemed to indicate that employers might care about your stack overflow reputation/activity in their hiring process for developers. Admittedly, this post is nearly a decade old, but does some of the sentiment expressed there still apply today?

In my anecdotal experience as a developer, I have never been asked about my stack overflow reputation, and my employer(s) don't seem to care about it. I'm in Australia, but I'm interested to hear if other countries are different.

  • Do employers care about Stack Overflow reputation?
  • If so, how does a candidate's SO rep affect an employers perception of the candidate? (may even be negative)
gnat
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protango
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    Having interviewed 200+ candidates at 3 companies, in my experience: they don't care at all. Only one candidate ever mentioned something like a SE reputation. But then, the guy was one of the top Quora mod. Apart from that, no mention of rep ever, and obviously no hiring decision based on rep. – Jeffrey Oct 03 '19 at 03:42
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    Theres utterly no way to answer this, since "employers" don't get together in a big meeting once a year and officially decide what they do and do not collectively care about... :D –  Oct 03 '19 at 03:43
  • (I interview candidates, and I have not once checked their SO reputation) –  Oct 03 '19 at 03:43
  • @Moo Thanks for your feedback. I think that there may be some misunderstanding here, as I am well aware there is no universal "yes or no" answer that applies to each and every employer ever. What I think is helpful is explanations of circumstances where it might come into play and what effect it will have. Alternatively explanations of why it will likely not come in to play. I also get the feeling that attitudes on this topic have changed in the last 9 years - so maybe there is someone who can speak to that too (ie. worked for a company that used to care but now doesn't) – protango Oct 03 '19 at 04:13
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    Why would they when there are so many better indicators to look at? If my experience here at the workplace is any indication, reputation is based mostly on happening to stumble on the right question at the right time.If your reputation is too high, hiring managers may wonder if you have a habit of answering questions when you should be working. – AffableAmbler Oct 03 '19 at 04:15
  • I'm Australian, work in IT and I have neither asked a prospective employee nor been asked by a prospective employer about my Stack Overflow rep. So with my data point of one, I would say "no". – Jane S Oct 03 '19 at 06:19
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    Possible duplicate of Should I include information about my reputation on professionally-relevant Stack Exchange (or other Q&A) sites on my resume? – LP154 Oct 03 '19 at 08:00
  • I'm a contractor, and have seen hiring in a number of companies over the last few years. Employers (unless they're really new & small & tech focussed) don't care about SO, but the hiring is influenced by developers and other colleagues. They most definitely do care and will check out SO, Github and other social media of prospective hires. Having a large rep will help, but small/no rep won't hinder the process. I've yet to hear of an employee A vs B decision being influenced by SO. – Justin Oct 03 '19 at 08:51
  • Not exactly an answer but I interviewed the other day for a huge UK software company and they asked if I use Stack Exchange – Gamora Oct 03 '19 at 09:10
  • I once interviewed and got asked if I look up answers on Stack Overflow or if I read books on the subject. I said SO if it's a quick question and apparently this guy was very anti-Stack Overflow thinking it made really bad developers since you can copy-and-paste answers without understanding. – Dan Oct 03 '19 at 13:56
  • In a past engineer life, I was fast-tracked through phone screens on occasion due to SO rep and relevant tags. It's happens. It's not common. It means less now, IMO, than it did then. I've probably gotten 5k over there without answering any real questions, and every now and then I get a comment on a 10 year old irrelevant topic. – Joel Etherton Apr 27 '20 at 17:23

4 Answers4

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Speaking as a hiring manager in Australia, I can’t say that I’ve ever gone looking for a candidate’s SE account.

I have gone looking up GitHub though.

s3raph86
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  • I would expect the interesting bits to be presented by the applicant. If you apply for a C# job and have a gold badge for C# that would be a good thing to mention, but then you at least need to check if the claim is correct. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Oct 04 '19 at 09:42
  • @ThorbjørnRavnAndersen Fair point. I’d certainly be interested to hear if the candidate had a community recognition of that kind, but I’ve never had an applicant who highlighted something like that, or chose to share their profile via their CV. – s3raph86 Oct 04 '19 at 10:02
  • So none of the applicants you have had, have had a significant SO presence? – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Oct 06 '19 at 22:44
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Not that I know of in Australia. It would be locale and individual company specific anyway. No one in my country aside from me knows what SE is, and I only found out a few years ago.

I've seen a few Australians since I've been here, but they're unlikely to be hiring managers.

A large chunk of the World is non English speaking, SE wouldn't mean much to most of them.

Kilisi
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SO reputation can be a double edged sword.

On one side, it gives a rough evaluation of your skills in knowing and communicating about certain topics, which might be relevant or not to your work (100k rep in the great outdoor or seasoned advice, for example, do not count the same as 100k rep in finance if you are an accountant).

On the other side, some managers can see it as a sign you spend too much time on non work related activities, maybe even during work time.

All in all, bring it out only if it adds value to your resume.

L.Dutch
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For my last two jobs I have used my SO actively in my application.

Having a Java gold badge combined with a non-trivial amount of reputation is a good thing for a Java developer. It says that you are not only experienced but also a good communicator, which has helped me land the jobs.

That said, it is just a single thing in the overall picture. I originally started contributing to SO to get points to use for bounties for my own questions when I was stuck (which has worked well). Using SO primarily for self-promotion for future jobs will in my opinion not work well.

Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen
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  • You appear under your own name. Many people use some anonymous handle that cannot be proven to belong to a certain individual. – Bernhard Döbler Oct 03 '19 at 13:57
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    @BernhardDöbler Yes, by choice as I have a rather uncommon name. I believe you can change your public SO handle, and if you want to use SO for self promotion I think first step would be to switch to your own name. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Oct 04 '19 at 09:41