Why did you close this question?


Do you not care about your careers? Do you have a career at all, or are you just a web 'developer'? Some of us haven't given up on life yet and have a software engineer career worth growing.

  • Sometimes, some of us act like rule-lawyers and close questions that are "off topic". – Tangurena Dec 30 '11 at 21:18

I didn't vote to close, but I agree with the decision.

Your question is more general career performance review related than software development. Programmers.SE is for subjective questions about software development, not subjective questions on careers.

No, I'm not a web developer either, although I find your statement doesn't exactly reflect kindly on you - I'd suggest finding a more productive method to vent.


There are quite a few comments on the question explaining why it's off topic, and Dan McGrath gives an excellent summation in his answer. I would also have voted to close, if I happened upon the question while it was still open.

Because I care for my career, maybe a little too much.

Recently I found out that my boss twitted on a couple of my answers, in a very positive tone. That's obviously kind of a big deal to me. I tried to lure almost everyone from my team here (and on other Stack Exchange sites, depending on speciality). We are a relatively small team, but an expert team nonetheless (each on his field). No one really bothered, and most of them nagged about the amount of noise here.

In parallel, I've introduced Programmers SE to quite a few core developers of my favourite platform through an internals mailing list, hoping to get actual experts to look our way. I'm saying "actual", because I sit atop the list of "top users" for the platform's tag, and I can tell you I'm no expert. Anyways, most where not impressed, for the same reasons. And quite a few noticed how skewed the list I sit atop is, where number three is that Spolsky character, with a single answer, that albeit being a great one, shows no actual familiarity with the platform.

Now, you obviously think you asked a great question (I'm not saying it isn't, or that it is). It's interesting, and possibly useful, but it's not a question the crowd here can expertly answer. Certainly there are quite a few people here who can provide educated guesses, but the possibility of someone giving a definitive answer is fairly small, if there's actually a definitive answer. That would have been ok, if the question was about software development, as quite a few people here have long careers in the field.

But, for argument's sake, let's say an expert came along and gave a great answer to your question. The whole point of Stack Exchange is that answers are peer reviewed, you expect every answer to be reviewed by experts and you can safely assume that if the answer is good it will get up voted. So we don't just need one expert to answer the question, we also need a few others to review the answer. The possibility of that happening (correctly) is even smaller.

In order to attract more and more experts, we need to concentrate on definitively answerable questions. And for all of us who participate with our real names, and our participation is visible to people we work with, it's extremely important to keep Programmers SE from turning into yet another forum.

There are at least three Area51 proposals where your question might find a better home:

Familiarize yourself with Area51, and help the proposals grow into full sites.

But, more importantly, if you want to be taken seriously as a professional, be nice(r). Your company is also a community, and I don't think people there will appreciate your tone, even if you get perfect grades on your evaluation.

-1 to you, from a lowly web developer.

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