Stack Overflow: What's in it for the programmer?

Roderic Page made a recent post to FriendFeed about the website Stack Overflow that set off the little hamster-powered mechanical wheels within my brain on a question I have had since I first encountered the site: Why would a programmer expend the time and energy to answer questions there? What's in it for the programmer?

Stack Overflow, to me, is the latest in my encounters with developer help forums, others including the the Cavern of COBOL on the Something Awful forums, the Python Tutor malining list, and particularly on comp.lang newsgroups on Usenet (where I've received some of the greatest answers to my questions). That's not to mention all the channels I haunt on Freenode. Up until Roderic's post, however, I hadn't really considered how little I thought of the economics behind answering someone else's programming question.

Stack Overflow offers one key feature the other help forums lack: reputation points—Slashdot karma for code monkeys. Before the days of Stack Overflow, you had to lurk for a while to figure out who the Steve Holdens and Alan Gaulds were, or to know you should be excited that the effbot answered one of your posts. You built credibility slowly by answering posts astutely and asking really interesting questions, yet, your credibility really only extended to others who made the time to be "in the know".

The Stack Overflow model brings instant recognition of credibility by someone new to the place. This provides tangible incentive to stick with the community. You still have to pay your dues to get your credit: ask smart questions, write good answers. Now, though, you get to carry those contributions with you as a scout carries her sash of merit badges. Now the newbie can see your sash of merit badges and compare them to everyone else's sashes, and make valuable decisions based on social status that would have previously only been possible after months of lurking, which can save a lot of time for those who only scan answers.

Ultimately, though, I ask the question, "Where's the beef?" If you're a programmer, shouldn't you be... well... programming? If you have your own work to get done, why help do someone else's, for no pay? Is the other person's problem more intellectually stimulating than your own? If so, shouldn't you quit your job and spend the time finding yourself a more challenging one?

If I was hiring a programmer, found a potential hire's profile on Stack Overflow, and discovered they accrued a lot of points, I'd have two minds about it. On the upside, this programmer knows what she's talking about enough to convince other programmers she knows what she's talking about; on the downside this programmer spent a tremendous amount of time doing work that's not her own. Now I don't hire programmers, and it's not clear I ever will, but as someone who would like to be hired for programming, I have these concerns on my mind.

It's worthwhile to compare Stack Overflow points to Launchpad or GitHub points. On Launchpad or GitHub, a programmer gains points by submitting patches, doing bugfixes, and making commits to projects. On the surface, I feel like these are two different point systems, where the Launchpad/GitHub points actually mean more, and would be seen as more productive. Under re-examination, though, I don't feel confident I can defend contributions on these social developments sites from the same critical questions I posed above on Stack Overflow and other programmer forums.

Supposing your job is to work on a piece of software tracked by Launchpad or GitHub, then all your points really indicate your productivity to a manager or potential employer. In the cases where your work is hobbyist in nature, then I think one could make the same argument for concern that I made for Stack Overflow.

I'll put out a few caveats to you lovely readers here: I consider myself nowhere near the paragon of the focused worker, and in fact, staying on task is one of my greatest shortcomings, and the one I spend the most time working on. (Exhibit A: this blog post.) Also, I acknowledge that there is a certain indescribable joy in doing the act of community service: providing aid to the cost of yourself for the benefit of the receiver. And sometimes, you just have an itch to scratch. I like people who do community service, and I was raised to think it's a Good Thing.

I will continue to think on programmer forums similar to economists who wonder about free open source software and contributions to Wikipedia. In the meantime, well, I'll probably pose this as a question to Stack Overflow.

Update: Just as an aside, the user with the highest reputation on Stack Overflow is also a bioinformatics grad student.