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Comment by iodbh | Hacker News Reader

Please pardon my negativity but i'm tired of this trend of taking something that span discussion on HN and making it into an app as soon as possible, then posting it on HN.

It's getting out of control since the old geek jobs article on Indiehackers. There's now at least one of these posts per week and they're less and less interesting. It's not showing cool tech or a cool idea, it's just trying to capitalize on the interest here and using HN as an early marketing channel.

I mean come on. This is literally an app that allows to add an element to a list because there was a succesful "Ask HN : who's firing ?" post a couple of weeks ago.

Please make it stop

View on HN

Then don't participate.

I actually find this idea very interesting and would love to subscribe to notifications about which companies are laying off workers or see trends about how many people are being laid off per week/month. As an investor, this is a nice data point that shows the health of the tech sector.

What exactly is wrong with capitalizing on interest here? Sounds smart to me - you know you're solving a real problem and you have a free marketing channel... So many people built stuff that nobody wants.

Seriously, uncovering data on lay offs and firings can only better people. I think HN keeps having ideas pop off like this precisely by its nature. If you go to a local automotive club there's going to be a lot of side projects on display. I would worry about HN becoming stale and (worse) irrelevant if it weren't doing these things.

I agree that it's smart and that's why it doesn't sit well with me : it's hacking community dynamics ( know interests and an encouraging attitude toward personal projects) into a revenue channel. A possible long-term consequence - HN slowly turning into a proto-producthunt - and a short-term one - a decrease in quality -concern me.

That being said, i do see the interest of the indicator. My comment is more about the trend highlighted by this post.

I'm actually very excited for this CRUD site; it'll provide valuable macroeconomic data around the tech industry (have we hit the inflection point yet? Is the market popping or slowly deflating? How quickly?). I prefer it far more than the endless stream of Go, JavaScript, Elixr, React, Containerization posts on HN.

It's a canary in the coal mine, and if you work in tech, it should interest you.

> I prefer it far more than the endless stream of (...) Containerization posts on HN.

Yeah, I'm starting to feel containers are the new Erlang here.

Make an app called "As Seen On HN", post about it, then the cycle will be complete and we can go back to the regular smorgasbord of things that get posted here.

Taken a step further, a webapp that tracks businesses that emerge from different online communities would be super useful for improving commercial targeting of social media, and with a delay on content updates baked in for free users could probably find a good group of paying ones.

The best way to kill a fad is to build it up to the point where it loses its novelty.

I love the way you turned this around : from frustration to an action course. Making me consider doing what i was criticizing moments ago. kudos.

Please don't build a needlessly bloated SPA obviously thrown together without much thought just so you can say "first" and post it on HN. If you care enough to do it, you should care enough to make it not suck. :)

How about an app for crowdsourcing answers to Y Combinator application questions?

> Please make it stop

Ignore posts that don't interest you, but don't discourage people from starting side projects. You never know what these side projects morph into.

Better than having "Ask HN: Who's Firing This Week?" threads every week, one for each topic that gets semi-regularly asked about. Think of it as a spam siphon.

Please define "cool tech" or "cool idea"

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