Ask HN: What did HN give you in 2018? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What did HN give you in 2018?

27 pointsvolument9 comments

Curious what insights, learning experiences, or career-changing moments this community was able to offer. Thank you for sharing!

View on HN

HN was hugely important in helping me and my cofounder validate and start a program for employed engineers to start companies (Sidepact). We started to validate whether start Sidepact with this post:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17008044

With the initial feedback + response, we were able to a) solicit 100+ applications and validate our idea, and b) decide to actually run the program (complete with speakers, investor events, and a 'demo day'). Over half of the first cohort heard of Sidepact through HN, and we're definitely thankful to have been able to reach the niche of folks who read HN!

Someone wrote it in a similar thread, I benefited from it so I want to write it again, for future readers.

I heard about someone (and then more people replied) that read "Healing Back Pain" book by John Sarno [1] and finally got rid of back pain. However strange it sounds, it seems to work. I didn't finish it yet but I already see the benefits.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Back-Pain-Mind-Body-Connectio...

Honestly, it took too much time. I need to better self-regulate my usage. Get back to once a day or less. Open that time for more producing, less consumption.

- A constant stream of great recommendations for books and talks

- Some useful advice on writing job descriptions and hiring

- One amazing new colleague who probably wouldn't have found us without HN

- Michael Nielsen's article about how to use Anki, which has inspired me to start using Anki for retaining all manner of interesting+useful things (not just vocabulary)

Lots of content which I actually enjoy reading. Advise regarding career path. Last but not least, ability to see people who shares my point of view without having to engage in an endless feed.

Million of dollars.

I am not even joking.

Here i read about Lambda Serverless and started exploring it and switched an entire ad network to Lambda.

I also read about Rust and put it to practise.

One key thing is here is you absorb the info selectively which helps you in your area of work otherwise it's wastful knowledge which you might never end up using.

HN was really interesting to find new startup and tech trends. Now it a mix of everything with too many political posts. Long time ago, there was too much noise only during the summer holidays, now it is all the year. I am on HN to learn, not to kill time.

People have been saying that for a long time now:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1934367

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6157485

I wrote a longish thing about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869.

It's great that you're here to learn. You could help with the quality of HN by upvoting the stories that help you do that, and flagging the ones that are off topic.

I have been reading HN since... 2008 maybe (I cannot remember) after quitting Slashdot. It was such an elegant place compared to Arrington's and Siegler's website. Now it seems that heated debates are everywhere. Maybe I am getting too old or too Swiss...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com