"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!

> That really sounds like a dick thing to say.

Yeah, it sounds like your current employer doesn't appreciate you.

> 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 really love this part of your comment.

OP: Congratulations, I only know a few people with gold badges and they're all pretty far in their field.

It's ok, he speaks in hyperbole sometimes, I do feel appreciated, and I feel like he appreciates my extracurriculars.

But I think we've demonstrated I can probably at least get free coffee with it, at this point. :) Cheers!

> People who are saying, "It shows you have a lot of free time" are nuts.

Just a boss clearly incentivized to keep down his underlings. I think it's unreasonable to expect anything else from people with that sort of incentives.

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.

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 think this is an approach that will serve you well in leveraging the SO ranking--cedsav mentions at least three skills that it demonstrates, and you should be able to expand on those (knowledgeable enough about Python to be able to understand a problem presented and identify a solution; efficiently communicating solutions to others, for example). Answer the question, "a gold badge, why should I care about that?" until you feel like you've got those skills you really want to highlight listed and honed in a way that you feel comfortable presenting them.

I know this is somewhat standard communications/marketing advice, but I think given your question it will serve you well, as it routes around the dismissiveness of the "it's just a gold badge" to make sure that they understand what it signifies.

Based on the responses to this thread, there are clearly people out there who value that signifier; some good communication will increase that number for you.

>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.

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.

OP you should probably message this guy

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.

"No One Cares How Hard You Worked"

I'm glad you think your manager is a good guy and that you like him. I might like him too. My first reaction to your question was, "The gold badge might be worth the paper it's printed on" -- not too far from your manager's coffee comment.

But that little exchange between you and your manager betrayed a lot. I suspect your manager is thinking about what results you deliver, but you're thinking more about the effort you've put in. The problem is that nobody cares how much effort you put in. Mostly they're looking for results, and results are what drive economic value.

This is not to say that posting to StackOverflow is worthless. It's not. (I'm a participant there too.) But its value is what you get out of that activity: what you've learned, the practice you get, and yes, the motivation you get for scoring points and getting badges. Isn't getting a gold badge an accomplishment? Not to anyone outside of SO. It's mainly evidence of time and effort you've put in, but it says little about how much you have or could accomplish if someone were to hire you.

Do a web search for the phrase "no one cares how hard you worked." You'll get some articles on this theme. One is [1]. Ok, this is about photography, but the point is relevant: someone likes a photograph or they don't. It doesn't matter that you put a lot of work into it, they still might not like it. Or [2]. See point #4, but also #3 and #7. Economic value comes from the results you deliver, not the effort you put in.

[1] http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photogra...

[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michaelprice/10-lies-we-tell-o...

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!

This. Getting well-known by other pythonistas is very valuable. How you get that recognition doesn't really matter. Stack overflow, a popular blog, contributions on the mailing list, working on a lot of open source projects, etc...

Personally, I don't think terribly highly of Stack Overflow's award system, since it can be relatively easy to game, but if you're really contributing value, then it's not the badge that matters, it's that value. And so, I would recommend against saying "gold badge in python on Stack Overflow" on your resume, but I would say "Very active contributor to python questions on Stack Overflow", and let the reader see the value you have put into the system beyond from the silly little badge next to your name.

In this life very few things are black and white. Getting a gold badge in Python is not as great as starting the next Facebook but it's definitely a clear sign that you know your stuff.

I think your badge is worth much more than $3, but it's very hard to value how much money it's worth. Think about it: how much money is worth getting a GPA 3.7 vs 3.3? How much money is worth meeting Zuckerberg and talking with him for 30 minutes?

Getting a gold badge in Python will not result in a rise on your salary alone. On the other hand having this badge proves that you know your stuff. It's clear how competitive StackOverflow is. If you ever decide to move to another company it will definitely be seen as a positive sign when they look at your CV. You may get an interview thanks to the badge.

So, to sum up, with this badge and some luck, you can work at a better company (and this means higher salary). On the other hand, don't expected a rise from your boss.

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.

It's true, answering all of those questions has greatly improved my skills in a demonstrable way, but it also signals that I have those skills, which means I probably won't be asked to demonstrate them in situations where others would. It could be used as a heuristic that at least gets me a free pass not to take the "can he code fizz-buzz" question. Then the question is, "can he architect a continuous integration system in a maintainable sort of way?"

If you're in the top 3% of Python users on SO, Fizzbuzz should take you no more than, so optimizing against that doesn't seem particularly useful.

And it feels to me like being able to cogently answer questions on StackOverflow isn't a skill that's necessarily correlated with architecting big systems. The value I'd imagine you have, out of this skillset, is being able to explain your code to other developers, give good code reviews, figure out new systems, etc.

If it were me, I'd mention it on my resume and give it some wording in the hopes that an interviewer will ask me questions along those lines and ask me to explain some code and I'll do a good job of it. But that would also be selecting for jobs where my work does involve a lot of working with other coders and doing code review, and not speak very much to my ability to do architecture and design review.

(Or maybe I have the wrong impression of what all this is about, and you should take me as an example of a naive interviewer and correct for that. :) )

> which means I probably won't be asked to demonstrate them in situations where others would.

I have yet to meet anyone who would take internet points as IRL credibility / experience (to my disappointment).

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 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 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.

Thanks, James, one of the reasons I set out to climb the ranks on SO was because I needed to build credibility, since I don't have a CS degree. I've been playing around with code since I was a kid coding elementary games in BASIC. I've been reading material on coding online for a long time too. But all that is not enough.

My MBA, personal programming experience, and constant exposure to tech at NYC meetups (like NYCPython and NYLUG) got my foot in the door, but I knew I needed to build reputation over time in a reputation based system. I now feel like I have not only my own work as a source of credibility, but also an independent source that gives me a requisite gravitas for my desired trajectory.

I know I'm not ready to be a Kirat Singh (or fill in your favorite giant system's architect's name), but I'd like to build up that kind of capability one day.

Ontopic: If I was checking you out for a position, the Python badge would definitely make an impact on me. It demonstrates that you really care about Python and think about it beyond just using it. Side note: if you're looking for a job (right now), I'm pretty much looking for you. Seriously.

Offtopic: "I want children, eventually, but I'm not ready yet. I'd also like another graduate degree, and I'd like even more experiences in finance"

I kind of think you just described not having children :) Which is fine, just decide now, because father age has a nontrivial impact on autism :(

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 :(

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 :).

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.

Can I be snarky and ask why you didn't ask this question on StackOverflow?

In all seriousness, some people will see it as a huge accomplishment. Some won't. If it were me, I'd put it on my resume. It seems like having a good reputation in an internet community like this should be a mark of credibility. Again, some won't see it that way, but some will, and you'll impress them.

I think you are discounting the "helped people" part. Your boss says what he says because he sees little value in your efforts. You answering questions on stackoverflow does not affect him. But it does affect the people you've have helped.

>And it probably has some economic value too, doesn't it?

Yes it does. It has economic value for the person whose job you probably saved. It has economic value for the person whom you probably helped get a job by explaining a difficult concept. There is economic value for the person whom you helped in shipping a feature for their customers. Your boss does not see from this prospective but the people you've helped do.

>That says I'm worth something, doesn't it?

Absolutely. I remember reading a quote, I think it was from Lewis Carroll. One of the secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others.

> $3 would buy me a cup of coffee

With diminishing returns. An answer on stackoverflow is more valuable than a cup of cofee simply because it provides far more value to far more people for a much longer 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.

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.

Ditto on the interview -- and if you really enjoy helping other engineers meet their goals you might want to consider a career in Developer Support. I've really enjoyed mine! Other variations on Developer Support include Professional Services, Field and Sales Engineering, Training, and Developer Evangelism, depending on who you like to hang out with more within your company (engineering, sales, docs, marketing) -- externally you're always talking with engineers.

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.

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.

Clearly congratulations on the achievement. Condolences, perhaps, on being caught in StackOverflow's gamification. Absolutely, thanks for helping so many people.

Internet points are only worth whatever someone decides they're worth...e.g. my HN points.

If your technical ability and enthusiasm seem under-appreciated, perhaps its time to look for another job. That [and monetization] is why StackOverflow Careers exists. Clearly you've advanced as a Python expert since you were hired, and what was suitable at an earlier stage in your career may not be as fulfilling now. Only you can say.

Good luck.

If you're super enthusiastic about python, why not start contributing to its development by fixing bugs, etc? It's also a long, slow process to get plugged into a big open source project but it's a nice thing to put on a resume that you've contributed to a large project like python. It will force you to code with high standards for commenting, documentation, testing, etc. and make you even more knowledgeable about python.

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.

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

Hey, I'm on the leaderboard! I guess that plus $x will get me a cup of coffee.

I'd really love to meet Martijn Pieters some day.

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!

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

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.

The problem with the karma of Stack Overflow is that the questions that are the most viewed, and thus are getting the most votes, tend to be very easy, like the ones you mention, or this one [0] about merging two dictionaries in Python. At the end of the spectrum, a very advanced python answer wouldn't get that much views so much, like this one [1] about extending python with C - I think the guy who answered put some efforts in it and has experience in writing C modules for python, which would make him a solid python programmer.

One way to disrupt Stackoverflow would be to have some way to access a question's difficulty and give karma points accordingly.

[0] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/38987/how-can-i-merge-two...

[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4238154/how-to-extend-pyt...

Stackoverflow was specifically built for the first type of questions: those that you have to google all the time, but which have a simple answer.

Before stackoverflow, the answers to such questions were buried in forum discussions. Worse, sometimes the top google result is a forum thread where the answer is "google it"!

Detailed/advanced questions don't really belong on Stackoverflow; it wasn't designed for them.

Having listened to almost all the StackOverflow -> StackExchange podcasts, the idea was to cover both obvious questions (that was more Spolsky [1]) and long-tail questions where Spolsky and Atwood were both in agreement.

Both were in agreement about the horror of forum threads. One of the direct targets however was ExpertSexChange's pseudo-pay wall. The big idea behind SO was reducing friction for finding answers to programming questions. Today, "What is REST?" would probably be killed because it is too broad for StackOverflow and better answered on WikiPedia.

[1]: See Spolsky's famous How do I move the turtle in Logo: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1003841/how-do-i-move-the...

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.

Answering questions is a very good way to test your own knowledge and learn a lot more about a subject. The sorts of questions people ask often fall outside your experience and expose you to things you've never thought to consider.

If this is the product of "someone with a lot of free time", then maybe we should abandon free open-source software in general. What a waste of time!

Sure, but I don't think "I post alot on forums" is necessarily the best gambit in an interview situation. Don't shoot the messenger.

It's not for bragging rights, but if someone is doing their "due dillies" and comes across your profile, that might speak to your credibility in particular domains.

I think I would wait for them to bring it up.

Well it certainly could do that. If it does, I can always chalk it up to sour grapes. But I think I have a good answer to that, if I encounter it in question form.

I also go to a lot of tech meetups and give tech talks. I'm ten-years married with no kids. I can spend my time how I choose. Only I have something to show for all of my evenings over people who only play games or read click-bait. I want children, eventually, but I'm not ready yet. I'd also like another graduate degree, and I'd like even more experiences in finance, as now I've only been a financial advisor and worked in risk data and architecture.

I had over 150 answers on tax and retirement planning on all-experts.com with strong ratings, and they've deleted that material because it's out of date, and now I just have a line on my old resume (it's not even in my current one). I like that much of my material will not be dated as quickly on Stackoverflow.

If he's using his time to benefit the python community, that's hardly a negative.

Depends on your boss. Some don't care even if you're saving the world. You're at work, act like it.

From the point of view of the python community you are right.

From the point of view of his manager, it depends, and it may count as a negative if his manager thinks working to maintain that 'top 3%' status might affect his focus on his job.

Actually, I conservatively estimate I'll be in the top 1% within a couple of years with no further contributions due to the passive reputation points I earn.

An employer could easily consider that a waste of time.

Sounds like a bad employer.

Or at least an irrelevant one. It's easy to find people who don't care, but aaronchall is looking for someone who appreciates those contributions.

>It may even be a negative, as it paints you as someone with a lot of free time.

Then what does 'Contributes a lot to open source' say or 'Knows several programming languages'? Because people often like those and yet it requires as much free time as answering SO questions.

> paints you as someone with a lot of free time

I hate that this is considered a negative.

Why would that even be a negative?

It's very easy to be 'busy all the time'.

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