Hacker News Reader

Comment by orf | Hacker News Reader

You refuse to use an awesome product because the CEO of a startup is actively engaging with a community that may (or may not) use it, accepting feedback and discussing the product with people?

Ok....

View on HN

I wouldn't go as far as OP, and I'm not saying the post doesn't add anything useful to the discussion, but in this particular instance it does feel distasteful and opportunistic. I'm sure this discussion around what other CI providers do would have happened with or without this comment. I'd like to have seen some restraint exercised in this case.

This isn't engagement, it is quite clearly advertising.

Sure, he's advertising how Gitlab, a related product in the same space, handles this and the steps they took to prevent this problem from happening.

It's informative, not "gitlab doesn't suffer from this, here's a 10% off coupon https://gitlab.com!!".

You're right, his post does contribute to a discussion on how to avoid this situation (which is what I'd like the thread to be about). I think it is based on a history of seeing GitLab's marketing team or CEO in any comment section tangentially related to their product that has put a bad taste in my mouth. I usually know before clicking into a comment thread whether or not they will be pushing their platform inside.

In general, I would tend to agree with you. In this case, though, the original article was about CircleCI specifically but mentioned this being an issue across the entire industry. GitLab is a part of that industry and they have lots of users on HN so, in this case, the comment is relevant (IMO).

More generally, however, you're right although I have just come to accept that this is how things are on HN. Choose pretty much any "Show HN" thread or any thread about some cool new app/product/service and in the thread you'll find a few "shameless plug" comments that would be considered spam in any other forum: "Hey, we also make an app that does $foo, sign up for our beta at example.com and check us out!".

(One of the worst "offenders" is Userify. Pick any thread that relates tangentially to user authentication and chances are good you'll find a comment from them that manages to work their name/URL into the conversation somehow.)

OP clarified it as a general topic of discussion in the industry, and not specifically about CircleCI. Other companies in the space respond with what they are doing. I saw it as a completely on-topic post, and assumed the best of his intentions. Both gitlab and github have shared incredibly valuable information on their architectures, and there are many many people that can benefit from an open discussion about this, including CircleCI.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com