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Comment by notacoward | Hacker News Reader

> The fanatics in the OSS world (and Tech at large) seem to have forgotten that Silicon Valley != The World

When it comes to attitudes and languages, Silicon Valley is sometimes quite different than tech in the rest of the US. As a developer in the northeastern US, one of the adjustments I've had to make in working for an archetypal Silicon Valley company is to the way people express themselves and particularly how they express disagreement or criticism (i.e. in a way that can be interpreted either as more gentle or more passive-aggressive depending on context). You raise a good point, but I think the differences are even greater than you (or the OP) think.

Of course, talking about this on extremely SV-centric Hacker News might not achieve very much.

View on HN

Yea, if you've been in the SV bubble for too long you might not even perceive it!

One of the biggest cultural things I struggled to get used to when I moved out to the Bay Area for work (originally from the northeast too), was the extent to which I needed to constantly self-censor and water down my wording to the point of meaninglessness, simply to avoid offending someone or coming across as too harsh. People out here have such thin skin, and you're always walking on eggshells when you need to disagree with something. It's a kind of newspeak, where it colors every interaction with people and makes it impossible to deliver certain messages effectively, without sugar-coating or couching with "probablys" and "maybes". When you take this culture and these rules and assume the entire world plays by them, you're likely to end up looking totally out of touch.

EDIT: Self-censored a little. :-)

Here's a question I often like to ask myself about people I interact with:

> What is this person's equivalent of "F you"?

For a typical east-coaster or northern European it's likely to be exactly as in the question. ;) For some people, "I'm not sure I 100% agree" is about as close as you'll ever get. The left-coast average seems to be much closer to the second option. I'm not saying it's a bad thing - in fact I find it quite pleasant - but it can trip you up until you get used to it. At my last job, it took me years to figure out how to interpret my Indian colleagues' responses correctly (if indeed I ever did). This kind of calibration is an under-appreciated skill.

I've never had too bad a time getting away with f-bombs though I have weaned myself off using the n-word for camaraderie (opting for homies). I've found it all depends on reading the room. If people know you and what you're about, they'll take it for what it is.

That said I couch my words with "maybes and probablies" all the time by habit. I suppose it just feels more precise? I save hard assertions for when I mean them.

Disclaimer: Bay native.

These role would be sent for file training to the Netherlands. This is one of the most direct culture, you get a raw opinion.

This is a good thing, eventually, after an adaptation period where you think that missed the memo on being nice.

> extremely SV-centric Hacker News

HN users are about 10% from SV (5-14%, depending on what exactly you count). And about 50% from the US.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16633521

I think the SV influence is probably much stronger than those numbers show. For one thing, what are the numbers like when adjusted for posting frequency? Five users who each post once a month don't balance out even one of the people who post a dozen comments a day. Also, people who have very strong connections with SV companies as employers, investors, or even customers are likely to adopt some of those attitudes even if they live elsewhere (like me). I'm pretty sure a real sentiment analysis would show a different result than a mere user survey.

The numbers vary depending on what we measure but they just don't vary that much. For example, when you look at total submissions and comments, the SV portion goes up to 10.9%. The highest SV number I've seen is actually for total page views (14.4%), which may suggest that SV users are reading more than posting, relative to other demographics.

When I read your comment I can't help but hear it as taking a step away from the numbers and back into preconceptions (i.e. real numbers would show what you already know). One thing I've noticed from years of doing this is that people's preconceptions about HN are amazingly strong and often not open to change. Sorry—I know that sounds condescending; in case it helps, I don't think I'm any different.

> users who post submissions and comments

That's a far cry from weighting by comment instead of by user, not to mention the other factors I mentioned. Maybe it would help if you could provide a link where people could look at the raw data (properly anonymized of course) and do their own analysis instead of relying on yours.

> people's preconceptions about HN are amazingly strong

Indeed. As you point out, nobody's exempt. Of course, there are ways around that. The proof's in the pudding. There are probably many people here who could do a real sentiment analysis and compare the result to other sites. I'm as sure as you are of what that would show, even though we make different predictions.

I don't understand what you mean by weighting by comment?

The corpus of HN comments is public and available to anyone who wants to do a sentiment analysis on them. I've not seen any compelling-enough examples of sentiment analysis to want to do it.

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