By Jacob Strieb
Published on May 14, 2020
Recently, I reached out to the moderators of Hacker News. After helping me, Daniel (dang) – the primary moderator – noted that my profile lists me as a student and asked about my thoughts and impressions of the site.1 I am indeed a student – currently finishing my junior year at Carnegie Mellon, though I started browsing Hacker News in the middle of high school. I visit frequently because it tends to have the best content related to my interests, so I have developed a lot of opinions. What follows is my attempt to distill these as much as possible.
Put simply, I think Hacker News is pretty great. It has benefited me personally and professionally; however, I have mixed feelings about the comments.
Hacker News’s greatest virtue is it has helped me figure out what I haven’t yet learned, enabling me to fill in the gaps. Growing up, I lacked access to computer science/programming mentorship. My public high school was devoid of computer science classes, and before college I did not know anyone in the tech industry. I’d been programming since I was young, but there were deficiencies in my knowledge I didn’t know existed. Hacker News allowed me to tap into the collective vocabulary of mathematicians, computer scientists, and tech workers. To this day, this lexicon guides my learning – words I do not understand become targets for further investigation. Moreover, my enhanced use of language eases reading documentation and searching for solutions while coding. The positive influence of Hacker News on my understanding of technical language cannot be overstated, nor can the benefits of using technical language while developing software, doing research, and communicating with technical people.
My regular readership also enabled me to contextualize much of what I’m now learning in formal math and computer science classes. For example, systems programming is more interesting and fulfilling for me than for many of my peers because reading extensively about programming and computer history has made seemingly-arbitrary, historic conventions feel natural. Broad exposure to technical topics, facilitated by the overwhelming quantity of high-quality content available on Hacker News, has ignited my passion and honed my intuition. Conversely, taking advanced classes has tangibly enriched the experience of browsing the site.
Beyond keeping me current on the latest and greatest in tech, Hacker News has been a boon for me professionally. Last summer, I had a productive, fun, and informative internship working at an early-stage Silicon Valley consumer robotics startup founded by Y Combinator alumni. We connected via Y Combinator’s Work at a Startup program, which I learned about through Hacker News. This summer, I will be interning for a security company that I initially reached out to based on a Hacker News “Who is Hiring” thread. I am confident that without Hacker News as a means to find opportunities, I would not have access to these experiences. I use my university’s on-campus career services, but Hacker News and more broadly, Y Combinator, are better equipped to help students find opportunities at startups.
On the other hand, I feel jaded about tech work before I have even begun. I am passionate about enriching society using software, so it feels inevitable that I will enter the tech industry in some capacity. Reading others’ critical anecdotes can make me uneasy about unpleasant, seemingly ineluctable professional experiences (ethically tenuous companies, “toxic environments,” management onanism, ageism, grueling hiring processes, upcoming tech bubbles, etc.), inspiring caution as I proceed. It remains to be seen whether the cynicism and apprehension borne out of reading others’ comments is for better, or for worse.
Reading the praise and criticism offered by commenters has also informed my understanding of best practices for tasks ranging from software development to technical writing, and has guided me to the work of role models whose skill I hope to emulate. Whether I agree or disagree with comments, they help me to independently form my own opinions, and to understand the collective mentality of the Hacker News demographic (to the extent such a common mentality exists, anyway). Even individually unhelpful comments can be insightful in aggregate.
Anticipating how others will perceive my work based on this notion of a collective opinion has shaped how I present my publicly-released projects. Before publicizing my work on Hacker News, I idealistically expected the comments to contain actionable directives for improvement, rather than tangential but intriguing discussion. In reality, the commentary on my (admittedly limited) popular work2 has been interesting, but hasn’t directly helped me improve; I have since adjusted my expectations. I now view releasing work on Hacker News primarily as a means to share projects and inspire people, and only incidentally as an opportunity to solicit personally helpful commentary.
Despite some negative impressions, my feelings about Hacker News comments are mixed overall because I love informative, insightful comments. In particular, there is nothing more exciting than having the author of posted content (whether OP or not) chime in with exclusive, behind-the-scenes information. I recognize the number of people with a comment far outweighs the number with insight. Top comments typically contain interesting perspective rarely found anywhere else, which often supersedes less productive discussion below. Though lamenting negativity and hypocrisy on Hacker News is common, users’ votes usually ensure toxicity is relegated to the bottom when present. Voters rather than commenters on Hacker News are the silent majority, which tends to successfully support good content and engaging discussion.
Hacker News’s moderation is stellar. dang and sctb do a great job keeping things running smoothly! They also both seem like genuine, caring people.↩︎
I am mostly thinking about a post that was discussed heavily here. The commentary was productive, even though I wish there had been more discussion about my main point: connecting math and programming.
I am also thinking of URL Pages, which was well-received considering it was a proof-of-concept. It was discussed here.↩︎