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Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

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Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#111

Post by ddingus »

CrazyStat wrote: post #91
deltree7 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Increasing productivity never lays people off, unless the people were originally being unproductive. That's a dumb understanding of economics and even management. Also, scaling tools to more than one user is incredibly hard. Software development is still custom / art. This tool works because it is suited to OPs workflow and his "way of thinking". In order to make it work for others, it needs lots of improvement and g…

> Increasing productivity never lays people off, unless the people were originally being unproductive. Maybe in some imaginary world with spherical cows, infinite demand, and no friction (physical or transactional). In the real world, increasing productivity so that one person can do the job that ten used to do very often results in layoffs. 70 years ago there were hundreds of thousands of telephone switchboard opera…

Reducing head count is literally the core sales pitch for a ton of software and or solutions out there today.

They won't put that in the end user facing presentation, but you can count on it being part of the executive pitch.

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#113

Post by gus_massa »

lnanek2 wrote: post #43
ushakov wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the ratio will stay though with a like and ratio number you can reverse-calculate the amount of dislikes

Isn't there a population shift, though? The users who will install an extension for this have different tastes than the users who won't, so you can't assume the like-dislike ratio for the population who will matches the population who won't.

Moreover, it will be easier to brigade (or shill). If a video has 1M upvotes in YouTube and 1K upvotes in the site, then with 1K enthusiast you can tilt the count. (And for obscure videos with 100 or 1000 less upvotes in YT, it will be easier.)

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#114

Post by eat_veggies »

jdavis703 wrote: post #90
RankingMember wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making it broadly available could also potentially just set a new floor for productivity in an industry that doesn't always reward such gains commensurate with their value, i.e. you'd get an attaboy and "alright well now you can do three times as much work for the same pay!"

Isn’t that the whole point of software engineering? You should always be engineering yourself out of your current job. If I’m dealing with the same issues I have today, a year from now, then I’d view that as a personal failure.

They engineered themselves out of their current job and still get paid for the job they don't have to do. Sounds like they engineered it pretty well.

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#115

Post by sibit »

BatteryMountain wrote: post #9

Yeah I do this. Most of what I build, nobody knows about it nor is it release into the wild. Latest example: at my current workplace we have some crappy custom compilers for our platform.... I've rebuilt them in a way that I like (and using C# instead of Java), that enables me to use it in a small visual studio code plugin that enables me with real time error messages as I code against our platform, so basically cons…

When I was first started my career I was working at a small software company. I spent my evening and weekends building tools and plugins to optimize my workflow and I quickly became 10x more productive than my coworkers. I shared my tools with the company and in return, I was rewarded with raises year after year. I went from 30k to 80k[0] in 3 years. Now I work for a large software company and the same tactics haven't worked out in my favor so I just keep everything to myself. In my experience not only did I continuously get paid more but everything I wrote was FOSS so it helped improve my portfolio. The catch is you gotta work for great people, and that's hard to find.

[0] Almost double the median household income for my area.

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#116

Post by edoceo »

When I was 20 (c1997) I took this job, it had a FileMaker database for tracking tickets. And then my team mates all had to review that system to manually fill out a Word document with hours.

So I made a little code to pull from FM and put into Word. So we could fill these forms, required for payroll, in minutes rather than hours (not a joke). And my team mates loved it. And then our lead claimed it as his own work, presented his accomplishment to the next boss up, bonus, congratulated and promoted. (Fuck you Ed)

Most folk only got they own back.

It had no impact on my career path and I'm still making stuff GPL and BSD and MIT.

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#117

Post by soledades »

lnanek2 wrote: post #43
ushakov wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the ratio will stay though with a like and ratio number you can reverse-calculate the amount of dislikes

Isn't there a population shift, though? The users who will install an extension for this have different tastes than the users who won't, so you can't assume the like-dislike ratio for the population who will matches the population who won't.

But maybe the signal is even better in the subpopulation

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#118

Post by soledades »

gus_massa wrote: post #113
lnanek2 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there a population shift, though? The users who will install an extension for this have different tastes than the users who won't, so you can't assume the like-dislike ratio for the population who will matches the population who won't.

Moreover, it will be easier to brigade (or shill). If a video has 1M upvotes in YouTube and 1K upvotes in the site, then with 1K enthusiast you can tilt the count. (And for obscure videos with 100 or 1000 less upvotes in YT, it will be easier.)

If not many people use it, there will be much less incentive to shill

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#119

Post by RankingMember »

jdavis703 wrote: post #90
RankingMember wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making it broadly available could also potentially just set a new floor for productivity in an industry that doesn't always reward such gains commensurate with their value, i.e. you'd get an attaboy and "alright well now you can do three times as much work for the same pay!"

Isn’t that the whole point of software engineering? You should always be engineering yourself out of your current job. If I’m dealing with the same issues I have today, a year from now, then I’d view that as a personal failure.

The whole point of engineering is to engineer yourself out of your current job? What? I think I must be misunderstanding you. Are people who engineer planes supposed to be engineering spacecraft or consider themselves failures or something? I'm confused.

Re: Do you ever avoid submitting something on HN so devs won't ruin it?

#120

Post by varsketiz »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #101
slingnow wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a healthy, well-adjusted response! Something didn't work out one time? NEVER DO IT AGAIN!

Commenter complaints about negative, unproductive responses to things they've posted; immediately gets negative, unproductive response.

Why do you consider it unproductive? I think the perspective provided is very reasonable - if something did not work once, maybe you shouldn't stop doing it forever.

What do you think would be a productive response to this complaint?

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