I can see how HN is bad for the author's well being, but certainly not for mine. I don't feel bad about reading other people's success stories. I don't feel any need to switch languages/frameworks when reading about new/hyped stuff.
It's all just information, what you do with that is up to you.
I'm with you. I'm here as a consumer. I skim most articles. I waste little time. Instead, I get a humongous wealth of information on a great variety of topics.
Also, one quick skim of the article list gives you a good idea of what's hot in tech. Even that has great value, and helps you decide what you should and shouldn't read.
About 10% of the time I jump into comments straightaway because they give you a good idea of the topic/validity of the article.
"I don't feel bad about reading other people's success stories."
I don't feel bad about reading other people's success stories either. What I hate is how some people reading those stories give super powers to those people who have succeeded as if there is no luck, timing or anything else and then those people, what they say, is oh so important even on subjects that they have little expertise in. The halo in other words.
Problem with some of the hyped stuff though is that it can become a self fulfilling prophecy when a mass of early adopters decides to go down a particular path with the latest thing.
Plus, most of what I see on HN these days is really bad business, political, social, and legal analysis, not any of the things discussed in this article. (This article is a great example of the same.)
Sure, but what is the opportunity cost of reading all of those posts and what are you really gaining from reading all of those "new technology of the month" postings?
HN isn't to blame for this, but the current Bay Area, VC-istan culture really is toxic. I don't know how people can stay motivated with their 0.03% equity slices when some completely unqualified idiot gets his IUsedThisToilet app acquired for $4 billion just because he went to the right schools going back to preschool. It's sick.
It's best to tune that shit out, but it's hard when people are young and impressionable, and given that the contemporary Silicon Valley culture is all about extending adolescence into the mid-30s (and then discarding people)... well it's easy see why people succumb to that nonsense.
The fundamental problem is that engineers are treated as a commodity in the Valley, and investor money is prized. It should be the other way; funding should be the commodity, and high-end engineering talent should be the seat of prestige.
I've noticed that a lot of writers in tech generalize their experience to everyone in the community. Several times a day I'm struck by someone who talks about his/her experience like it's a common experience, when it may or may not be. I think it would be safer and more relatable if the author had said "HN - Bad for My Well Being," but of course that doesn't sound as portentous.
Absolutely. There's a lot of "I don't like X, so X is bad" out there. It's quite disturbing the number of people who can't imagine that other developers might approach the world in a different way and with different values.
I get the impression this is a trait that seems more present in programmer types than many other people, and this fascinates me. I notice this in myself too. I almost always try to reduce/abstract my own problems or issues to 'general principles', and I tend to want to get to the root of things.
There are many plausible explanations for this (and obviously I've tried to get to the root of this phenomenon too), but at some point I started reflecting on whether this behavior is a good or bad thing.
I think it's both good and bad. It's good primarily because a lot of people look at their own problem in isolation, and share/address them as 'their unique problem', which keeps them from seeing underlying patterns or principles and from tapping into the experiences and observations of the countless others that have had pretty much the exact same problem. But it can also be bad, because not everyone likes being subjected or presented with this kind of generalization, and attempting to think about a problem in a general sense while you are suffering from it yourself complicates the search for solutions immensely (especially practical, direct solutions to implement).
Does anyone know if there has been research into this? I never really thought of diving in the the 'psychology' of programmers...
I completely agree with you. Way too often to I read articles stating various truths based on their sole experiences. This is just one more thing that devalues HN and warrants curation.
In this particular case, this is not only my experience but the experience of some of my colleagues and friends. That doesn't mean that this applies to everyone and obviously it is an opinion article.
Some might find it interesting that I consider part of my job as a tech strategy consultant is to keep up with what's happening on HN.
I try not to open every link or anything, because I procrastinate just like everyone else. However, some of the value that I provide my clients is knowing about changes to their competitive landscape before they do.
Tightly coupled with both experience and a willingness to offer strong, thoughtful opinions on the day's tech news, I am often able to be the most honest and disconcertingly knowledgeable person at the table... all thanks to scanning HN a few times a day.
I owe much of my livelihood to your often link-bait posts, so thanks. :)
Still not nearly as bad as Reddit. Subreddits have value, but look at the front page of Reddit. Zero value. On any given day, of any week, month, or year. Reddit's front page is 100% wasted time. I demonstrate this by asking to myself: Ten years from now what will Reddit's front page look like? Answer: The exact nonsense memes and image macros posted today.
The frontpage of reddit is what you make it. Get rid of the crap, subscribe to subreddits you actually like, and you're good to go. There are some decent subreddits...
I completely agree. I replaced (a good chunk of) my reddit browsing with HN browsing. I may burn excessive time here, but I feel like I'm at least learning/gaining something while I'm here. And the commenters here are actually intelligent and the top replies are generally decent and not "witty" one-liners.
But I don't work in the startup world. I don't get the stress of second guessing everything I do because in the same week opinions on all sides of an issue germane to startups have been heavily upvoted at different times. So perhaps that is key.
I don't think anyone has claimed reddit, or at least the default reddits, are a productive way to spend your time. All the default subreddits are pretty much just for entertainment.
To me, watching Reddit grow has been an interesting perspective on how population size affects democracy.
4-5 years ago, you would more often see long articles or self posts where someone would make a case for something on a topic. People would read the whole thing, try and understand the issue, and talk about it.
As reddit has grown, thoughtful posts have been replaced by one liners and memes. The front page is mostly just a dumping ground for whatever is viral at the moment.
I think this, interestingly, mirrors what happened to democracy in the United States. The democracy that the founding fathers imagined was one run mostly by the educated few, with everyone else also having the ability to voice their concerns.
What its turned into now is a chaotic mess of talking points and rhetoric, with two factions on opposite sides just screaming the same things at each other.
I think its because the more people you get involved in decision making, the simpler you have to make the case for each potential choice in order for the most people to be able to understand it. People will choose an inferior choice that they can understand over a superior one that they can't.
And the problem then is that oftentimes the most important things are the things that are hardest to understand.
I've noticed a different bad thing that happens to me when I am active on HN. I become very argumentative IRL. On HN it's fun to engage other people, debating, disagreeing and arguing your point. It's constructive and usually we all get something from it.
I noticed that the more time I spend active on HN (in comments) the more I tend to correct friends when they make a mistake or vigorously argue a point of view on something not that important (these aren't bad things the but the frequency with which I was doing them annoyed me and my friends and it wasn't just the important stuff I was arguing, it was stupid things).
When I logged out of HN for a while this behaviour slowly started to improve. I couldn't stay away for ever though but I am much more aware of the effect and try to stop myself before I get too deep into a stupid debate/argument both on HN and IRL.
Yes! This and the need to explain things always in an exact and neutral way without actually knowing all to much about the issue at hand and thereby blatantly ignoring the reality and the knowledge and interest of the persons around you.
I don't blame HN. I've learned and still learn a lot of cool stuff here. It's the best source to stay up to date on internet drama and timely background information for security and hacking related incidents. Also a lot of programming and Unix related ideas I would hardly find anywhere else. But it's of little use to me. I'm not the security engineer of a start up. I'm not even really coding at the moment.
My reality is different. I should leave my room, work on my bicycle, solve the real and urgent issues around my life and sit in the library or hanging around with friends doing real stuff. Connecting with real people and learning something about other aspects of life. This may be different for others here.
Instead I'm here trapped in a strange click loop. I would do probably something similar without HN or even without internet. It's sad but the OPs post about is a good reminder to cut it down... it's irrational for me and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
It depends on how long you've had an HN account. At some point the content seems to get repetitive. It's pretty easy to ignore the content that you've seen before.
But in the beginning it is a wealth of information, giving you insight into what should be expected when trying to start a barebones new company.
So you gorge on the articles until you rarely get new insights from them. Then, naturally, your addiction to HN ends. (Typically this starts the "remember when HN was good?" comments)
Now if you are addicted for other reasons, like you feel socially involved here, that I can not speak to. But if your addiction is content, that will fade once you've had your fill.
I have a different problem with it, which is that it invariably makes me feel pretty incompetent, because no matter what subject comes up, people with 10 times my level of skill in fields that I consider myself relatively competent in start discussing things and I suddenly feel quite completely devoid of any skill at all. Even on a simple thing like posts about typing I find people lamenting how they are only able to output 60wpm while I measure myself at 48wpm. Part of my problem is that I tend to be a generalist and know a lot of things quite well rather than single specialist topic at extreme depth.
How this all plays out in my head is a complex thing, but overall I feel like it is bad for my self-image. It is just very hard to keep the perspective in mind that I might be in the top 20% of people in a field but the top 1% will be the ones who start commenting on a specialised topic on HN. Add to that the different personality types hiding behind people's pseudonymous identities and you are getting a super distorted picture of the world.
My advice would be to embrace your generalist nature.
There are certainly roles fit for specialists, but generalists with rare blends of difficult and useful skills are a lot more valuable in most situations. Specialization in any one area tends to have rapidly diminishing returns.
I think any above average developer can make themselves more valuable at a much faster rate by becoming decent at complementary disciplines like design, user experience, conversion optimization, writing, etc. than by continuing to hone their development skills.
Even within development, becoming decent at every level of the stack, from dev ops and databases to front end, is usually going to add a lot more value than becoming slightly stronger at your specialty.
Flip it on its head and HN comments are one of the best places for me to learn, find interesting things to read, and above all read about perspectives and experiences on a subject different from my own.
Just because someone can overtake you in the conversational straightaways when it comes to their specific area of study does not mean you cannot outmaneuver them in the chicanes of general knowledge. :)
While I think all of OP's points are valid (loss of productivity, focus on things that are too positive or negative, unactionable items, etc.), I think there is a flipside. I'm not saying you should spend an exorbitant amount of time on HN, but I think many come for the community and shared purpose. It's like getting your Reddit fix without having to worry about cat photos and memes. There are many tech-related articles here that aren't about frameworks or success/failure.
Honestly, most of my HN reading is because I need a mind-break from whatever I'm focusing on. I find it's a great way to take a break, and still learn a few things while I'm at it.
>>The solution is not to read absolutely no news at all.
A question: What makes you think so? I've gone months and years at a time without reading any news; it's a fantastic feeling, and if something is really important you'll hear about it from a friend.
Just as "read less HN" may not be applicable to everyone, "you should probably keep reading the news" may not apply to others, or at least others may have had positive experiences quitting the consumption of news media.
There is definitely a flipside. I wouldn't be nearly as up to date with tech if it wasn't for HN, and last summer I managed to get an internship at a startup that I would have had zero chance of finding had I not seen them in a "Who's Hiring?" post on here.
Oh definitely. I would just argue that you had to dig through a lot of posts that were less-than-beneficial and that a filter for an "Ask HN" would have been more worth your time. And that is just one form of curated content that I was mentioning.
> Something that can curate the top posts and send them to you on a schedule.
When you read a bunch of articles and upvote interesting ones (for whatever your value of "interesting" is), you contribute to the community by making a distinction between articles.
The problem with reading from a curated feed is that you're most likely no longer participating (because it's too late to meaningfully upvote), and hence delegating curation to all the other users. When a majority of all the other users are doing the same, then the power of curation becomes concentrated in fewer voters.
I suspect the value of HN is amplified by the meaningful participation of its users. There are many other ways to be a passive consumer of news.
I actually think the discussions on HN are pretty good, even the political ones. There are some well thought out people here, and then people who I would've empathized with years ago when I was younger and not more exposed to the way the world works. Both sides are helpful to read and be aware of.
But I mainly read HN for the tech news. I'm one of those people who will learn about Github/Twitter/Heroku being down from here. All the big hacks are posted here and thoroughly discussed. I probably would've never played around with CoffeeScript, Angular, Go, and Dart without them being endlessly discussed around here. I wish I had something like HN when I was in college.
It seems to me that often HN is an echo chamber for people who want to feel superior about their tech choices - an attitude that's inherited from it's creator PG. I mean, "Blub programmers"? Can you get any more elitist?
I view HG as a boy's club for programming fashionistas. It just happens that sometimes amongst all the posturing there's something genuinely valuable.
Regarding the OP - I think that HN is fine as long as you learn to skim and filter.
I actually took around 2 months off of Hacker News over the summer when we were coming up on a big deadline with the beta launch or our new game, and I must say I noticed a significant uptick in productivity over this period. Completely fasting; however, hasn't turned out to be the best idea since I'm now more addicted than I was previously. The newsletter idea is probably the best of both worlds.
HN is an online community, where people go because they feel that it fulfills them in some way (maybe because they plan to do a startup of their own one day and reading about other startups makes them dream, because they like debating with others, etc.).
I suggest the ridiculous notion that you should do what makes you happy, and if going on HN fulfills some part of your being - no matter how irrationally - then go for it.
The issue I have with HN (and other Forums), is that there is a lot of repetition in the comments. In part on HN this is probably not helped as it's difficult to overview and digest threads, especially if the comment trees are large. Comment verbosity and positional changes also make it difficult.
I think that is why in part people come, post, then move on. Necro-posting, even a day late is pretty pointless if you want to add to the general discussion.
I think I'd rather comments have a character limit. Or to get people to post summaries of their posts as titles. And/or some tl;dr; post mortems on comment threads.
Regarding the curated content option, I don't think that would be a good option for me. I come here to learn about the unusual and non-mainstream tech stuff. Of the 20 frameworks, it's true that I can only really learn one, but I probably am not going to want to learn whatever one the curator decided was best, because the curator is going to choose the most popular/hip/mainstream one, since that's the one that would be of interest to the most readers. I come here not to learn what's popular, but rather to learn about the things that aren't popular.
[+] [-] fhd2|12 years ago|reply
It's all just information, what you do with that is up to you.
[+] [-] richforrester|12 years ago|reply
Also, one quick skim of the article list gives you a good idea of what's hot in tech. Even that has great value, and helps you decide what you should and shouldn't read.
About 10% of the time I jump into comments straightaway because they give you a good idea of the topic/validity of the article.
In short; consume, in moderation, with salt.
[+] [-] larrys|12 years ago|reply
I don't feel bad about reading other people's success stories either. What I hate is how some people reading those stories give super powers to those people who have succeeded as if there is no luck, timing or anything else and then those people, what they say, is oh so important even on subjects that they have little expertise in. The halo in other words.
Problem with some of the hyped stuff though is that it can become a self fulfilling prophecy when a mass of early adopters decides to go down a particular path with the latest thing.
[+] [-] jamesaguilar|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnmurray_io|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelochurch|12 years ago|reply
It's best to tune that shit out, but it's hard when people are young and impressionable, and given that the contemporary Silicon Valley culture is all about extending adolescence into the mid-30s (and then discarding people)... well it's easy see why people succumb to that nonsense.
The fundamental problem is that engineers are treated as a commodity in the Valley, and investor money is prized. It should be the other way; funding should be the commodity, and high-end engineering talent should be the seat of prestige.
[+] [-] michaelwww|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peterashford|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] startswithaj|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mercer|12 years ago|reply
There are many plausible explanations for this (and obviously I've tried to get to the root of this phenomenon too), but at some point I started reflecting on whether this behavior is a good or bad thing.
I think it's both good and bad. It's good primarily because a lot of people look at their own problem in isolation, and share/address them as 'their unique problem', which keeps them from seeing underlying patterns or principles and from tapping into the experiences and observations of the countless others that have had pretty much the exact same problem. But it can also be bad, because not everyone likes being subjected or presented with this kind of generalization, and attempting to think about a problem in a general sense while you are suffering from it yourself complicates the search for solutions immensely (especially practical, direct solutions to implement).
Does anyone know if there has been research into this? I never really thought of diving in the the 'psychology' of programmers...
[+] [-] johnmurray_io|12 years ago|reply
In this particular case, this is not only my experience but the experience of some of my colleagues and friends. That doesn't mean that this applies to everyone and obviously it is an opinion article.
[+] [-] peteforde|12 years ago|reply
I try not to open every link or anything, because I procrastinate just like everyone else. However, some of the value that I provide my clients is knowing about changes to their competitive landscape before they do.
Tightly coupled with both experience and a willingness to offer strong, thoughtful opinions on the day's tech news, I am often able to be the most honest and disconcertingly knowledgeable person at the table... all thanks to scanning HN a few times a day.
I owe much of my livelihood to your often link-bait posts, so thanks. :)
[+] [-] Segmentation|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mikeb85|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skwirl|12 years ago|reply
But I don't work in the startup world. I don't get the stress of second guessing everything I do because in the same week opinions on all sides of an issue germane to startups have been heavily upvoted at different times. So perhaps that is key.
[+] [-] slig|12 years ago|reply
On HN one can fool himself think that he's getting value, but that isn't always the case.
[+] [-] Houshalter|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] minimaxir|12 years ago|reply
You have manually curate the subreddits you want, unfortunately.
[+] [-] edgarallenbro|12 years ago|reply
4-5 years ago, you would more often see long articles or self posts where someone would make a case for something on a topic. People would read the whole thing, try and understand the issue, and talk about it.
As reddit has grown, thoughtful posts have been replaced by one liners and memes. The front page is mostly just a dumping ground for whatever is viral at the moment.
I think this, interestingly, mirrors what happened to democracy in the United States. The democracy that the founding fathers imagined was one run mostly by the educated few, with everyone else also having the ability to voice their concerns.
What its turned into now is a chaotic mess of talking points and rhetoric, with two factions on opposite sides just screaming the same things at each other.
I think its because the more people you get involved in decision making, the simpler you have to make the case for each potential choice in order for the most people to be able to understand it. People will choose an inferior choice that they can understand over a superior one that they can't.
And the problem then is that oftentimes the most important things are the things that are hardest to understand.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ebiester|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k-mcgrady|12 years ago|reply
I noticed that the more time I spend active on HN (in comments) the more I tend to correct friends when they make a mistake or vigorously argue a point of view on something not that important (these aren't bad things the but the frequency with which I was doing them annoyed me and my friends and it wasn't just the important stuff I was arguing, it was stupid things).
When I logged out of HN for a while this behaviour slowly started to improve. I couldn't stay away for ever though but I am much more aware of the effect and try to stop myself before I get too deep into a stupid debate/argument both on HN and IRL.
[+] [-] nisa|12 years ago|reply
I don't blame HN. I've learned and still learn a lot of cool stuff here. It's the best source to stay up to date on internet drama and timely background information for security and hacking related incidents. Also a lot of programming and Unix related ideas I would hardly find anywhere else. But it's of little use to me. I'm not the security engineer of a start up. I'm not even really coding at the moment.
My reality is different. I should leave my room, work on my bicycle, solve the real and urgent issues around my life and sit in the library or hanging around with friends doing real stuff. Connecting with real people and learning something about other aspects of life. This may be different for others here.
Instead I'm here trapped in a strange click loop. I would do probably something similar without HN or even without internet. It's sad but the OPs post about is a good reminder to cut it down... it's irrational for me and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
[+] [-] Sakes|12 years ago|reply
But in the beginning it is a wealth of information, giving you insight into what should be expected when trying to start a barebones new company.
So you gorge on the articles until you rarely get new insights from them. Then, naturally, your addiction to HN ends. (Typically this starts the "remember when HN was good?" comments)
Now if you are addicted for other reasons, like you feel socially involved here, that I can not speak to. But if your addiction is content, that will fade once you've had your fill.
[+] [-] zmmmmm|12 years ago|reply
How this all plays out in my head is a complex thing, but overall I feel like it is bad for my self-image. It is just very hard to keep the perspective in mind that I might be in the top 20% of people in a field but the top 1% will be the ones who start commenting on a specialised topic on HN. Add to that the different personality types hiding behind people's pseudonymous identities and you are getting a super distorted picture of the world.
[+] [-] danenania|12 years ago|reply
There are certainly roles fit for specialists, but generalists with rare blends of difficult and useful skills are a lot more valuable in most situations. Specialization in any one area tends to have rapidly diminishing returns.
I think any above average developer can make themselves more valuable at a much faster rate by becoming decent at complementary disciplines like design, user experience, conversion optimization, writing, etc. than by continuing to hone their development skills.
Even within development, becoming decent at every level of the stack, from dev ops and databases to front end, is usually going to add a lot more value than becoming slightly stronger at your specialty.
[+] [-] hkmurakami|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] return0|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChikkaChiChi|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonathanjaeger|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Stealth-|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] themodelplumber|12 years ago|reply
A question: What makes you think so? I've gone months and years at a time without reading any news; it's a fantastic feeling, and if something is really important you'll hear about it from a friend.
Just as "read less HN" may not be applicable to everyone, "you should probably keep reading the news" may not apply to others, or at least others may have had positive experiences quitting the consumption of news media.
Scary, I know ;-)
[+] [-] sean-duffy|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnmurray_io|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] conanite|12 years ago|reply
When you read a bunch of articles and upvote interesting ones (for whatever your value of "interesting" is), you contribute to the community by making a distinction between articles.
The problem with reading from a curated feed is that you're most likely no longer participating (because it's too late to meaningfully upvote), and hence delegating curation to all the other users. When a majority of all the other users are doing the same, then the power of curation becomes concentrated in fewer voters.
I suspect the value of HN is amplified by the meaningful participation of its users. There are many other ways to be a passive consumer of news.
[+] [-] danso|12 years ago|reply
But I mainly read HN for the tech news. I'm one of those people who will learn about Github/Twitter/Heroku being down from here. All the big hacks are posted here and thoroughly discussed. I probably would've never played around with CoffeeScript, Angular, Go, and Dart without them being endlessly discussed around here. I wish I had something like HN when I was in college.
[+] [-] VMG|12 years ago|reply
But I agree with the larger point -- HN is addictive and biased. Moderation is key.
[+] [-] peterashford|12 years ago|reply
I view HG as a boy's club for programming fashionistas. It just happens that sometimes amongst all the posturing there's something genuinely valuable.
Regarding the OP - I think that HN is fine as long as you learn to skim and filter.
[+] [-] hgezim|12 years ago|reply
However, the content that I get from HackerNews is priceless, so quitting makes no sense.
[+] [-] james33|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GuiA|12 years ago|reply
I suggest the ridiculous notion that you should do what makes you happy, and if going on HN fulfills some part of your being - no matter how irrationally - then go for it.
[+] [-] nettletea|12 years ago|reply
The issue I have with HN (and other Forums), is that there is a lot of repetition in the comments. In part on HN this is probably not helped as it's difficult to overview and digest threads, especially if the comment trees are large. Comment verbosity and positional changes also make it difficult.
I think that is why in part people come, post, then move on. Necro-posting, even a day late is pretty pointless if you want to add to the general discussion.
I think I'd rather comments have a character limit. Or to get people to post summaries of their posts as titles. And/or some tl;dr; post mortems on comment threads.
[+] [-] johnjourney|12 years ago|reply
HN - Why It's Actually Good For Your Well Being (medium.com)
[+] [-] pcmonk|12 years ago|reply