The Pulse #134: Stack overflow is almost dead

The Pulse is a series covering insights, patterns, and trends within Big Tech and startups. Notice an interesting event or trend? Send me a message.

Today, we cover:

1. Stack overflow almost dead. Today, Stack overflow has almost as few questions asked per month, as when it launched back in 2009. A recap of its slow, then rapid, downfall.

2. Industry pulse. Google’s CEO doing customer support, coding model recommendations from Cursor, AI dev tools company valuations soar, OpenAI still a nonprofit – but with more clarity on stock, and will we get an answer to whether copyrighted materials can be used to train AI models?

3. Could big job cuts at Microsoft become more regular? 6,000 people (about 3% of staff) let go at Microsoft. Based on the company’s history, mass layoffs happen more than in the past. Satya Nadella is an empathetic leader, but also doesn’t shy away from axing jobs.

4. Google: high performers get more bonus, low performers get less. Not exactly a controversial change, but another example of the search giant becoming similar to other tech companies. Places like Uber have implemented this approach before.

5. Notes on rolling out Cursor and Claude Code. A 40-person dev team at Workforce.com with a Ruby on Rails codebase started to use AI tools and agents. Results so far are pretty good: productivity gains are real if modest, and there’s learnings on how to best use them from cofounder, Alex Ghiculescu.

1. Stack overflow almost dead

The volume of questions asked on Stack Overflow has nearly dried up, new data shows:

This graph was shared by Marc Gravell, a top 10 all-time contributor to Stack Overflow. Let’s look closer at the data:

A few things stand out:

• 2014: questions started to decline, which was also when Stack Overflow significantly improved moderator efficiency. From then, questions were closed faster, many more were closed, and “low quality” questions were removed more efficiently. This tallies with my memory of feeling that site moderators had gone on a power trip by closing legitimate questions. I stopped asking questions around this time because the site felt unwelcome.

• March 2020: a big jump in traffic due to pandemic-induced lockdowns and forced remote working. Instead of asking colleagues, devs Googled and visited Stack Overflow for help

• June 2020: questions start to decline, faster than before. Even though we did not know at the time, this was stilll two years from ChatGPT launching!

• June 2021: Stack Overflow sold for $1.8B to private equity investor, Prosus. In hindsight, the founders – Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky – sold with near-perfect timing, before terminal decline.

• November 2022: as soon as ChatGPT came out, the number of questions asked declined rapidly. ChatGPT is faster and it’s trained on StackOverflow data, so the quality of answers is similar. Plus, ChatGPT is polite and answers all questions, in contrast to StackOverflow moderators.

• May 2025: the number of monthly questions is as low as when Stack Overflow launched in 2009.

In January, I asked if LLMs are making Stack Overflow irrelevant. We now have an answer, and sadly, it’s a “yes.” The question seems to be when Stack Overflow will wind down operations, or the owner sells the site for comparative pennies, not if it will happen.

Even without LLMs, it’s possible StackOverflow would eventually fade into irrelevance, due to what feels like hostile, outdated moderation policies. LLMs have certainly accelerated its fall, though.

2. Industry Pulse...