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Possible Duplicate:
Posse request: jobs/career/etc. tag cleanup

career: 29 questions
work: 5 questions
job: 15 questions
career-development: 8 questions
employment: 3 questions
hiring and work-environment are somewhat related, but I think may have a better case for independent existence. I propose the other tags be merged into career, the most populated one, with individual questions retagged as appropriate (for example, several of the work questions).

See also Tag consolidation and blacklist. I created this question so that this issue could be discussed/voted on separately.

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  • Well, not all work questions are to be merged into career. (programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2082/… is an example). – P Shved Sep 10 '10 at 8:11
  • This exact tag request was already being discussed on the thread you linked: let's continue the discussion there instead of duplicating the question. – user8 Sep 10 '10 at 8:11
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    @Mark, I think this particular issue deserves a separate discussion. – P Shved Sep 10 '10 at 8:13
  • Then create a separate answer in Tag Consolidation and Blacklist: that's what we were doing. There's no reason a new question needs to be created, especially since there's already a tag consolidation request for career/job/hiring/etc. there. – user8 Sep 10 '10 at 8:17
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    @Mark Trapp: Maybe, but comments don't allow for an extended discussion, the use of markdown, accepting a solution, marking it as status-completed... The meta people have been creating new topics for tag-related questions for a long time, I think we shouldn't change too much from that behavior. – Tamara Wijsman Sep 10 '10 at 9:42
  • Hmm, what about [profession]? Example question: programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2935/… – Tamara Wijsman Sep 12 '10 at 14:30
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Here's what I think about the tags you listed. IMHO they fall into several topics, not just one.

  1. The topic you probably meant is career development. It addresses such topics as:

    • How do I develop my career to make a better specialist?
    • What languages should I learn for that?
    • Should I turn that job and get master's education, or...?
    • Will certification make me a better developer?

    [career] seems a perfect tag for this kind of questions.

  2. Another topic, which mirrors the previous one, is being a good employer. It addresses:

    • How do I become an attractive employer?
    • Can Java developers make it in a C# project?
    • Are people with MS degree better programmers?
    • Will certificates help us if our company focuses on Microsoft tech stack?

    As these questions are essentially the same ones as those in pt.1 (essentially, they're dupes), so they fall into the same [career] tag.

  3. However, if the questions in the previous point are asked with accent on how to hire good developers, it deserves more of a [hiring] tag. At least I think that the tag should be different to [career]. Examples:

    • How would you describe your company in a job ad?
    • What traits of Java developers should be scrutinized if I'm interviewing them for a C# project?
    • Should I prefer developers with MS degree to those with BS only?
    • Should I consider only Certified Developers if our company uses only Microsoft technologies?

    Different, aren't they? Perhaps, the last two aren't defferent from their counterparts at pt. 2, but they all are very different from those in pt.1. So we definitely need another tag here ([hiring]).

  4. Some questions concern the way you work as programmer. They're sometimes tagged as [work]. Actually, among five questions tagged [work], and only one is about [career] actually. Most likely that one question is just a misunderstanding (for example, in Russian, only one word is used for both "work" and "job").

Summary:

  1. tags like [career], [career-development], [employment] are generally the same and should be merged into [career].
  2. The [hiring] tag deserves a separate treatment, as it's about "how to hire/interview" developers.
  3. The [work] tag presents a different concept, and, perhaps, is to be renamed, but not merged.
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  • +1 Really nice overview, favorited this question... I agree with this. – Tamara Wijsman Sep 10 '10 at 12:05
  • Splitting the employer/employee side makes sense to me. Will accept if no other ideas get posted. – Larry Wang Sep 10 '10 at 22:46
  • I like your answer, but [job] is usually not "career advancement" but "life in office", "quality of job" and so on – Wizard79 Sep 12 '10 at 11:38
  • @Lorenzo, well, I told that in Russian there's only one word, and I still haven't grasped the difference. Removed "job" from the list, just in case. – P Shved Sep 12 '10 at 12:32
  • work: работа, job: задание. But job could also be work and then it is indeed работа. The difference in both lies that work is derived from an uncountable verb and job is a countable noun: "At my work I have to complete multiple jobs." – Tamara Wijsman Sep 12 '10 at 13:33
  • @TomWij However, they say "go get a job", "my job makes me more disciplined", "job search website". An only use of "work" in this context I encountered is "office": "at work", "go to work" etc. It would be cool if a native speaker outlined the difference. – P Shved Sep 12 '10 at 14:10
  • @Pavel Shved: That's indeed "job" as задание, and what you mentioned "is work" as задание. But work could also be used in the работа way, like in "I have to do some work for school". I'm sure about the задание as being the business part, but I'm unsure if I see работа right but I mean the effort part of this two-sided coin... A native speaker that is good in his language would indeed be able to express this in a way more formal way. But I just wanted to tell you that job and work can both be used in those two contexts. Job is more used in a business context and work in a effort context... – Tamara Wijsman Sep 12 '10 at 14:23

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