Ask HN: What tangible benefits did you get from spending time on HN?

Story about my SAAS made it to the front page ~3 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16616991 . Back than the project was making some pocket money. I've received a lot of valuable insights in the comments. It allowed me refine the features and business model, to a much more profitable format. Right now this project is my main source of income and it allowed me to quit my job to focus on pursuing other challenges.

BTW I use this magic link https://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=100 to filter out less valuable stories that "growth hackers" push to the frontpage. Since I've started using it, browsing HN has become much more pleasant.

As someone else mentioned, I avoid anything political unless I'm purposely diving in for entertainment. The tech comments are normally high quality, and tend to force me to think about my opinions. Also, while everywhere has some level of group think, the tech comments tend to be pretty balanced.

I've developed a bit of timer in my head. If I feel like I've perused HN too long or catch myself just refreshing the home page, I close the tab and move on.

Finally, and this isn't HN specific, I never start my day by checking sites. I always do a solid 2-3 hours of work (sometimes 'deep'), before anything else.

EDIT

Other thing, is don't argue on the internet or HN. I'll share my opinion and/or respond a bit, but if someone really wants to argue, I let them have it and move on. Takes too much time, and doesn't gain anything once I'm ok with my position. I mentioned the other day in another HN post that I had stopped going to FB for this exact reason. Zero helpful information, and it just led to arguments which take too much time and accomplish nothing.

I think your answer begins with the site's full name: Hacker News Network (HNN). It's not about hacking, per se. It's about aggregating news and tech articles and occasional solicitations from YC's startups that are likely of interest to developers and other tech folk, originally those in the San Francisco area startup community where its owner YCombinator (YC) is based (a startup incubator).

I think HNN's original intent was to help startup staff to make connections with potential partners and domain subject matter experts (which can be difficult if you're new to an industry, as many at startups are). In time, the site has evolved, broadening its agenda and its geography as its participants grew and diversified.

The conversations that ensue are echoes of participants who have trod the path described in each article, or more typically, have insights or opinions. If you find that amusing or edifying, you'll stay. If you don't, you'll leave. Apparently you don't.

Well whats the compound? Perhaps someone else reading it could benefit from this too.

As with many tools, it mostly depends on how you use it, assuming that there is something of value for you to start with.

Let me give you a few examples to illustrate:

- Reddit: mostly a waste of time for me; I rarely found anything of great interest; however, "killing time" sometimes is useful for me, even though I should find better ways to do so (e.g. take a 10 minutes walk, instead of spending 10 minutes of reddit browsing)

- Facebook: I rarely use it, because it's not only a waste of time, it's also a place where I see the worst part of my friends being shown. A lot of selfies, a lot of "let me show you how cool / rich / hot / lucky I am", even for people that I know aren't like that in real life.

I also recognize it as such, because at the beginning (8-10 years ago), I used Facebook that way. I used it to post pictures from exotic places I visited for work, diagrams of the globe with my numerous flights, etc. (at the time I was flying 100+ times a year, I had a very cool job (tech evangelist for AWS for a large chunk of the world), and I visited tens of different countries and cities each year)

- Hacker News, on the other hand, has mostly great content. I have been spending time here almost every day for the past 10+ years, and I pretty much don't regret any of it. To the contrary: me being extremely curious, I found a ton of relief in being able to read stuff not just related to work / software / IT, but also about other "geek" / "nerdy" things. I've learned so much. I even got to "know" a couple of dozen frequent posters, and with some of them we exchanged emails every once in a while.

But in addition to the links themselves, I think it's really valuable to read comments and participate. I think that the moderators (@dang, etc) have done an incredible job in keeping this place mostly civilized and high quality.

I don't think it's for everybody; and your experience might be different. But perhaps you should give it a proper try before giving up on it.

Hope this helps.