May 2023 layoff impacting 58 SO/SE staff

In order to support our colleagues as they go through this very difficult transition, we’re asking that you respect their privacy, and we will not be taking questions about who was impacted . . .

I know you are the messenger here and this isn't necessarily your choice. Having been a community manager for a previous round of layoffs, I can say this is intensely frustrating. One of the ways Stack Overflow has stood out in the past is the connection between members of the community and employees. We watched the site being built publicly, worked closely across the employment boundary and when it comes time for people to leave the company we publicly share in their grief and/or excitement. Unless, of course, the company has some reason to keep things quiet.

This morning there are 58 people who suddenly don't have a job to go to. I imagine some of them would like to find a new job in the near future. There are people in the Stack Overflow community who might have leads for the newly unemployed. I wonder how many of the people were laid off don't mind having their names revealed by the company rather than having the community speculate about their status?

If any former Stack Overflow employees are looking for people to connect with, they should feel free to email me. My contact information can be found at the bottom of my blog posts. I can connect you to resources for ex-Stack Overflow employees.

I'd like to express my deep dissatisfaction in these events.

In the past, as a startup, layoffs were framed as something essential for the survival of the company, and they often resulted in fairly significant damage reputationally and in terms of the relationship between the community and the company.

One of the benefits that we'd been told of, well, the acquisition, was that Stack Overflow would no longer be at the whims of needing to chase funds, and would be in a situation of better financial stability. At a time where the company's chasing the ML/GenAI hype train — intends to dedicate, rather ironically, the same level of staffing to that as the employees cut. We don't know the full extent of the layoffs and where they are of course, but I've noticed 2 losses in the community team (and for a company that claims to be community-centric — that's kinda off-putting), and at least one DBA.

It's not just a warm body, so to speak, being lost — it's years of contacts and skills, the relationships cultivated with the community and coworkers and skills lost, which, frankly, no generative AI can replace.

Our commitment is to continue to provide our customers with the level of service they expect and to the users of our public platform—the knowledge they’ve been seeking from Stack Overflow for nearly 15 years.

The knowledge is from the users of the public platform - the community, and I feel like this is back on the unfortunate cycle of 'we can cut back on the community to focus on the current shiny paid product'.

I've been here most of those 15 years and this feels like an unfortunate cycle that keeps repeating. Events such as this don't build trust. There are so many promises, and optimism and... oops, we're needing to shed staff because...

My heart goes out to the staff who're let go — it's never easy, and while the full extent of the damage is yet to be seen, as an old timer of SE — y'all are family and the community appreciates the work you've put in to keep this site going.

Well that's a depressing turn of events.

First and foremost of course the real human impact is on the poor folks on the receiving end - and my heart goes out to them. I've been there, going through the whole stressful wringer of "is my job up for the chop" and while I was fortunate enough in that situation to find something bigger and better even before my then employer backtracked it was still one of the most stressful periods of my career and that was in a country with much better employee protections in this area than the US and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. So from the bottom of my heart I wish all those affected the absolute best.

Sometimes layoffs can't be avoided of course and I don't pretend to know the ins and outs of Stack Overflow's financial picture. Inevitably however my thoughts turn to the other recent announcement from the CEO, I expressed concerns there that the company might be throwing a truckload of cash at chasing a hype-train without a clear value proposition, and now in practically the same breath there's sweeping cuts to the headcount for profitability reasons. This might not be on quite the same scale as the company-formally-known-as-facebook's recent adventures in burning truckloads of money on a boondoggle before laying off thousands of staff, but the parallels are disturbing.

On a more mundane day-to-day level the losses in the Community Management team are concerning - as a moderator I've experienced both the frustrating times when the team was chronically understaffed and the benefits to the smooth functioning of the network when the team was built back up. So to see cuts to a what was still a relatively thinly stretched team is concerning, especially in light of the recently announced CoC changes that are likely see an increased need to escalate matters to the CM team to handle. So the mods have basically been handed a big fat "here's a big change to the CoC, and we're simultaneously cutting the available staff to support you with it" sandwich.

I'm sure the volunteer moderators and the remaining CMs will muddle through, as has always been the case, but it will no doubt lead to some degree of extra load on the volunteers, in the name of Stack Overflow's profitability. Which does leave an unpleasant taste if I'm honest.

Do you know what I really like* about that blog post? It's this: when you view it on mobile, the one 'related post' (that I guess the blog software auto-picks) has this summary:

Made me laugh, bleakly.

_{* like is the wrong word but I lack the vocabulary to pick the right word}

As a woman working in a technology-oriented field, I would like to extend my support to those who have lost their job.

I have lived through several rounds of layoffs in my career so far - sometimes I dodged the bullet, sometimes I had to eat the pink slip.

There is one thing however that I hope might bring consolation to those that have been made redundant: and that is that, in the vast majority of circumstances, it was not your individual fault that led to the loss of a job. Sometimes the market contracts (or expand) in directions unforeseen by your employer, and companies don't always have a say - they either adapt, or die.

Oftentimes it's not even a symptom of being a less valuable asset in the same department - in fact, it's often the most specialized professions that find themselves suddenly in a position of no longer being able to benefit their employer.

However the cause, find solace in the knowledge that having worked for such a reputable organization will no doubt make the transition to your next role easier.