jobs.codeproject.com [modified]
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CP is a free web-site hosting several thousands of articles, for "helping" programming community -- that is its sole purpose. By embedding a "paid massive" job web-site inside it, its purpose is being changed. Changing the purpose of CP might affect the enthusiasm of people who make controbutions to it. My only question was to raise discussions on how ethical it is to do what CP did. I think most of the CPians took it personally.
Nope - your question didn't bother me one way or the other. Personally, I wish Chris and the team all the best with this venture, and I hope it succeeds for them. Ultimately, they only get paid if The Code Project makes money, and they can't really rely on the advertising for that so it's good to see that they have looked at diversification. I would be worried if it took up all of Chris' attentions, but I trust that guy - he's proved his intentions in the past; plus he seems to be looking to do what's right for his staff.
Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.
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A lot of those accounts belong to little Joshua and Kyle because they get banned every so often. :) Then there are the people who create an account when they find out they have to register for downloading ZIP files, forgetting they did the same thing yesterday.... All in all, I think the number of active users (few posts a month, an article a year) is in the low thousands.
Cheers, Vikram.
The hands that help are holier than the lips that pray.
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Well, one could filter out (bad) received job vacancies, and at least charge reasonably less amount, for advertisements. Actually, came to think now, maybe by charging this amount, CP tries to maintain high quality of job seekers? -- but what does that change, one could still do the filtering manually. At the very least, the idea should be to make the job web-site, relatively limited in terms of allowed job applications, and not make it too massive, else, it may over shade CP after a while :).
bigdenny200 wrote:
but what does that change, one could still do the filtering manually.
...which costs time (== money) and effort from someone here to filter them. I don't get it. Surely any employer will spend far, far more than $249 during the hiring process and in wages once they finally find a candidate... heck, $249 won't even get you a crappy little ad for 30 days in the "Help Wanted" section of most local newspapers. Where are you coming from on this? :confused:
Citizen 20.1.01
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
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"If CP provides a free service, why is it wrong for them to also provide paid services, so long as they don't impinge on or change the offering to people who are using the site for free ? It's actually great for us - I have won tons of work through my CP articles, imagine how much more so I can point to my CP articles as part of my proof of experience, when the job is listed on CP ?" True, but as I said, CP should try to keep the job site relatively limited in terms of available vacancies. If this web-site becomes very massive, it will make CP look more like an employment agency; again, of course free job site is OK, but the ethical questions raises, when one sees 300$ as a charge for a single job vanancy advertisement within a free software developer community's web-site.
modified on Tuesday, June 3, 2008 2:49 PM
bigdenny200 wrote:
when one sees 300$ as a charge for a single job vanancy advertisement within a free software developer community's web-site.
Eh? What? Not sure where you got the $300 figure, but the page i saw said $249 USD. That's peanuts. $300 is still peanuts. I just checked the price of running a short little entry in my local paper, and 30 days would cost me over $700, with no fat rich text description, no logo / attachment, no map, and no targeted audience. :suss:
Citizen 20.1.01
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
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bigdenny200 wrote:
when one sees 300$ as a charge for a single job vanancy advertisement within a free software developer community's web-site.
Eh? What? Not sure where you got the $300 figure, but the page i saw said $249 USD. That's peanuts. $300 is still peanuts. I just checked the price of running a short little entry in my local paper, and 30 days would cost me over $700, with no fat rich text description, no logo / attachment, no map, and no targeted audience. :suss:
Citizen 20.1.01
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
Well, that makes CP's intention to create a job-web site even more massive. According to my insights, I had considered 250 relatively a high charge for a job vacancy. Maybe this is not an answer to you, just I am tired from answering so many posts :) But, just imagine Linus, speculating with the freeware developers of Linux, by creating job-sites (in the worst case, embedded into linux web-sites) targeted to such audience using his 'channels', and starting to make money out of the employers. Again we would get back to the same ethical problem. CP had collected this community, from different purposes, and suddently, it starts earning "lots" of money "using" them :). In the end you can say, it is a win-win situation (omitting the ethical side, which clearly exists). But, still this can affect CP in a bad way, in the long term [see my reply to Chris Kaiser -- made after the post of "led mike"].
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Hey All, I wonder, how "ethically" correct it is to create a web-site like, jobs.codeproject.com, within (please correct me if I am wrong) the codeproject.com site. The community at CP, is mostly doing what they do for free, and I don't think it is a good idea, to "use" this fact, in order to run a business like jobs.codeproject.com. In a way, it turns CP to a web-site which is masked under the name of a free software developer's community, while at the same time, its owners get highly paid by employers for running the job.codeproject.com service. In the very least case, I think these web-sites should be hosted on two different domains. Else, one will end up with a web-site offering jobs, and no more developers :). Please don't get furious :). Just putting my opinion, I am sure many have thought about this beforehand, and also I think, the reality might be a bit different then I described. So, simple clarifications (without swearings) and discussions would be welcome. PS. Another implication can be that, when one sees a "great" article by some programmer at CP, one does not know it anymore, whether it was done on a purely enthusiastic basis, or with the purpose to attract job seekers. Of course, this is always the case, since someone can link to his article on CP, but with this new approach it makes it even more obvious and noticable. PS2. I think that if the web-site goes on running, it should limit itself in terms of received vacancies, and not become very massive. Else, CP will turn into an employment agency, instead of a software developer community, after a while. Cheers.
I think the replies to your question by other regulars sum it up pretty well, but for the record I thought I'd offer my 2c. Firstly, our #1 priority is to the site and the development community. We're not going to do anything that ruins what we have. I feel like I've built this whole thing up with my bare hands so I'm not going to do anything that threatens what we have. Secondly, we need developers to help build more stuff for you guys but finding good devs is really hard, which is frustrating because so many of the very people we are trying to attract already come to our site. Almost every company I've spoken to has the same issue and so we thought the best thing to do is work out a way to hook up our 5 million members with all those companies looking for good talent in a way that is simple for our readers and simple for a company. Having a Job Board is a natural extension to what we have here at The Code Project: Resources to help you in your programming career. The thing is: we used to have a Job Board. It was crap and wasn't anywhere near the help we wanted it to be so we've bit the bullet and built something that will actually be useful. The only way it will work, though, is if we can have it pay for itself so we've adopted the standard model of having the Employer pay (and they are paying up to half what other sites charge) and the potential employees (you guys!) use it for free. We're constantly looking for new and better ways to help the development community. Some of those new ways might have a fee attached (like the job board) and others won't. As has been pointed out, running a site like The Code Project and hiring the best developers to work on it is an expensive proposition. With regards to the size of the board it is actually more useful the bigger it is. It won't detract from the rest of the site because it's in its own area, and the more jobs we can have posted the more chance of there being something that a developer on the site would be interested in.
cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
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Hey All, I wonder, how "ethically" correct it is to create a web-site like, jobs.codeproject.com, within (please correct me if I am wrong) the codeproject.com site. The community at CP, is mostly doing what they do for free, and I don't think it is a good idea, to "use" this fact, in order to run a business like jobs.codeproject.com. In a way, it turns CP to a web-site which is masked under the name of a free software developer's community, while at the same time, its owners get highly paid by employers for running the job.codeproject.com service. In the very least case, I think these web-sites should be hosted on two different domains. Else, one will end up with a web-site offering jobs, and no more developers :). Please don't get furious :). Just putting my opinion, I am sure many have thought about this beforehand, and also I think, the reality might be a bit different then I described. So, simple clarifications (without swearings) and discussions would be welcome. PS. Another implication can be that, when one sees a "great" article by some programmer at CP, one does not know it anymore, whether it was done on a purely enthusiastic basis, or with the purpose to attract job seekers. Of course, this is always the case, since someone can link to his article on CP, but with this new approach it makes it even more obvious and noticable. PS2. I think that if the web-site goes on running, it should limit itself in terms of received vacancies, and not become very massive. Else, CP will turn into an employment agency, instead of a software developer community, after a while. Cheers.
The job listing I saw was for a job at Code Project itself. I don't understand why it isn't reasonable for CP to advertise for its own staff in a place where it's likely to find people with the right skills. If we treat http://jobs.codeproject.com[^] as a general purpose jobs listing service, I think I see your misconception. The people who write articles for The Code Project contribute their work free of charge. That has absolutely nothing to do with how Chris, Dave, and company support the operation of the site. I believe they have bent over backward to keep the site open and friendly to developers. The advertising on the site (which the suppliers benefit from and pay for) is reasonably unobtrusive. Charging a nominal fee for other services, like job listings, is simply an extension of this idea. As long as they aren't charging for article views (and then not paying the authors), I don't see a problem.
Software Zen:
delete this;
Fold With Us![^] -
I think the replies to your question by other regulars sum it up pretty well, but for the record I thought I'd offer my 2c. Firstly, our #1 priority is to the site and the development community. We're not going to do anything that ruins what we have. I feel like I've built this whole thing up with my bare hands so I'm not going to do anything that threatens what we have. Secondly, we need developers to help build more stuff for you guys but finding good devs is really hard, which is frustrating because so many of the very people we are trying to attract already come to our site. Almost every company I've spoken to has the same issue and so we thought the best thing to do is work out a way to hook up our 5 million members with all those companies looking for good talent in a way that is simple for our readers and simple for a company. Having a Job Board is a natural extension to what we have here at The Code Project: Resources to help you in your programming career. The thing is: we used to have a Job Board. It was crap and wasn't anywhere near the help we wanted it to be so we've bit the bullet and built something that will actually be useful. The only way it will work, though, is if we can have it pay for itself so we've adopted the standard model of having the Employer pay (and they are paying up to half what other sites charge) and the potential employees (you guys!) use it for free. We're constantly looking for new and better ways to help the development community. Some of those new ways might have a fee attached (like the job board) and others won't. As has been pointed out, running a site like The Code Project and hiring the best developers to work on it is an expensive proposition. With regards to the size of the board it is actually more useful the bigger it is. It won't detract from the rest of the site because it's in its own area, and the more jobs we can have posted the more chance of there being something that a developer on the site would be interested in.
cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
"The only way it will work, though, is if we can have it pay for itself". Again, my concern was for CP not to start earning high profits by 'using' its 'free' community. If the purpose of the charging policy for the vacancies, is solely to cover its own running costs, then all my comments can be dismissed. Just curious what happens, if CP suddenly starts making more money out of it then intended for running this service :-\ .
modified on Tuesday, June 3, 2008 5:51 PM
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Well, that makes CP's intention to create a job-web site even more massive. According to my insights, I had considered 250 relatively a high charge for a job vacancy. Maybe this is not an answer to you, just I am tired from answering so many posts :) But, just imagine Linus, speculating with the freeware developers of Linux, by creating job-sites (in the worst case, embedded into linux web-sites) targeted to such audience using his 'channels', and starting to make money out of the employers. Again we would get back to the same ethical problem. CP had collected this community, from different purposes, and suddently, it starts earning "lots" of money "using" them :). In the end you can say, it is a win-win situation (omitting the ethical side, which clearly exists). But, still this can affect CP in a bad way, in the long term [see my reply to Chris Kaiser -- made after the post of "led mike"].
bigdenny200 wrote:
According to my insights, I had considered 250 relatively a high charge for a job vacancy.
Glad i was able to debunk that notion then.
bigdenny200 wrote:
But, just imagine Linus, speculating with the freeware developers of Linux, by creating job-sites (in the worst case, embedded into linux web-sites) targeted to such audience using his 'channels', and starting to make money out of the employers.
Wait, you don't think Linus works? You don't think he manages to make money off of his reputation? :~ I got news for you, brother: he does. Not by running a job site, but by working a job. Why? Probably because running a job site isn't interesting, and isn't a particularly good way to make a profit. And if you think you're tired of answering, i'm definitely tired of reading. I read the entire thread before replying, and ended more confused as to what you're upset about than before i started. I'll assume that English is not your first language and give you the benefit of the doubt, but if you have presented a concrete line of reasoning (instead of vague allegations that "it might hurt someone at somepoint, somehow" or "it's unethical") here somewhere then please link to it.
Citizen 20.1.01
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
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bigdenny200 wrote:
According to my insights, I had considered 250 relatively a high charge for a job vacancy.
Glad i was able to debunk that notion then.
bigdenny200 wrote:
But, just imagine Linus, speculating with the freeware developers of Linux, by creating job-sites (in the worst case, embedded into linux web-sites) targeted to such audience using his 'channels', and starting to make money out of the employers.
Wait, you don't think Linus works? You don't think he manages to make money off of his reputation? :~ I got news for you, brother: he does. Not by running a job site, but by working a job. Why? Probably because running a job site isn't interesting, and isn't a particularly good way to make a profit. And if you think you're tired of answering, i'm definitely tired of reading. I read the entire thread before replying, and ended more confused as to what you're upset about than before i started. I'll assume that English is not your first language and give you the benefit of the doubt, but if you have presented a concrete line of reasoning (instead of vague allegations that "it might hurt someone at somepoint, somehow" or "it's unethical") here somewhere then please link to it.
Citizen 20.1.01
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
I think (hope) English is not your native language either ;).
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I think (hope) English is not your native language either ;).
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bigdenny200 wrote:
According to my insights, I had considered 250 relatively a high charge for a job vacancy.
Glad i was able to debunk that notion then.
bigdenny200 wrote:
But, just imagine Linus, speculating with the freeware developers of Linux, by creating job-sites (in the worst case, embedded into linux web-sites) targeted to such audience using his 'channels', and starting to make money out of the employers.
Wait, you don't think Linus works? You don't think he manages to make money off of his reputation? :~ I got news for you, brother: he does. Not by running a job site, but by working a job. Why? Probably because running a job site isn't interesting, and isn't a particularly good way to make a profit. And if you think you're tired of answering, i'm definitely tired of reading. I read the entire thread before replying, and ended more confused as to what you're upset about than before i started. I'll assume that English is not your first language and give you the benefit of the doubt, but if you have presented a concrete line of reasoning (instead of vague allegations that "it might hurt someone at somepoint, somehow" or "it's unethical") here somewhere then please link to it.
Citizen 20.1.01
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
Sorry now finally, I got what you meant. "a concrete line of reasoning". 1. More or less concrete answer was my answer to C.Kaiser (after led mikes post). 2. Answer to Chris Maunder. 3. Btw. "ethics" is a very concrete notion I think. And I don't think It is vague, to ask whether something is ethical or not, especually, by more or less argumenting why I consider it unethical.
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CP is a free web-site hosting several thousands of articles, for "helping" programming community -- that is its sole purpose. By embedding a "paid massive" job web-site inside it, its purpose is being changed. Changing the purpose of CP might affect the enthusiasm of people who make controbutions to it. My only question was to raise discussions on how ethical it is to do what CP did. I think most of the CPians took it personally.
bigdenny200 wrote:
Changing the purpose of CP might affect the enthusiasm of people who make controbutions to it.
Here's where your reasoning falls apart (or ends): you don't present a theory as to why or how a job board might have such an effect on contributors. You note that it is a change to CP, but CP changes all the time - there has to be something specific about the change that would dampen our enthusiasm. I must believe that you have a scenario in mind when you write this: so what is it?
Citizen 20.1.01
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
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bigdenny200 wrote:
Changing the purpose of CP might affect the enthusiasm of people who make controbutions to it.
Here's where your reasoning falls apart (or ends): you don't present a theory as to why or how a job board might have such an effect on contributors. You note that it is a change to CP, but CP changes all the time - there has to be something specific about the change that would dampen our enthusiasm. I must believe that you have a scenario in mind when you write this: so what is it?
Citizen 20.1.01
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
"but CP changes all the time". No it never does, at least its purpose never changes. The specificity of this change however, is that it has a high chance to change the purpose of CP. And in the worst case, the job web-site might take of so much that CP ends up as an employment agency :). Anyway, I think my English is good enough for a non English speaker, and I am again too tired to answer more questions. So, I am going to sleep :). Hope I was clear, else, you can consider anything about my reasonings in whatsoever manner. I tried to be clear enough, and my goal was not to criticize and say something bad about CP, rather to just figure out how 'right' -- towards developers -- and how 'good' -- towards themselves -- was it (in the long term) for them to do what they did. good night :)
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Why are you not happy when CP got money? I'm absolutely fine if Chris become a richest man in the world :)
Thanks and Regards, Michael Sync ( Blog: http://michaelsync.net)
Michael Sync wrote:
I'm absolutely fine if Chris become a richest man in the world
I think he would be miserable. So miserable, I would be willing to take my part in sharing that misery.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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I think (hope) English is not your native language either ;).
Wow. Just a single '1' score, after so many sensitive discussions :). Funny is that, I was not even sarcastic in my reply, I really found Shog's reply confusing, so just wanted to make a joke on that particular message :).
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bigdenny200 wrote:
does not mean that you are a bigger fan of CP than I am
Chris, We need one more metric. FAN-O-METER ;P
Yusuf
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Chris-Kaiser wrote:
Please give a concrete example of how the job board could hurt this community.
Ok. You carve some listings into a concrete block and drop it on a community member. ;P
led mike
No, we've got some checks in place that will stop that. (At least we had them in the specs. Maybe that bit is still in beta...)
cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
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"but CP changes all the time". No it never does, at least its purpose never changes. The specificity of this change however, is that it has a high chance to change the purpose of CP. And in the worst case, the job web-site might take of so much that CP ends up as an employment agency :). Anyway, I think my English is good enough for a non English speaker, and I am again too tired to answer more questions. So, I am going to sleep :). Hope I was clear, else, you can consider anything about my reasonings in whatsoever manner. I tried to be clear enough, and my goal was not to criticize and say something bad about CP, rather to just figure out how 'right' -- towards developers -- and how 'good' -- towards themselves -- was it (in the long term) for them to do what they did. good night :)
I appreciate your comments and concerns. I guess all I can say is: I've put the last 10 years of my life into this. I'm not going to break it. All I want to do is make CodeProject better.
cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
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"but CP changes all the time". No it never does, at least its purpose never changes. The specificity of this change however, is that it has a high chance to change the purpose of CP. And in the worst case, the job web-site might take of so much that CP ends up as an employment agency :). Anyway, I think my English is good enough for a non English speaker, and I am again too tired to answer more questions. So, I am going to sleep :). Hope I was clear, else, you can consider anything about my reasonings in whatsoever manner. I tried to be clear enough, and my goal was not to criticize and say something bad about CP, rather to just figure out how 'right' -- towards developers -- and how 'good' -- towards themselves -- was it (in the long term) for them to do what they did. good night :)
bigdenny200 wrote:
No it never does, at least its purpose never changes.
That really depends a lot on what you consider its purpose to be. :sigh: I'm really not trying to put you down or argue. Rather, i'm curious as to how you see this potentially harming the site and/or those who frequent it. Criticizing a change because you have identified a potential and plausible danger posed by it is laudable; criticizing a change because you fear change is questionable at best. I merely wish to understand which of these categories you fall into in this thread.
Citizen 20.1.01
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'