So it's a post on the front page of HN about how much it doesn't matter about being on the front page of HN? I love meta and recursion, but that's a little too meta even for me.
I don't have anything against the guys at 37Signals. Seems like they are doing some cool stuff. They have set themselves up as being awesome as part of their marketing strategy. While sales from HN hits probably don't amount to anything, I can't help but think that being on here is a big part of their portraying themselves as thought leaders.
I've been on the front page of HN a lot -- and I know a lot of other HNers here have also. I enjoy the feedback from the community, which to me is more valuable than anything else. So while being here is not some kind of master plan for business world domination, it's not like it's worthless either.
I agree. But what if they made 300K/month off HN, would they be asking HN to upvote posts regardless of merit? The post seems to be a little sour grapey to me but I don't think it's a big deal anyway. Just one more story to ignore on HN's front page.
But I personally find their posts(and many others on HN) lacking in objectiveness and follow the below trend:
1) Find something (eg. sharpening pencils), that most companies/people do.
2) Write an article about how a policy of not doing that immensely helped their company. (save time not sharpening pencils and make a million bucks). "Sharpening Pencils Considered Harmful"
3) Make it sound absolute and generalize it(no company should do this and if they do, they're bureaucratic fools). This may not be explicitly stated, but it's implied.
4) Rake in page views
Then it hits front page of HN(surprising how their posts get immediately on FP, but I don't think it's foul play, maybe it's their Twitter followers?).
Then the inevitable follow up HN comments/blog posts come along "Why 37 Signals is wrong about Pencil Sharpening and how it can work/worked for me/us and we made millions Sharpening Pencils". Full of noise, flamebait comments, back and forth opinionated arguments and even personal attacks that are sometimes totally worthless since the whole argument is very subjective to individual circumstances.
Navigating through this morass for finding the 1% of posts that are actually insightful is an exercise in frustration and usually a waste of time. The big risk is that you'll find a comment which you vehemently disagree with and fall prey to spending ten precious minutes composing a reply ("Look Mom! Somebody is wrong on the internet!") which will lead to a comment tree of arguments.
For reference, look at this very discussion, it will be very similar to what I just stated.
This is repeated ad nauseum on here, not just by 37 Signals but by many other posts. I've slowly learned to ignore the noise generated by this but not always successfully. It's like chewing gum for your brain except you can easily get sucked into a wasteful time sink.
I've slowly learned to ignore the noise generated by this but not always successfully.
Yeah, the problem is that we're always dropping into the middle of this continuous rehash-posting cycle. When you spot a topic that may be new to you, that could still just be a reaction post.
>Navigating through this morass for finding the 1% of posts that are actually insightful is an exercise in frustration and usually a waste of time. The big risk is that you'll find a comment which you vehemently disagree with and fall prey to spending ten precious minutes composing a reply ("Look Mom! Somebody is wrong on the internet!") which will lead to a comment tree of arguments.
>For reference, look at this very discussion, it will be very similar to what I just stated.
I don't have anything against the guys at 37Signals. Seems like they are doing some cool stuff. They have set themselves up as being awesome as part of their marketing strategy. While sales from HN hits probably don't amount to anything, I can't help but think that being on here is a big part of their portraying themselves as thought leaders.
I've been on the front page of HN a lot -- and I know a lot of other HNers here have also. I enjoy the feedback from the community, which to me is more valuable than anything else. So while being here is not some kind of master plan for business world domination, it's not like it's worthless either.