Has anyone here worked outside of tech? Hiring isn't any better. Engineers tend to be really hard on themselves and others if something isn't perfect. But you can't hire perfectly. You will hire good people and crap people. People will come and go. Training your forces and marshalling them to victory is much more important than hiring the best recruits. People in IT seem to think training is some kind of punishment, but it's a force multiplier (along with morale), and absolutely necessary for the best work. Ask anyone who studies business efficiency, or warfare.
StackOverflow is a good idea, but in the few times I've tried to use it, I have always been slapped down by obscure rules and tyrannical mods. The rules (which can vary by tag, specialty, and are often subjective) are not clear at all to new or casual users. SO needs to refocus on user stories and pain points.
> SO needs to refocus on user stories and pain points.
It did, massively, but ended up alienating a lot of loyal, hard working volunteers in the process, because actually a lot of first time interactions were good and patient, and only a few weren't, and SO talked as though they were all bad. And even then, they were mostly just brusque based on culture rather than actually bad.
If you read some of the beginner questions that had no effort put into them, requiring a long patient conversation to tease out the detail, partway through which half the time the beginner would lose patience, say something rude and leave, and then post about toxicity on Reddit, you might also sympathise slightly more with mods and regulars who've dealt patiently with this sort of thing hundreds of times.
Tl;dr: You can't be both a repository of useful, searchable reference content and a human-powered ChatGPT interface for beginners.
StackOverflow is a good idea, but in the few times I've tried to use it, I have always been slapped down by obscure rules and tyrannical mods. The rules (which can vary by tag, specialty, and are often subjective) are not clear at all to new or casual users. SO needs to refocus on user stories and pain points.
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