
Ask HN: What’s Your ROI in Browsing Hacker News? - slipmagic
I currently feel like I’m in a place where the cool stuff is something I can’t use because it’s too technical, not fully dependable, or just a cool concept at the end of the day.<p>What value have you gained from hacker news submissions or comments that has helped you in your life?<p>This is not meant to make HN look bad.
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rl3
I really like how critical HN can be sometimes. It makes you reflect on what
you're writing very carefully.

There's also a bunch of subject matter experts lurking here. There's nothing
better than when you have lay people discussing say, nuclear reactors and an
actual nuclear physicist or engineer chimes in.

As far as content, I really read it more for the weird little obscure articles
that are terribly interesting, more than I do for keeping up on tech. However,
it is interesting to skim the comments of a submission for a particular
technology stack: it really helps give insight into where that particular tech
is going and how it's actually used in the real world.

There's also a lot of deeply personal, candid stories on here that I enjoy
reading. HN is a forum run by a startup accelerator after all, so there's no
shortage of people who have tried and failed repeatedly here. It's a wealth of
knowledge and experience I'm very thankful to have.

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soulchild37
Discovering patio11, codinghorror, tptacek, ahoyhere etc has made tremendous
impact on my career / ways of thinking. I would have never negotiated higher
salary or shipped my own apps / books without reading their HN comments /
blog. It allowed me to work lesser hours and earn money from products.

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probinso
A random article on hacker news completely changed how I job search. This has
led to several jobs I don't think I would have found otherwise.

The article was not about job search, it was a post reviewing a tech talk
about technology that as you say may have been "too technical" for me at the
time

This is not to say that I use hacker news for job search

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rak00n
Which article was it?

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probinso
It was on a talk about HalVM that was given at Microsoft Research. Had nothing
to do with jobs

It changed how I find companies to work with

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wikibob
Can you tell us more? How did it change the way you look for companies?

~~~
probinso
I found that the hardest part of cold applications was identifying companies.
In any major city you can probably think of 20 companies off the top of your
head that exist there. Fewer with your expertise or interests in mind, fewer
that are currently hiring. Additionally, identifying companies (without
references or a network to pull on) for job search is a labor intensive and
often boring process.

Since I would rather be "always learning" it is far more fun to watch
technical talks at conferences and track any company that sponsors a speech I
enjoy. I am doing this constantly (not just during active job search).

Since it is the norm for technical conferences to post to youtube, this
strategy only costs time.

When you have a list of companies large enough, then it is easier to find
competitors or get appropriate suggestions from networking platforms like
linkedin.

I never track large or obvious companies, because I probably already know
their name.

Now I've been in the field long enough to pull on my network, but don't really
find it necessary. I have a list of 300+ companies that I can pull on
reflecting my interests/expertise at different points in my career.

The only downside to this is it doesn't usually grow proportional to your
geographical region, but there are ways to bias your results with other
strategies.

I might have come across this without HN, but it definitely would have
happened later. People post things that interest them on HN, and I find things
interesting that others do.

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codingdave
Mostly, it keeps me thinking. I see what people are doing, what they have to
say about the latest news, what the latest startups are trying to accomplish.
Whatever I think of it all, it invokes some critical thought on the bigger
picture of this industry. And I thereby avoid getting caught up in the details
of my own work and stagnating.

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qzx_pierri
My ROI is pretty high considering the changes I've been seeing in myself
lately. It's a huge step up from reddit and 4chan - I cut those websites out
of my life and started browsing HN exclusively not too long ago. My mood has
changed, I'm less cynical/jaded, and when I make a comment, I consider the
person on the other side of the computer screen. This site is a bit slower, so
I've also been getting more work done.

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arendtio
Since you are asking for the 'Return On Invest', I think there are two sides
to this medal. I didn't have any large returns, but I like the content that
comes up, so I try to limit the resources I invest.

I observed that giving my brain new(s) information in the morning makes it
harder to concentrate later the same day. So I try to avoid visiting HN in the
morning and wait until the afternoon.

To improve the noise to signal ratio, I also added a little widget to my new-
tab-page showing me the current top 3 news of the 'best' list. That way I
don't have to constantly monitor the site and don't miss the big stories
either ;-)

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trykondev
I've directly found two jobs through HN, so already that's a massive benefit
for me. Aside from that, I feel it's given me a much better grasp of both the
breadth and depth of the tech industry.

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DoreenMichele
It's the only place I ever manage to have substantive discussions of medical
science. Given my diagnosis, this positively contributes to my failure to be
dead yet.

~~~
slipmagic
I hope you continue to fail at dying.

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StevenTheSpace
Longtime lurker. I owe my entire career to HN. I was always into programming
but never understood the business/startup side behind it. Thought you just had
to get a job and unless you were super lucky or rich there wasn't any other
way. Discovering HN has shattered this notion and allowed me to live my life
the way I always wanted to.

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quickthrower2
Sometimes rarely I see something that can help me in my job. The recent
announcement of v8 Javascript speed improvements was useful to know, and I’d
probably not know without HN. I didn’t read the full article but I know if our
performance tests suddenly get better when that browser version comes up it
might be them not us.

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tmaly
I stick with a saying I came up with: “Make Knowledge Actionable”

I gain the most value from Ask HN posts. I used hckrnews.com to identify the
top ones. I look at the top comments on these posts. If there are any good
insights, I note them and favorite the post.

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axaxs
Immeasurable. I don't do any social media, or networking. HN lets me know
what's hot, and I can filter whether or not I need it myself. HN brought me
Golang, and I wouldn't have found it so early otherwise.

~~~
sethammons
My first thought was hn has negative roi for me as it is a time sink. But,
like you, I first learned about Go here. A couple of folks at work and I
introduced it to our org some maybe seven years ago. The org became a Go shop.
I vastly prefer coding in Go compared to AnyEvent Perl or Twisted Python. So,
hn has had a very big impact on me; immeasurable.

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vegetas_mustach
Same as with twitter: negative ROI. I just hate-read it and get pissed off at
all the nitpicky assholes going "well, actually" at each other to no end. It's
sad, but I don't know how to stop.

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buboard
I got a lot of visitors from Show HN

