Ask HN: I just got my Stackoverflow Python gold badge - is it worth anything?

The most important thing you've gained is not recognition of those skills but the skills themselves. Use those to show whomever you need what you are capable of.

I'm afraid your boss was right. It may even be a negative, as it paints you as someone with a lot of free time.

I guess it is only worth anything on stackoverflow and it might be of value on a future job hunt if and only if you take care to present it as "true work outside of your work time". Otherwise you risk, as gaius says, being considered a procrastinator and someone who spends too much work time on his hobbies.

Sorry. It is something to be proud of but to be handled with care also.

In the context of gamification you have a high score in the video game of stackoverflow. In the context of tool usage, you are good at using python. What you build with that tool is what will give you status. Don't spend too much time using the tool to beat the video game.

I came here to say "that and $5 at starbucks would buy you a cup of coffee"... but I see your boss already mentioned that.

I will say this: Congratulations! You appear to have set a goal and attained it! This is a good thing for you, and you should be proud of it.

You also appear to looking for some validation for your efforts. Here, I think you're going to be disappointed. But you don't need external validation for this to have meaning. Enjoy what you've accomplished!

It's possible that you're underestimating the benefits of the "getting your foot in the door" effect. You should be relatively well-known among SO pythonistas, and anyone else in the python community is likely to be impressed enough by your advocacy to get coffee with you. Use that to expand your network!

It's great to have but reality is very few people will care.

If you did this just to get preferential treatment on interviews and such I'm afraid you were wasting your time.

However your efforts in helping the community of developers is certainly worth a mention on your CV just don't expect anything for it.

Stack Overflow is a great training tool. If you find a question you can't answer, figure it out and post the answer.

A Gold badge is a sign you've been active in a community, but the real challenge is to end up on the leaderboard: http://stackoverflow.com/tags/python/topusers

If you mentioned this in a job interview with me, I would be impressed and want to talk about questions you'd answered, questions you'd asked, etc. It's a minor asset, but major achievement.

There's a variety of things related to programming which have little, to no, obvious economic value. You might find that your achievement (very well done!) economically impacts you "in-kind". Its doubtful that an employer or prospective client will look at your Stackoverflow profile and pay you more. However, your glowing referrals from your peers to both might allow you to position yourself as more highly sought after than you _actually_ are.

TLDR; Do good things and good things will come to you. Keep being awesome :).

I don't agree about the comments saying it doesn't mean anything. We are currently looking for talented people and after Github I can't imagine any better validator than Stack Overflow. We can only dream of finding someone like you. Trust me, if someone walked in saying he or she had a gold badge on Stack Overflow it would almost be an instant hire.

I don't know that I would compensate more for that achievement, but it would certainly stand out in an interview. The fact you gained that badge tells me you not only have the knowledge, but you also enjoy helping other people learn. That skill is much more valuable to me as an employer. A person like that can elevate a whole team.

Your contributions on StackOverflow demonstrate that you're passionate about your subject, articulate, and willing to help other. The gold badge reinforces that.

You're asking if it's worth something, I think it definitely is, but it's up to you to leverage it. Bring it up in your next job or salary negotiation, or when looking for freelance gigs.

Perhaps the most important thing for you though is to figure out what's next. If you enjoy educating and helping others, there are a lot more you can do: start a blog, write a book, teach a class, etc...

I received a CV request from a recruiter that specifically stated that my SO score was one of their metrics.

I have done quite a bit of recruiting and interviewing for Python in the past, and I'd say that if I saw it on your CV, I'd automatically invite you in for an interview.

If you fluffed the interview on Python stuff, I'd give you the benefit of the doubt and give you another go.

And if you happened to have answered one of my questions for me, I'd have a whole lot of good will towards you.

I think you'll probably end up with a lot of very small karmic rewards, rather than any one big one.

It will probably help you get your foot at the door and that's just about it. Provided you have a "careers" profile. I've been contacted by companies through that.

Other than that, no. For example if I were your interviewer I would rip your answers apart and ask you "why did you choose that solution?", or "what if we change that condition on this problem?". So, if you thought that you are going to "skip" parts of the interview, I'd say nope! Au contraire my friend :D

Congrats on the badge though, I don't have a gold one :(

At best, this is a hyperlink on your resume or a source you can easily point to on your website for people to know you are 'legit'. However, considering the difficulty of this achievement and that your skills and outgoingness should be apparent, the achievement should be obvious to anyone looking somewhat closely. However, these kinds of credentials are great to introduce some speaker for an event and they add color to your life in a bio or other blurb thingy. Along those lines, when they introduce you in a court appearance, these are things that can maaaaaaaybe e used.

All that said, CONGRTATZ! great job! keep up the good work.

It matters. Stackoverflow runs a careers platform and ranks users based on their scores. It's opt-in but if you place yourself in there, you'll start getting some calls from recruiters looking for python people. A gold badge is worth a lot on the platform in terms of visibility to prospective employers (it's much more targeted than, say, a linkedin profile). It shows that you are passionate about your programming. Don't let anyone else tell you otherwise.

If you want to quantify it in monetary terms, it's hard to say but it could mean an extra $10-$25k salary per year (due to better negotiating power at the table...).

Source: I've used their careers platform to find some people who are passionate about what they do.

I have ~42k points on SO and I don't think it's worth much to be honest. It's only worth something if you don't have prior professional experience. For example, you're fresh out of college, and the only thing you can do to demonstrate your competence is to point to your blog, Stackoverflow profile, and some of the hobby projects you've posted on github.

If you have worked prior jobs then a Stackoverflow profile wouldn't be worth much.

How did I earn 42k points? I was very active on SO for about 4 months (during the early days, long before Serverfault was launched (which, for those who don't know, was only the second StackExchange site; heck, StackExchange didn't really exist back then)). I used it actively because I had tons of free time. I had just finished University and didn't have a job.

When I stopped being active, I had about 9k points. I was hoping to get to 10k but I gave up, or rather, stopped caring. All the rest of the ~31k points were earned passively; upvotes I've been getting on a daily basis for the past 5 years for all my previous questions and answers.

That's why I don't think a Stackoverflow profile is worth that much.

EDIT:

For example, I have 1430 votes on this question:

http://stackoverflow.com/q/671118/35364

Does that say anything about my skills/knowledge? The only thing it says is I was an early user of SO, so I got to ask that question before anyone else.

I also have tons of votes for this question:

http://stackoverflow.com/q/1261975/35364

Whose answer I just googled and have no idea why it works. Still, it's the most upvoted question/answer related to VirtualBox. Someone literally contacted me because of that. They assumed I was some sort of a virtualbox expert.

I'm the third person on this list of "all time top users on virtualbox": http://stackoverflow.com/tags/virtualbox/topusers

I can assure I know very little about virtualbox.

Stack Overflow can definitely be a part of a selection criteria, both for initially discovery and as a validation of skill - particularly linking to highest-ranked answers relevant to a potential employer's problem domain.

Careful though: if people start taking it seriously they may investigate how many of your answers were posted during normal working hours!

It matters WHERE you are applying to for future jobs.

If you pick a startup, a top 3% score maybe held against you. In that you don't get things done, you focus on "personal" projects above work plans.

Some corporate jobs just want the bragging rights that they have the best. That would be positive.

It would be great should you decide to freelance, and maybe helpful to get an interview, especially with a recruiters.

"that and $3 would buy [you] a cup of coffee."

That really sounds like a dick thing to say. Even if it were true (which I don't believe it is), It sucks to have someone who is in charge of writing your performance reviews say something like that about one of your accomplishments. What if you took a Coursera online course on Python and he said the same thing? What if you got a Python Programming Certificate from O'Reilly and he said, "Well, any monkey who pays for the training software could do that"?

The truth is, you will most certainly benefit financially if you put it on your resume and your LinkedIn profile. I think recruiters and tech-savvy employers would gobble that up. It definitely shows that you are extremely knowledgeable about the language and can answer almost any question without hesitation. It also shows that you are articulate and that you are the kind of person who would take the time to teach others and share your knowledge. These are very valuable traits that are extremely valuable in software companies.

People who are saying, "It shows you have a lot of free time" are nuts. Free time for what? Thinking about software? Who wouldn't love that from a potential job candidate? I guess it also shows that you have a lot of free time if you're going to tech conferences, take online courses, or go to night school.

Not all people will value your badge, but I'm pretty sure you could leverage it to find a new, higher-paying job with an open-minded boss who isn't going to discredit your accomplishments.

Congratulations on your badge!

The fact that you have to ask somebody if it's worth anything contains your answer.

I think it's beneficial as a personal achievement. You set a goal and worked hard to achieve it. (Kudos!)

As a professional achievement, I think it would have mostly neutral effect. There are a lot of good jobs (doing decent work) that just won't filter past basic proficiency and professional competence.

Additionally, I'd suspect that, for jobs where you'd do amazing work and where candidates would be filtered to a much higher standard, something like this could set expectations too high. Even if you have a corresponding degree of real expertise to match your StackOverflow rank, there's still very little upside in passing these high expectations.

Of course, you're probably more visible to recruiters now, whatever that's worth.

>I want children, eventually, but I'm not ready yet.

Totally off-topic, but there will possibly never be a time when you feel 'ready', or by the time you eventually feel ready it may well be too late.

10 years married if you married at 20 still leaves you with a few years of time. 10 years married if you married at 30 leaves you (and more specifically your wife) with far less time and a far higher likelihood of complications.

Anyway, I know nothing about your situation and I don't in any way mean to butt in on something that is a highly personal decision, but if you haven't done so already, it's very worth having a good think about what 'ready' actually means for both you and your wife.