Improving the developer journey: Our partnership with Stack Overflow

Since our start in 2004, Pluralsight has taken me to some incredible places. I’ve had the opportunity to meet some of the smartest, most innovative technologists in the world. And over the years, many of those acquaintances have become valued advisors and trusted friends—one of those friends is Joel Spolsky, the CEO and co-founder of Stack Overflow.

Joel and I share a similar history. We both started our careers as developers roughly 20 years ago. Back in the day, we both wrote textbooks about programming. And as the pace of change in technology accelerated, we both recognized that static books weren’t cutting it—that the developer community needed learning solutions that could evolve as quickly as technology.

That’s why we built Stack Overflow and Pluralsight. And that’s why I’m excited to announce we're partnering to create a better way for developers and other technologists to share their expertise and experience. And it starts with Pluralsight IQ.

Developers who use both platforms will be able to share their Skill IQ (for a variety of skills, including JavaScript, C#, Python and dozens more) on their Stack Overflow Developer Story page. To get a Skill IQ, learners take a Pluralsight assessment and in five minutes or less, they have an accurate IQ and novice, proficient or expert rating. To share the Skill IQ back to their Developer Story, users simply select the Stack Overflow icon under “share” on the results page.

Skill IQ isn’t subjective—it proves proficiency in a way that simply listing a skill on a resume could never do. And now that developers can add Skill IQs to their Developer Story, they’ll have instant third-party skills verification that gives them more credibility and showcases their true knowledge.

Both Pluralsight and Stack Overflow have many of the same goals: Helping the tech community grow their skills, sharing knowledge and providing tools developers need to build more successful careers and create progress through technology.

Between the two platforms, developers have the most comprehensive data related to their learning journeys. Stack Overflow supports developers through focused Q&A, user activities, just-in-time learning and the Developer Story, which allows users to share their experience and credentials with peers and employers. At Pluralsight, we equip developers with relevant, expert content and tools through our technology learning platform—helping them with long-term learning, in-the-moment problem solving and accurate skill measurement.

You can see why this partnership is such an exciting step for developers. And I hope it’s only the beginning. Working with Stack Overflow, we can deliver even more value to the dev community. I’m looking forward to sharing more about what we build together in the future. This I know for sure—working with Joel and the Stack Overflow team is going to be amazing.

Learn more about adding your Pluralsight IQ to your Stack Overflow Developer Story here.
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