

A Year On Hacker News - bennesvig
http://bennesvig.com/2011/12/10/a-year-on-hacker-news/

======
bane
I'm closing in on a year myself. One thing that HN has clearly done for me is
turn my interest in technology into an interest in businesses driven by
technology -- it's moved me up a whole meta-level.

I can't help but think of technology now in business terms. What does it cost?
How much is it worth? Is _that_ a viable business model? etc.

For years I suffered under the familiar problem of being a technologist that
was viewed by non-technologists as being essentially thought of as a high paid
janitor. Nobody cares when things work great, but you get beat in the broom
closet when something falls down.

The business-side that HN taught me has paid off tremendously, pay raises,
promotions, more responsibility. Without any perceptible change in my skills
as a technologist, I'm out of the broom closet and into the board room these
days!

~~~
skylan_q
"I'm closing in on a year myself. One thing that HN has clearly done for me is
turn my interest in technology into an interest in businesses driven by
technology -- it's moved me up a whole meta-level."

Hah! It made me go in the opposite direction, but in a good way. I started
drifting away from CS and SE, getting more and more bored by it. Slashdot was
my only half-decent "tech" news site. Other things become more interesting to
me.

Then I discovered this site. Now I'm very happily being dragged back into
developing my hacking skills. For a while I was letting my skills slip. But
now, I'm getting good at it again. Thank you, HN.

------
chaosmachine
I come to HN for the comments. Every now and then I'll read something that
really inspires me. I'm not necessarily talking about great advice, either.
Sometimes just reading over other people's frustrations will lead me to new
business ideas.

~~~
billpatrianakos
I'm often disappointed by some of the front page submissions these days so I
end up reading a few gems and for articles I'm not really into I'll go into
the comments too. The comments can often be more interesting than the articles
themselves. I'm right there with you!

~~~
jcr
> I'm often disappointed by some of the front page submissions these days

The supposed decline in submission quality is mostly an illusion. PG set up a
page that only shows submissions by older users (first six months or first
year --not sure which) to evaluate the supposed submission quality decline:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/classic>

Additionally, everything has an item ID #, so if you want to prove it to
yourself, you can go through everything sequentially.

~~~
benologist
I don't think "old users" is a good metric for measuring quality, it assumes
that the age of your account is somehow related to your intentions on this
site.

There's 3 things I think are affecting the quality:

1) A lot of stuff is written specifically _targeting_ HN, that probably didn't
happen when the traffic a front page story got was negligible

2) There are sites that blindly submit everything they publish

3) There are people who blindly submit popular sites within seconds of them
publishing anything

You don't have to be a new account to be doing any of those things. My
account's ~4 years old, I could be doing any or all of them.

------
smadam9
Great post, and thanks for the read.

I'm about 6 months (daily-->hourly page refreshes) into HN and I've read some
of the most incredible articles here. I feel the same way you feel, and agree
on your point of "few people are remembered for being well read.....start
shipping...".

With that boost of morale, my decisions to put a lot of things I've read here
into practice seem all the more rational.

------
akg
After few months of reading hacker news articles and reading comments I
decided to be a part of this community. The discussions here are of the
highest caliber from any other community out there. Already over the past few
days of joining, I've learned a tremendous deal. I can't wait to see how my
development (personal and technical) will advance over the next year!

------
DiabloD3
I'm already past my one year mark, and somehow I have 917 karma.

I think I fell off the wagon somewhere.

~~~
Mz
If the difference between your karma and his concerns you, I suggest you not
check the leader board.

~~~
DiabloD3
That wasn't my implication. When I originally started with HN, I was telling
myself I didn't want to join another community and all I wanted was aggregated
links worth reading.

I am now 917 karma into said community. The wagon, I fell off it.

~~~
Mz
My bad. (Perhaps it implies I'm a "karma whore" that I jumped to the wrong
conclusion?)

I hope you don't really regret the fall.

