This time of year is always a special one. It is a time to celebrate with family and friends as another year passes by, reflecting on both positive memories as well as making resolutions for areas of improvement in the year ahead.
Here at Stack Overflow, it is no different, looking across the calendar year and seeing how much our team has accomplished and where we need to double down on efforts in the months ahead. In the spring, the world was (and still is) dealing with a variety of macroeconomic pressures—but we were determined to stay focused on our vision of what “Community + AI” could mean for the larger developer space. The launch of our annual Developer Survey only solidified that vision as more than 90,000 developers confirmed for us that there is no shortage of how you can leverage AI, however, there is one core deterrent in its adoption—trust in the accuracy of AI-generated content. 77% of developers are favorable of AI tools, but only 42% trust the accuracy of those tools. To address this, Stack Overflow’s been determined to develop AI offerings that are highly trusted and attributed in the knowledge base of 58 million asked and answered questions on the platform and proprietary knowledge within Stack Overflow for Teams.
Stack Overflow’s vision for community and AI coming together is the inevitable next phase of growth in GenAI’s trajectory. Stack Overflow continues to be the go-to site for accurate, technical data that the future of GenAI will rely on. From the keynote stage of WeAreDevelopers World Congress in Berlin, we showcased early previews of six new capabilities and features of our OverflowAI offerings. Powering solutions from within both the Stack Overflow public platform and our market-leading SaaS product, Stack Overflow for Teams, these AI/ML solutions offer users new capabilities that will ensure they get to solutions faster within their workflow.
We also acknowledged a huge milestone as the company celebrated 15 years of Stack Overflow. With more than 58 million questions and answers across our site, we’re proud to have democratized access to so much incredible information and grateful to the community that continues to help us build this incredible knowledge base and help us in solidifying the tools and features that will define the future of the technology landscape.
In terms of self reflection, this year we did scale back our go-to-market team to focus on our core products and engineering efforts. This effort is not only part of our path to profitability, but a reinforcement of Stack Overflow commitment to the long-term success of our customers and to our public platform community. As part of the effort to cement the success of our product team, we’ve recently added Ryan Polk to our executive leadership team as Chief Product Officer responsible for evolving Stack Overflow’s product suite in order to drive growth across the Stack Overflow public platform and Stack Overflow for Teams in an AI era. Ryan brings nearly 30 years of executive leadership experience from brands like VMWare/Carbon Black, CA Technologies, Rally Software, among others.
The road we take together over the coming months will help us prioritize the continued growth of Stack Overflow for Teams accelerated by our GenAI offering—OverflowAI—the addition of valuable new experiences on our Stack Overflow public platform through OverflowAI, and the expansion of our strategic partnerships. The technology sector is constantly evolving with new topics, techniques, tools, and technologies are constantly introduced to the landscape. There is only one place technologists go for reliable feedback on what is real and what is hype: Stack Overflow. The Stack Overflow community provides real-time, accurate, and sourced responses. Without that, it is garbage in and garbage out for the AI era. Expect to hear more from us across each of these areas in the coming months.
OverflowAI continues to gain alpha momentum
As I discussed earlier, this summer season we launched OverflowAI, and in a single day tens of 1000’s of builders signed as much as study extra concerning the product. Updates introduced ranged from Enhanced Search to Enterprise Information Ingestion, to Slack Integrations, to a Visible Studio Code Extension (IDE).
Of those alpha rollouts, one which individuals are most enthusiastic about is the developments being made to search—each for Stack Overflow for Groups and the Public Platform. At present it’s a must to do the work of discovering and piecing collectively your options or get to the stage the place you recognize sufficient to know how you can ask the neighborhood for assist. Looking out and parsing by way of all of that info may be time consuming. We envision a brand new manner the place GenAI expertise reduces the time it takes you to articulate your query or drawback after which discover a related resolution
As we’re opening up the Alpha to 1000’s of recent customers each month, please understand that your suggestions throughout this time can nonetheless affect the ultimate product. In the end, we hope to assist our customers discover solutions to their questions in a faster and extra environment friendly manner and cut back plenty of the friction they’re presently experiencing.
Stack Overflow for Teams growing to meet customer demand
Our flagship product, Stack Overflow for Groups continues to be the go to useful resource for greater than 15K organizations around the globe. Though I’m all the time proud to see how our work impacts world clients like Nationwide Devices and Bloomberg or hear how the likes of Shell be a part of our podcast and focus on how they’re innovating the vitality sector, none of that’s attainable if our product doesn’t proceed to innovate and evolve to satisfy the rising wants of builders and technologists.
This yr, we’ve already added a number of new options, however most not too long ago we launched Connectivity, a brand new characteristic within the Stack Overflow for Groups Enterprise Dashboard that provides our clients visibility into how cross-functional collaboration is occurring inside their organizations. By taking a look at every person’s division and job title, we will measure whether or not the group is efficiently breaking down information silos. Connectivity gives each information visualization by way of an interactive chord diagram and reporting by way of desk and CSV obtain choices to let clients view their connection information in the way in which they want it.
We additionally invested closely in Stack Overflow for Groups to make sure stability, flexibility, and safety. The previous two years have been an thrilling time at Stack Overflow migrating Stack Overflow for Groups to Microsoft Azure. Along with all the advantages you’d think about with cloud infrastructure, a key energy is the power to take care of safety compliance frameworks similar to SOC2. Azure makes this rather a lot simpler: their information facilities preserve a number of compliance attestations and certifications, and their tooling helps preserve our assets compliant. Stack Overflow for Groups working with none dependencies on the on-premises datacenter makes it rather a lot simpler to spin up extra ephemeral environments the place we will check new options and infrastructure adjustments with out disrupting different builders.
Reach & Relevance showcasing our partners to millions of developers
Stack Overflow continues to be a go-to vacation spot with greater than 58 million questions and solutions. Thousands and thousands of the world’s most lively builders and technologists go to to ask questions, study, and share technical information, making it one of the crucial common web sites on the planet.
As a lot as we could share updates from efforts from OverflowAI or new options for Stack Overflow for Groups, we’d be remiss to not point out all of the efforts being made by this group. From the focused new advertisements web site highlighting the kinds of insights we will share, to our ongoing employer model analysis that not too long ago discovered that of 1,000 builders 79% are a minimum of contemplating new job alternatives (if not actively wanting). All these information factors may be universally useful to corporations of their missions to retain expertise and purchase new clients.
We additionally introduced plenty of new options and updates to Stack Overflow Collectives, together with the ‘All Dialogue’ web page for Collectives on Stack Overflows. This new web page teams collectively all Discussions going down on collectives. With Discussions, a model new area and format on Stack Overflow, builders now have new devoted area for unbiased, technical assets and responses from specialists. In August 2023, we launched Collections in all collectives. A set is a listing of content material from Stack Overflow (questions, solutions, and articles) gathered round a particular theme. Collections are designed to assist collective members simply uncover and collaboratively construct upon high-quality content material a few particular topic space.
Final, however actually not least—we additionally added a model new Collective targeted on cell for builders who wish to share their information and study extra about cell improvement practices and platforms. This concentrated apply joins a rising listing of curiosity areas ranging throughout AWS, Google Cloud, Twilio, CI/CD, NLP, and extra.
Thankful for this global community
As we end this fiscal yr and transfer into the following part of the corporate, a part wherein we are going to should be leaner, extra agile, and much more targeted on investing in our product within the evolving AI period—we do all of it for you, our customers. Earlier this yr we requested the query “Can Stack Overflow save the day?” The responses proceed to inspire us to create new options and evolve each our platform and Stack Overflow for Groups to make sure we proceed to be there for you once you want us. A small snapshot of a few of what you all shared:
- “One of many essential issues that Stack Overflow for Groups solves is the problem of data silos. With no centralized information base, vital info can get trapped within the heads of particular person group members, making it troublesome for others to entry that information when wanted. By offering a platform the place group members can share their experiences, Stack Overflow for Groups ensures that information is shared extra successfully throughout the group.”
- “There was a particular time I can keep in mind, our group was a skeleton crew that day due to some people being on PTO. Our Slack channels had been exploding with questions on a device we supported. We did not wish to ignore our inner clients however there wasn’t sufficient time to offer a strong clarification for each query that day, so, we used Stack Overflow for Groups by tagging low precedence questions that will require a extra in depth clarification with the Slack command to request that the person creates a brand new query. This allowed us to concentrate on the extra time delicate points and let our inner clients know we had been on prime of their query and we might present a extra in depth clarification shortly but additionally permitting them to know they had been heard.”
- “I used to be engaged on a posh information evaluation venture with a decent deadline and was caught on a troublesome SQL question. After hours of frustration, I turned to Stack Overflow and was amazed on the stage of assist and experience the neighborhood supplied. They not solely solved my drawback but additionally taught me a number of new SQL methods that saved me time and impressed my boss. Stack Overflow has since change into my go-to useful resource for any coding drawback that stumps me.”
- “I coded mainframes (suppose assembler, COBOL) for 15 years‚ I left the business burnt out and determined to show for 10 years. After sufficient of that, I made a decision to return to the business. Nonetheless, the business had modified. I obtained a job coding PHP, JavaScript, CSS, and so forth. – all issues that weren’t actually across the final time I coded. Whereas I understood the ideas, with out Stack Overflow open ALL DAY to show me ALL NEW SYNTAX, I would not have been capable of make the transition so efficiently. So efficiently, it gave me the abilities and confidence to get an excellent higher job (in an entire new language, C#) the place I proceed to make use of Stack Overflow on daily basis to increase and improve my information!”
With the tech panorama altering quickly and virtually every day, we could not all the time have the ability to predict what the long run holds for the Web, however we do know that the Stack Overflow neighborhood can be on the forefront of its innovation and evolution. Thanks for all of your contributions and we hope that you will see the updates we share over the approaching months as thrilling as we do.
