Wow!!! This was the first thing on my mind when i read the title on Stackoverflow saying "I was recently asked for my stackoverflow reputation score in a job interview". Even one of it's creators Jeff Attwood (also the creator of coding horror blog) just replied "really? REALLY?!"
Stackoverflow as been up for near a year now and it's popularity as a coding reference as grown huge. Their team created a new concept, making a forum for tracking and answering programming problems a game, where users actualy fight bettween themselfs to give better answers. Making it a great resource, from programming-noobs to hardcore programmers.
As only programming questions are allowed, and stackoverflow follows the wiki path, users tend to close extremly quickly any kind of question not related to programming. But ofcourse, including in programming we have all kinds of Software Engenieering divergences, (databases, software managment, architectures, gui, ... you can guess the rest of the list).
My point with this post is simple, Stackoverflow as grown big, really big, to the point that this actualy started to happen. Where will this lead? A manager interviewing a candidate can have big insigth on the skills, aptitudes and knowledge which would be great (half of the questions of the interview could be skiped this way). But and on the other hand? What if the candidate as a really miserable reputation, because he works hard, is very good, has out of work things to do, and can't just stay at home up to 5AM coding and reading programming articles and answering questions. It's the two sides of the knife.
Let's see where it leads. But indeed, start using Stackoverflow more or you'll get a low rep and will be looked asside on your next interview ;) (it's a joke, though SO is great so use it the same)
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