Title: OK, I know this probably amounts to a (not-so-)humblebrag, but I&#x27;ve been paying close attention to my stats on Stackoverflow, I&#x27;m in the top 3% overall in terms of rep. And this weekend, I finally achieved the Python gold badge (my area of focus). It was hard to get, took a long time, and I benefited from strong English skills and research skills as well as my Python and programming skills.<p>I mentioned it to my boss this morning, also a technical type, he told me that and $3 would buy me a cup of coffee. (He&#x27;s a good guy and I like him.) I nodded amiably, and as non-defensively as I could, said, &quot;Well, some select for it.&quot; But who really does? It may get my foot in the door in some situations, and it might be considered a feather in the cap for my organization, but it&#x27;s certainly not my key to the top tech job at a fortune 500. I have to earn that kind credibility in other ways.<p>But it&#x27;s something, right? It&#x27;s an achievement, and it signals that I have the ability to reach goals. That says I&#x27;m worth something, doesn&#x27;t it? And it probably has some economic value too, doesn&#x27;t it? How would I quantify that? That&#x27;s my main question.<p>I&#x27;m probably asking to be smacked down here, but that&#x27;s a risk I&#x27;m willing to take. I&#x27;ve seen a sort of anti-Stackoverflow current before, but you can&#x27;t deny that it helps people, and (I&#x27;ll hedge with &quot;virtually&quot;) all of us technical types use it at least as a supplement to documentation and reading the source, and I&#x27;ll brashly assert that many of us use it as a first resort thanks to Google. And if I&#x27;ve helped people, that makes me feel really good, so I do have a lot of respect for Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood, and I&#x27;ve wanted, for a while now, to make a meaningful contribution to a resource that has helped me so much. I&#x27;m now starting to feel like I really have. To me, the economic question is one way of measuring that contribution.<p>Evidence: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;stackoverflow.com&#x2F;help&#x2F;badges&#x2F;51&#x2F;python?userid=541136<p>Addendum, gaius said: &quot;I&#x27;m afraid your boss was right. It may even be a negative, as it paints you as someone with a lot of free time.&quot;<p>My response (from below): 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.<p>I also go to a lot of tech meetups and give tech talks. I&#x27;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&#x27;m not ready yet. I&#x27;d also like another graduate degree, and I&#x27;d like even more experiences in finance, as now I&#x27;ve only been a financial advisor and worked in risk data and architecture.<p>I had over 150 answers on tax and retirement planning on all-experts.com with strong ratings, and they&#x27;ve deleted that material because it&#x27;s out of date, and now I just have a line on my old resume (it&#x27;s not even in my current one). I like that much of my material will not be dated as quickly on Stackoverflow.
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