Can we get an official statement regarding career advice questions?

Question

I'm looking at the following question:

Am I a dinosaur programmer?

It has 4 close votes (at the time of writing), and I've been waffling over whether or not to put in a 5th.

By convention, at least, closing is essentially flagging for deletion, and I think this is an important consideration with respect to the proliferation of deletion-related questions/issues that have popped up on Meta just recently (here, here, here, here... you get the idea).

Career advice questions are the epitome of subjective, bike-shed type questions. Anybody can answer, and any answer is correct for somebody. As opposed to a typical subjective or open-ended question, which may still be objectively answerable or at least have answers that can be evaluated objectively (any "list" question fits the bill here), there is virtually never any truly objective criteria on which to answer a career advice question or evaluate an answer.

These questions always pick up extreme numbers of answers and upvotes. In addition to the question up top, I refer you to the following, some of which are very recent:

• I’m graduating with a Computer Science degree but I don’t feel like I know how to program.
• Senior programming ‘guru’ who can’t program - should I find a different career?
• Is 4-5 years the “Midlife Crisis” for a programming career?

These aren't only the highest-voted questions under the career-development tag (currently at 922 questions and counting); they're some of the highest-voted and most-answered questions on the entire site. Suffice it to say that career advice questions get pretty favourable treatment, even though they are ipso facto extended-discussion questions.

I'm holding off on my close vote for now. I'm not going to touch any more career advice questions until there's an official answer. So I put it to the moderators, and Jeff, and the rest of the Stack Overflow team:

Are Career Advice/Career Development questions welcome on Stack Overflow?

If they are, then what should the guidelines be for posting them? Without guidelines, it becomes a lottery, as it's been framed before; people just fire away without thinking and hope they get lucky (their question remains open / gets upvotes). Surely we can do better than this.

And if they aren't considered to be in-keeping with the overall theme of Stack Overflow, then what should be done about them? They are so popular, and there is such a huge precedent, that it is basically a losing battle for a closer/deleter to explain why they should remain closed/deleted. And perhaps this is status-bydesign - that's why I'm bringing it up.

Given all of the accusations and general mistrust recently directed at closers/deleters, I think we deserve an official response to one of the most egregious examples of subjective vote/answer swarming. Do these questions belong, or not?

Of course I welcome everyone's input, so feel free to respond with your thoughts; although I am especially interested in what the brass have to say. At the end of the day, this really ought to be a simple yes-or-no policy, like code golf on SO (yes, with specific guidelines) or 3rd-party web sites on Super User (no). So please - let's decide, once and for all.

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Addendum:

I'm aware of the incredibly brief mention given to this issue on the SO blog. I don't think that really answers the question, and certainly doesn't set out any guidelines. In addition, I think that career building is actually a very specific incarnation of the more generic career advice. For example, questions about how to deal with a clueless manager aren't really related to career building.

Let's think of this specifically in the context of close reasons. Which reasons would apply to which career advice questions, and when/why? So far I only have:

• Off-Topic - applies if the question could be reasonably answered by somebody totally unfamiliar with the software development field (a counselor). Alternative view: applies if the question would still make sense if all software-specific reference were to be stripped away.

That's fine for OT; what about NARQ, S&A, Dupe, and TL? Can they ever apply to career questions? Where is the bar?

Answer 1

I'm going to say there are career questions that deserve to remain open, and the "dinosaur programmer" one is one of them. The question is related to programming, in that the tools and knowledge discussed is specific to the programming world.

Other questions that have no programming specific focus at all ("my boss is a dick", "my co-worker won't take my advice", "colleague senior to me is incompetent and I have to carry the water") do belong closed IMO.

My suggestion for a guideline on career related questions would be "could a career advisor answer it?" if the answer is yes, close it. If it's no, leave it open or at least be very lenient in your judgement.

Just my 2 cents.

Answer 2

Close, close and close again. I simply cannot see how questions about careers are about writing code, which is what I take to be the activity of programming, the focus of StackOverflow.

I'm also a bit worried that you care about what "the brass" have to say. The value of this site is the moderation by the users. From your posts here, I thought that we agreed on that.

Answer 3

I think that career advice type questions are artificially 'popular' simply because there is a lower barrier to entry to posting an answer to that kind of question. If you are asking a programming question on say, C#, there can be several reasonable answers - but you would have to be confident of your stuff because even a slight edge of doubt in an answer can cause downvotes (e.g. I seem to remember that ...). So there is a lot less of the kind of random guesses at the right answer that blight certain forums and a lot more high quality, quickly researched, answers.

On the other hand if you are on SO you are likely to have some kind of career or at least know someone who does - so you can make reasonable stabs at careers advice without any real expertise (e.g. Don't threaten the interviewer with physical violence BEFORE he offers you the job).

In essence if the tech questions are the 'A' Level in Pure and Applied Maths that I'm sure we all passed; the career development questions are 'A' Levels in Media Studies or possibly even General Studies. People go for Media Studies etc because they are an easy way to get reputation/qualifications - not always for a deep seated desire to be the next Melvin Bragg.

Should SO mix such questions?

No.

Answer 4

It doesn't matter what you do, or what the "official" statement is.

As you note, these questions are very popular - almost everyone reading has a career, many face the same problems as the OP, and so there's an immediate interest.

It's the sort of question that comes up frequently on message boards, and generally collects the same sort of answers (make a portfolio / stick with what you know / join a class/user group/cult). Of course, the top-voted/accepted answer applies equally well to the many "I just graduated, how can I prove I know stuff" questions which are also rather popular and for the same reasons.

Vote to close if you think it should be closed. I did. It's clearly off-topic. But it doesn't matter.

That question had 7 answers before it was closed the first time around. Both the question and its answers have plenty of up-votes. If it gets closed, it'll probably be re-opened. If it doesn't get re-opened, it probably won't get deleted. And if it does get deleted, it'll likely be re-opened and locked, because regardless of what the "official" position is, popular questions get special treatment.

So it doesn't matter. If you feel you need to vote to fulfill some personal obligation to the site, then go ahead... but don't expect it to make one bit of difference.