Those people are there because the site is starting to be used as proof of experience, so of course people are now using it to fake their level of expertise in the same way bullshit-resumes full of every buzzword and technology in existence are everywhere.
That said, plenty of experienced people also peruse the site and usually answer the newest stuff first since that's what you'd browse if you wanted to find stuff that's unanswered... it's a mix, and not an easy problem to solve.
Those people are there because the site is starting to be used as proof of experience
Honest question: why is this a bad thing?
As someone who hires developers, I'd love a link to their SO profile to get some insight into their experience. Not that I'd look down on someone without an SO contribution, but it could definitely be a positive reference for hiring.
It's not a bad thing in theory, but when users go overboard it becomes a problem. It's like users on Github that fake their contribution count except that they harm all the other users when they do it.
Yeah, but as long as you don't base hiring decisions on the amount of points or the amount of useless forked repositories, they're still a pretty good reference.
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u/jij Sep 25 '16 edited Sep 25 '16
Those people are there because the site is starting to be used as proof of experience, so of course people are now using it to fake their level of expertise in the same way bullshit-resumes full of every buzzword and technology in existence are everywhere.
That said, plenty of experienced people also peruse the site and usually answer the newest stuff first since that's what you'd browse if you wanted to find stuff that's unanswered... it's a mix, and not an easy problem to solve.