Please don’t make Careers developers‑only in practice!

Question

Careers will soon be merged into Stack Overflow.

Only two sites are concerned by this change, because there’s currently only two kind of jobs on Careers: developers and system administrators.

Situation:

Because careers.stackoverflow.com isn't careers.stackexchange.com (and uses some of the Stack Overflow design) most jobs advertised on Careers (which will become Stack Overflow) target developers.

Of course this issue predates the current change but it will enhance targeting for developers at the expense of sysadmins, thus making things far worse because there would be no longer separate site with a separate design and separate accounts (so targeting fewer people).
Going to Stack Overflow for finding non developers Jobs would be like the situation of this famous sketch.

Result of the change:

I understand you will keep encouraging posting sysadmin jobs on Stack Overflow instead of Careers. But such change will definitely put a strong STOP to the idea of advertising non developers jobs for employers.

This also means Server Fault users would need to create a Stack Overflow account even if they do nothing related to questions/answers on Stack Overflow. Those who have a Careers profile, but not a Stack Overflow account will also probably get a Stack Overflow account.

So please don’t move what remains of this feature !

Update:

The real integration path you’re describing would have been to create new jobs sites first (at least for Server Fault) and only move Careers to Stack Overflow after.

Answer 1

Don't read too much into the current changes. Right now, careers.serverfault.com simply redirects to careers.stackoverflow.com - and yet, we both encourage employers to post their sysadmin jobs and advertise the service on Server Fault.

The project currently underway simply moves that site from a separate domain with separate profiles and additional login requirements to one that is more fully integrated with the normal Q&A site. That should actually make it a little bit easier for people on other Q&A sites to log in and create CVs as well. So this doesn't actually make anything worse for the good folk on Server Fault.

That said, it could be a lot better for them than it currently is. As you note, targeting is... not awesome. The pickings are pretty slim, which doesn't help - getting more employers aware that this service exists would go a long way toward fixing both problems.

FWIW, I don't know what the long-term plans are for other sites, but I certainly hope we wouldn't deny jobs for professionals who are active on Stack Exchange just for the sake of a different URL scheme; this is all about serving MORE people, not fewer! Once upon a time, the dream was that every site would have an associated section for jobs, a place where everyone from chefs to physicists could turn their knowledge into a live portfolio... We're still a long, long way away from that, but I'd like to believe that better integration with Stack Overflow is the first step along that road.

Answer 2

Most of this is a cross-post of my answer from the MSO thread, since I'm not sure if the OP read the MSO post...spoiler alert, though: it's not much different from what Shog said.

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The job board will continue to have both programming and sys admin jobs. What's changing is that the job-seeker experience of the job board will not live on a separate site requiring an entirely different account; it will live on Stack Overflow instead. (Employers will continue to use careers.stackoverflow.com to post job listings, manage applications, send messages, etc.) We've recently done a lot of work to simplify and streamline creating and logging into multiple Stack Exchange sites. While this may not be ideal for Server Fault users who don't use Stack Overflow today, it should be a great deal less painful to use a Stack Overflow account for jobs-related activities than it has been to create and maintain your CV on a totally separate Careers account.

There has never been a dedicated job board for sys admins; careers.serverfault.com simply redirects to careers.stackoverflow.com. We're not introducing a sys-admin-only job board, but we're not taking anything away that currently exists, either.

We can definitely do more to make the experience better for Server Fault users, but right now, we don't have plans to add a Jobs tab to sites other than Stack Overflow. There's still a lot of work to be done behind the scenes to complete this integration, and it makes sense to iron it all out on one site first. I can't say that we'll definitely add a Jobs tab to other sites at any point, but I can tell you that we're definitely not getting rid of sys admin jobs as part of our job board offering. Moving the job board to Stack Overflow should only change things for the better: closer integration between Q&A and job-related activities will benefit job seekers by making it easier for Q&A users to log in and create CVs, and the extra exposure from living on Stack Overflow should help even more employers know that we can help them hire technical staff, including sys admins.

We aren't changing the way targeting works, either. If an employer tells us their job listing is for a sys admin, it gets advertised on Server Fault. If they don't, we assume it's a developer job and advertise it on Stack Overflow. That's the way it's always worked, and that's the way it will continue to operate. Sys admin jobs are a small part of the jobs that are on our job board, and yes, that sucks. However, I don't expect sys admin jobs to ever be at parity with developer jobs; they just aren't as numerous.

In summary...

Sys admin jobs are still entirely appropriate and encouraged on our job board, and we will continue to advertise sys admin jobs on Server Fault.

The only thing that's changing is that the job board will live on Stack Overflow rather than an entirely separate site.