11

I understand that Careers is mainly targetted to the US market, or at least the majority of job offers are in the USA I guess, so displaying the job offer's distance in miles makes a lot sense. However given that Careers is also open to the rest of the world it makes more sense to actually use an internationally understood way to display these things.

As such I would like to request that the distance is being shown in kilometers, or at least suggest that a setting is added to change the way distances are displayed.

Improve this question
6
  • 3
    Furlongs are also needed.
    – Rosinante
    Commented Apr 21, 2011 at 21:21
  • 1
    The great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from!
    – Pollyanna
    Commented Apr 21, 2011 at 22:37
  • 2
    @Adam Davis: Doesn't change the fact that the rest of the world actually uses the metric system and understands kilometers more easily than miles ;)
    – poke
    Commented Apr 22, 2011 at 18:21
  • 1
    @Adam: The US system is not a standard!
    – Lorem Ipsum
    Commented Jun 5, 2011 at 18:47
  • @yoda We loved the metric system before it went all commercial.
    – Pollyanna
    Commented Jun 6, 2011 at 1:20
  • 4
    I’m voting to close this question because Stack Overflow has discontinued Stack Overflow Jobs and Developer Story on March 31, 2022.
    – Random Person
    Commented Apr 2, 2022 at 9:53

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
4

Good point, but as you say Careers is currently very US centric, so using kilometers alone wouldn't really fit, either.

I would suggest using both, in the form of

 20 miles (32 km)
Improve this answer
4
  • maybe instead of 20 miles (32 km) it could say 20 miles or 32 km to appease the masses.
    – Engineer2021
    Commented Apr 21, 2011 at 20:33
  • 2
    @Changeling that just seems like a wordier/confusing version of the suggested form
    – Daniel DiPaolo
    Commented Apr 21, 2011 at 20:37
  • I fear this way lies madness. Not only is it less readable, but it's also clearly Wrong — it should be 32 km (20 miles).
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Apr 22, 2011 at 18:37
  • 1
    @Gilles nah. Look at the distribution of jobs on careers, probably 90% of them are in the US. I'm comfortable with any format as long as the km are there
    – Pekka
    Commented Apr 22, 2011 at 18:39
3

It would be lighter on the UI to display a single distance, based on some localization information. Since the localization is available right there…

Show 20 miles if the location is in the US (and perhaps a few other countries — is Myanmar still using British units for distances?). Show 32 km in the rest of the world.

Improve this answer
4
  • 4
    I would have thought offering it as a user preference makes more sense. I hate it when websites "assume" my localisation preferences based on my IP. Britain uses both miles and km, and it's totally personal preference.
    – Dan Blows
    Commented Apr 21, 2011 at 22:06
  • @Blowski: There's no need to bring IP location (which I hate too), since the information to display is inherently localized. Agreed, some countries are in transition, but a preference is not something you'll get on SE (Jeff is very much against customizable UIs).
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Apr 21, 2011 at 22:10
  • In which case @Pekka's response below is a good balance. Or something like in the same "neighbourhood", "city", "state", "country" might be useful.
    – Dan Blows
    Commented Apr 21, 2011 at 22:23
  • @Blowski: It's hard to define such things though..
    – poke
    Commented Apr 22, 2011 at 18:23

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .