What should our predefined off-topic reasons be?

Question

There are some fairly major changes coming soon to how posts are closed, you may want to read up on the details:

• Closing changes: [on hold], unclear, too broad, opinion-based, off-topic reasons, bye-bye to Too Localized
• Responding to your “too localized” concerns

We will need to come up with our own list of custom off topic reasons for Programmers. These reasons will be available to close voters after they have picked the generic "off topic" one. Here's a screenshot of Meta Stack Overflow's close dialog, where the new system is already available:

The "other" option will allow a custom message, when none of the three custom reasons applies:

If you have an "off topic" reason you'd like to nominate, please post it as an answer. Some general guidelines:

• One reason per answer, so they can be voted separately.
• A brief comment explaining why the general category is off topic is mandatory. See the examples in the first screenshot for inspiration. If we have a good Meta discussion explaining in detail why the category doesn't work, please link to it in your comment.
• Examples to existing closed questions that would fit your custom reason would be immensely helpful.
• If there's already an answer with a reason similar to what you have in mind, but with a slightly different phrasing, please consider commenting on the existing answer and refining the phrasing instead of posting a new answer.

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The winners:

• "what language, technology, or project one should take up next"
• "career or education advice"
• "recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource"

Answer 1

Questions about what language, technology, or project one should take up next are off topic on Programmers, as they can only attract subjective opinions for answers. There are too many individual factors behind the question to create answers that will have lasting value. You may be able to get help on The Whiteboard, our chat room.

Answer 2

Questions seeking career or education advice are off topic on Programmers. They are only meaningful to the asker and do not generate lasting value for the broader programming community. Furthermore, in most cases, any answer is going to be a subjective opinion that may not take into account all the nuances of a (your) particular circumstance.

Answer 3

Pitting two large choices against each other doesn't fit the Q&A format well. This question is begging for debate as opposed to information, and the answers will not stand up over time as the choices change. Both options are likely good and bad, try to reformulate this question to as for a solution to your problem and you may get more beneficial responses. For further details why questions like this generate poor quality content read this blog post by StackExchange's co-founder.

Answer 4

I think you should consider adopting one of Stack Overflow's custom reasons:

Questions asking us to recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.

This is (sort of) covered under Too Broad, so I understand if you don't want to use up one of your three slots for this, but it's proven to be very useful on Stack Overflow to call that out specifically.

Answer 5

This question: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/202875/which-technologies-will-most-affect-financial-services-over-the-next-decade

just made me remember another good reason we constantly close stuff, folks asking for a technical crystal ball.

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This question is asking for pure speculation, of which no one can be provably correct, incorrect, or informative in any way at the present moment. This site has a focus on gathering authoritative content, unfortunately for this question no such content is currently possible.

Answer 6

This is an attempt to begin a discussion, however this is not a discussion forum. This site is for providing authoritative answers to specific questions. Feel free to join The Whiteboard chatroom if you wish to participate in discussion.

Answer 7

This site is for questions and answers regarding programming specific concepts and activities. Questions that aren't specific to programming or won't be relevant or useful to professional programmers are off topic.

Answer 8

Questions that are not unique to the programming profession are off-topic for Programmers. This question either applies to any profession (try Workplace) or requires expertise in another profession (such as law/business/marketing) for an expert answer.

Answer 9

I suggest that the existing close reason

Questions seeking career advice or help with office politics are off-topic here unless they're specific to the programming profession. If people in other professions face similar problems, ask about it on The Workplace Stack Exchange.

Should be changed to

Questions seeking career advice or help with office politics are off-topic here. For a question about office politics, ask about it on The Workplace Stack Exchange.

Points being

1. My understanding is that career advice and office politics are off-topic here, regardless of whether the career or politics are specific to software development or the programming profession.
2. Career advice is off-topic on The Workplace.