this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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Wow, it's been a while since I've been there, but my impression was the polar opposite. That it's filled with business folks and tech bros. That their unbalanced voting system unearths controversial takes rather than informative comments. Every now and then, you'll genuinely see a comment from someone with expertise, but that was not worth sacrificing my mental health for.
One of my hats os interviewing senior engineers, one of my warm up questions is to ask where they get their news and stay current.
Hacker news is a very, very, common response.
In fact I don't have a better news source to offer you.
I worry about dismissing the discussion as tech bro and businessy... As real engineers use the site, I also worry about dismissing people as tech bros, it's not a great term, and I think unfairly applied to engineers because they are often not neural typical.
How important is this to you? If they say they don't make an effort to keep up with tech news, is that a red flag? Is your company/product really so much on the cutting edge that you need the team to be keeping up with the latest tech news.
Doesn't seem very important to me, but it's one of the first questions you ask.
its a warm up question, its not a requirement, getting to know you.
But, someone in industry who doesn't make an effort to stay up to date in the industry, somehow, would raise an eyebrow... FWIW nobody has ever not had a answer to that question.
I certainly don't want to dismiss any individuals as tech bros. Tech broism is more like a natural phenomenon, which occurs when you lock exclusively privileged people into a room for long enough and then let them discuss user needs.
At some point, they'll ask themselves questions like "Why do we need privacy?" and everyone else in the room will agree that they've never needed it either ~~and then they'll found Google~~.
I am very much at risk of this, too. I have to constantly go out of my way to try to re-adjust my perspective, so that I don't completely miss the ball on what users actually need.
And places like Hacker News naturally form, because of course, we all do want to only talk about topics that we consider relevant. And folks whose needs are not generally considered relevant by the Hacker News community will look for different places, too.
I guess, a question you can ask yourself:
If you've ever interviewed a senior engineer who was for example black, gay, trans and/or a woman, did they frequent Hacker News?
Have you taken a look at lobste.rs? Not saying it's better, but there are alternatives.