Predictably Irrational and Stack Overflow Careers

After finishing "Without Fear" I have picked up Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational". The book is on behavioral economics and, broadly speaking, tries to determine what influences human decisions which, if looked objectively, sometimes seem irrational. I'm not even through chapter 2 and find it an interesting read.

Jeff Atwood, the author of Coding Horror and one of the programmers behind Stack Overflow, had written a blog post describing the gist of the book. It was that post that prompted me to buy it.

In the post, while summarizing the 1st chapter of the book, Jeff wrote:

Realize that some premium options exist as decoys -- that is, they are there only to make the less expensive options look more appealing, because they're easy to compare. Don't make binding decisions solely based on how easy it is to compare two side-by-side options from the same vendor.

While reading another of his newer posts, I came to know that the Stack Overflow bunch have started a new site -- Stack Overflow Careers. The idea is to let active Stack Overflow members, who are looking for a job, post their resume on Stack Overflow Careers. The catch here is that in Stack Overflow Careers, the job-seekers will actually have to pay to make their resume available to the hiring-managers! Their reason:

When hiring managers search through CVs, they want to know that they’re looking at active, serious job applicants. If it were free to post a CV, a lot of applicants that weren’t looking for jobs, or who knew that they had no reasonable chance of getting a job, would post them, making it harder for the employers to find serious applicants.

Of course the other and maybe the real reason is so that Stack Overflow Careers can make money. Also, I'm sure that the other side, which looks at the CVs, also gets charged. Win, win, win!

But wait, how much does it cost? Well here are their rates:

• If you’re a student, a 1 year membership is free
• Until November 9th, 2009, a 3 year membership is $29
• After November 10th, 2009, a 1 year membership is $99

See what they did there? The $99 option is a decoy (go and read Jeff's excerpt above), albeit a temporary one.

But I think the biggest trick which they are playing is making the service paid. That combined with their brand name is actually going to make people rush to it. Hell, I might try it out of curiosity!

To make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.

-- Mark Twain