I've all but given up social media elsewhere on the web, HN is one of my last holdouts, and I would argue that's it's more of a forum than classic social media. HN does not engage in nefarious methods of keeping you engaged. It does not send you alerts telling you about what you've missed, it does not curate the home page to place you in your own personal echo chamber. These for me are it's strengths. However, like a…
I have to agree it does feel more like a forum. I wonder how HN achieves this.
Ask HN: What tangible benefits did you get from spending time on HN?
241–250 of 283 posts
Re: Ask HN: What tangible benefits did you get from spending time on HN?
#242For me, HN gives a sort of window into the American SF techno views and mindset about the world. It's quite interesting to read their ideas and opinions. It's a bubble like other places but it doesn't mean you won't learn something.
Last I ran the numbers (which was a couple years ago) the HN community was at least 50% outside the US.
Re: Ask HN: What tangible benefits did you get from spending time on HN?
#243I pivoted careers to software engineering. That wouldn’t have happened without HN. I actually make less money now, but I am much happier and have great work/life balance.
Re: Ask HN: What tangible benefits did you get from spending time on HN?
#244I pivoted careers to software engineering. That wouldn’t have happened without HN. I actually make less money now, but I am much happier and have great work/life balance.
What were you doing before?
Re: Ask HN: What tangible benefits did you get from spending time on HN?
#245I did a Show HN for the idea of a SaaS for GitLab and I’m now the CEO of a $6b company.
Nice
Re: Ask HN: What tangible benefits did you get from spending time on HN?
#246I've all but given up social media elsewhere on the web, HN is one of my last holdouts, and I would argue that's it's more of a forum than classic social media. HN does not engage in nefarious methods of keeping you engaged. It does not send you alerts telling you about what you've missed, it does not curate the home page to place you in your own personal echo chamber. These for me are it's strengths. However, like a…
I never thought about this until you brought it up, but I'm more hooked on HN than anything else and it's the only place that doesn't try to hook you.
Re: Ask HN: What tangible benefits did you get from spending time on HN?
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are some good subreddits out there. r/experienceddevs springs to mind
I enjoy Reddit, but it's just not designed for smaller communities in my opinion. The tricky thing with reddit is that it's algorithm tuned for a daily churn. A small sub, like the one you mentioned, may only have a couple good posts a week, but you will miss them if you don't check every day. If you only browse the frontpage of your subscribed subreddits, adding any popular subreddits tend to drown out the smaller o…
I see. My habit is manually checking subs rather than relying on an aggregate or algorithmic view. I also sort by newest.
Re: Ask HN: What tangible benefits did you get from spending time on HN?
#248I did a Show HN for the idea of a SaaS for GitLab and I’m now the CEO of a $6b company.
A man can dream.
Re: Ask HN: What tangible benefits did you get from spending time on HN?
#249I've been reading it for years. It keeps me abreast of what I would consider many of my peers are paying attention to.
I find heaps of cool new programming libraries and languages and frameworks that would just slip through the cracks.
I also love reading the comments to get overall sentiment on various issues, from a group of people who are quite well behaved online!
Re: Ask HN: What tangible benefits did you get from spending time on HN?
#250I found an article about a company nearly identical to the one I was trying to start that was going out of business. Not only would that have completely destroyed my chances, but it would have been a disaster for all of their customers.
I've been working for over a year to re-build that company. It's been a challenge, and it's been much tougher than I could have expected, but it's probably one of the best opportunities I could have asked for.