Dev platform Stack Overflow axes 28% of staff as AI competition grows
Developer and programmer platform Stack Overflow is cutting the company’s headcount by approximately 28% amid a rise in the popularity of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots.
On Oct. 16, Stack Overflow CEO, Prashanth Chandrasekar, made the announcement citing the challenges of macroeconomic pressures impacting the entire tech industry.
The firm is on a “path to profitability” and “continued product innovation,” said Chandrasekar who added, “This year we took many steps to spend less.”
Stack Overflow is a 15-year-old tech-focused question-and-answer forum for millions of developers, coders, and enthusiasts. It doubled its headcount in 2022 to 540, according to reports, so this week’s layoffs account for around 150 employees.
In August, Stack Overflow noted that its web traffic has seen a small decline compared to 2022, falling by an average of 5%.
"Conversely, in April of this year, we saw an above-average traffic decrease (~14%), which we can likely attribute to developers trying GPT-4 after it was released in March," it added.
The firm also said it expected generative AI to cause "some rises and falls in traditional traffic and engagement over the coming months."
Meanwhile, technology outlets such as Ars Technica have attributed the rise of AI chatbots to declines in the traffic and usage of traditional social knowledge-sharing platforms such as forums.
“Chatbots can offer more specific help than a 5-year-old forum post ever could,” it stated on October 17. ChatGPT and the like can also correct code, provide optimization suggestions, and explain what each line of code is doing.
New York University Leonard N. Stern School of Business Professor Panos Ipeirotis also made a similar suggestion in an X post on Oct. 17.
However,
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