Those questions, anybody having spent time answering thousands of questions had to think about it. When you realize an SO account isn't really worth much for your brand, you may realize other benefits of your participation: the rare pleasure of really helping somebody (sometimes, not when answering trivial questions), the enjoyment you get from a very fun game (if you're into it) and the knowledge you build for yourself (I forced myself to watch some tags just because they were about technologies I didn't knew and that I wanted to learn). IMO you have to stop when it becomes boring. I stopped participating for 3 or 4 years before I learnt Rust and felt the need to see what other people were asking about the language and the approaches other people had to solve problems.

> The last thing I want to do is exploit Stack Overflow users for corporate gain, even accidentally. That's horrible.

Not horrible enough to stand in the way of $1.8 Bn, though.

Do you feel there was a certain threshold you passed which made recruiters see your profile and start contacting you? E.g you passed 10k score or won some gold badge in some framework?