31–40 of 283 posts
Yes, it's a waste of time, I would leave and not return. I haven't made any money or started any companies or met any wives on this site, it's a total joke.
I know a friend who got a job offer from Square and Google after one of his blog posts (very deep, technical, explaining a new thing he discovered about the tracking of a famous app). He is not even very active on HN, just one hit post.
But, it seems to me that you are being very superficial about how you define tangible and not very open to get value from HN outside of a very direct path with obvious causality to power and money. So it will be a lottery with low chances of winning, thus I would advise you to get out of it. It will be a waste of time for you because of your way of seeing things.
Just my personal opinion, but if you’re looking for a place to advertise your startup, then I doubt HN is the right place. Personally I come to HN because it’s one of the few places you can have a discussion and read comments without having to dig through dozens of memes and low attempt jokes.
Stuff like...
"Oh I can tell you a thing or two about the legal complications of cubesat launches, my company did this for the last 12 years. [...]. By the way, this is our website"
...is probably more effective if a potential client stumbles over it than 100,000 "targeted" facebook ads, especially if you serve some highly technical niche.
Lately, I learned about CSS stack contexts because of a blog post here, and read other posts by the same author. Learned a lot about CSS that day.
In both cases the challenge was apparently challenging enough that the company actually meant "we hire based on this challenge". Sadly, an overwhelming majority of hiring "challenges" are so easy that the company feels the need to impose a full conventional hiring process behind it.
Also some technical tidbits here and there, especially on the practical side, the knowledge "on the streets", exchange experiences, niche companies that are only starting but might solve a problem you have (or might have)
Even if it has no tangible benefit, I'm at a lower risk of l wasting a lot of time here than in Reddit or most other social media sites.