Comment by charlieirish | Hacker News Reader

Comment by charlieirish | Hacker News Reader

There have been lots of negative comments on 'year in review' or 'launch result' posts like this (see [1], [2] and [3]). However there are a few reasons why I believe HN should respect these as valid, interesting and "On Topic" : 'Anything that good hackers would find interesting'.

- Of Interest. It's hard to disagree that posts like this are of interest to hackers and HN readers. The four posts mentioned (linked, [1], [2] and [3]) are scientific and analytical. They go in to detail about how four technically/graphically minded gentlemen have failed or succeeded in their various startups and ideas. They offer an honest appraisal of their own decisions.

- Honesty not Arrogance. Many self-absorbed posts are arrogant in their success stories. I see each of these as being honest and humble. This is certainly subjective but I believe them to be modest in their writings.

- Education. HN can certainly learn from all three of these posts. I think patio11 put it well when he said: "I would hope that the six-thousand odd words of narrative in the post and copious linked material contains non-obvious useful tidbits such as "You can increase the sales of a mature, six-year old software company by over 60% solely by A/B testing while keeping all other factors constant."

- Democratic(ish) Voting. Let's not forget that HN is largely driven by its readers.

- Inspirational. I know that many people have taken great inspiration from these posts, particularly those wishing to move in to their own products or to write eBooks. One of those is http://brianfran.co/wroteabook/ who dedicated his book to Sacha Greif (sgdesign). If HN serves as an inspiration resource to encourage creativity and success, isn't that enough.

Whilst not all agree, I would like to say A Very Well Done bdunn, patio11, sgdesign and nathanbarry and thank you for being honest, humble, educational and inspirational.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4982416

[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4982649

[3] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4974121

The negative reaction is more to do with the old community being invaded by these new types of posts - a lot of which focus on money (how I made $x in y days doing z), some sort of secret to being wealthy (top x tips on quitting your job and making your first million) or some sort of life shortcut.

There are many sub communities within the broader startups and entrepreneurial fields, but what HN used to be was a group of people who were hackers first with interests in stories about other startups, new technology, implementing technology etc.

There is an entire other subculture around working from home, the 4 hour work week, SEO, affiliate marketing, how to ship product online, how to write an ebook that can sell for $40 in 24 hours, the micro-ISV space etc.

That later group, who would prefer to talk about how they sold $50k worth of software or ebooks, is much larger than the group of hacker entrepreneurs who would much rather read about the latest Javascript library, security exploit or scientific breakthrough.

Business of Software, the forum that Joel Spolsky ran for micro-ISV's shut down and it seems everybody came flooding over to HN (or were coming over steadily over the past few years). This means more of that type of content.

There can't be more than a few thousand technical (or want to be technical) entrepreneurs, while the group who are interested in breaking away from their career and becoming an ebook affiliate likely numbers in the millions.

A lot of those negative comments are, I feel, from frustrated hacker entrepreneurs who know you can make $100k a year online and who don't want to hear that story again. I didn't click on any of those links when I saw the headlines (no offense to the authors, but it just doesn't interest me) and the only reason I clicked on this thread is because I couldn't believe that another thread that mentions an amount of money in the title had again made it to the top of HN.

I have gone from clicking on 60-80% of HN headlines to now hitting 10%, on a good day. I bet that if I did click on one of those headlines, that I too would have left a smart-ass cynical comment as well, but i'm passed that stage of protesting submissions that I feel don't belong here and now just move on (except this thread).

edit: I realize that I made some sweeping generalizations, I don't mean that people interested in SEO aren't hacker entrepreneurs, I just needed a way to define what are different groups of people in the audience here.

Author here. Trust me — I completely understand where you're coming from. With Planscope (my SaaS product) I'm getting to engineer a really rewarding product with Backbone.js and Ruby.

However, because I'm bootstrapped, things like SEO and marketing are pretty important if I want to be able to keep making my house payments, so they interest me.

I think marketing and engineering are completely complimentary. You can't have one without the other in this space. I need to know how to make money selling software or whatever else if I want to keep going, but I also am curious about the latest JS lib or whatever else to help build a sellable product.

My goal with this and other posts has been to always show "hackers" that building software and running a business aren't mutually exclusive. Stories and inspiration from others helped me get to where I am today; and I hope that my story can help others. That's all :-)

Do you find that balancing the business, marketing, and writing side of things comes naturally or is it something you have to force a bit? I can do it, but it seems like a grind versus learning new and rewarding software techniques.

....but what HN used to be was a group of people who were hackers first with interests in stories about other startups, new technology, implementing technology etc.

Stories about other startup you listed. So what's wrong with stories of how this startups made money. You mentioned implementing new technology. But any technology or opensource software not actively used in money making ventures starts to lag and eventually dies.

Why are we being hypocritical.

Hacking books (especially tech books) or hacking code? What's the difference? Both are just as technical.

I will agree, the post could have been titled better. What's relevant here is not the money but the OP's change of attitude from live to work to work to live.

That's something I hardly ever see on HN. And it belongs here on HN.

You think the HN community has a problem with these posts because it's filled with people who can already execute on the "million dollar consultancy" or "make 100k online" business models? That the backlash is coming from the "thousands" of "hacker entrepreneurs" resenting the "millions" of "microISV" people taking over the site?

Give me a break. The backlash is from people who are so intensely jealous that they find the idea of making any money outside a job unseemly and would get back to bitching about how evil Valley VC is.

"The backlash is from people who are so intensely jealous"

Behaviorally, I'm wondering if some of the jealousy is coming from the "aw shucks" tone of these posts.

After all, in high school, nobody was ever jealous of the cliche kid with horn rimmed glasses that studied all the time, never partied, went to medical school (or became a rocket scientist) and ended up making lots of money (and actually married a beautiful nurse). He worked hard he deserved his success. (Or the athlete who made it into the pros or pick your own example). I think it's human nature for people to see someone who appears to be naive/lucky and things just worked out.

A relative of mind recently commented that his college roommate "who had a lower GPA than I did" made it big on wall street and was living the life with a beach house and all the trimmings (while the relative was working for a bank doing just "ok"). It was clear he was jealous and that he felt he was smarter and had worked harder than this individual.

Just a hypothesis.

Edit: Emphasis on appears to be.

This is the same mentality that suggests that 37signals is supercar-successful because they lucked out and got a popular blog. As if blogs were harvested from comet shrapnel instead of simply being the result of posting regularly about your work.

There is nothing Patrick is doing that most people on HN couldn't do. That is, in fact, his whole damn story; it is literally his thesis. "I spent 5 hours a week building 'hello world' and hooking it up to a random number generator and then refining ways to sell it to teachers; here's what happened". LUCKY DUCKY! cries HN.

"There is nothing Patrick is doing that most people on HN couldn't do"

Sure if they applied themselves and put the effort in. Big "if" there though.

In any case I don't think Patrick falls into the "aw shucks" category at all. The post he did was long and detailed and I don't remember much (just rescanned quickly maybe I missed) about how he did it all and managed to still travel and have fun (he might have but I didn't see that). The sheer amount of detail in that post is great. I don't even have time to read it fully I can only imagine the effort that went into writing and editing.

There is also this sentence at the end:

"I think that, aspirationally, career/job/business/etc was never supposed to be my #1 priority, but be that as it may it sucked up a disproportionate amount of my twenties."

So Patrick did what he had to do to make it happen, this is no "boating accident" (it's a shark) and his success is the result of hard work. Not everyone has what it takes to do that. (I'm reminded of the Karate tournament that I was in when I was younger where I was absolutely blown away by opponent who clearly had put way more effort into preparing than I did.)

I'm not sure all, or even that most, HN'ers could achieve that because while they may be smart and they may read and learn everything they can they might not actually be good at applying that information, taking chances, having other things in their life suffer etc. or just plugging away.

"Let's not forget that HN is largely driven by its readers."

I would add that HN is also driven by the admins. The admins can decide what gets on the front page and what stays there. They are the gatekeeper to being able to gain votes to stay on that page (unless an admin decides to remove something?).

All those negative commenters can shove it up their ass. This is one of the few really interesting posts in the last few _months_ on HN. If they can't see the connection between business and "hacking" (whatever the fuck that might be in their minds), they won't get very far in this industry. Either you figure out your personal business/life model (one and the same almost in the US), or you crash and burnout.

Fuck the haters. So to speak.

Period.

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