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Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

I am not blanket dismissing her concerns, nor am I making the argument that "that's how it is."

I'm quite surprised this has gotten so many upvotes. I generally do not feel I am responsible for how other people react to my comments. I certainly don't run around trying to figure out how to be the top comment.

I'm a demographic outlier here. I try to give my point of view as best I can, knowing that it will often be neither respected nor appreciated.

If people want to talk about BigCo, they are free to do so. But understanding how much of her story can be reasonably attributed to the company and how much to other things is the best way to criticize a company, if that is your desire. If you blame them for everything, people stop listening and won't take even legitimate criticisms seriously.

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Yes nuance in discerning between these things is important but your response's focus didn't acknowledge any merit of what she had to say about her direct experiences with Microsoft in particular. And your account has huge karma count of 18000 over only a year and a half. Are you really that surprised that this ended up at the top? Is your POV that often not respected?

Yes, I am really surprised. I think most of my karma comes from posting articles, not from my comments.

My opinion is somewhat respected on specific topics, such as homelessness. This article is not on a subject where I expected anyone to care one whit what I thought.

Plenty of my comments are initially met with downvotes or strong criticism. I participate here a lot because I'm medically handicapped and don't get out much, not because I have any fantasies that the world is particularly interested in my opinions.

I generally figure if the world were strongly interested in my opinions, my various websites would have more traffic and make more money. In point of fact, I am routinely mocked on HN for complaining about how my participation here has failed to garner me anything resembling a middle class income and told to STFU and go get a real job.

Do keep in mind that probably hundreds or thousands of people have read your comment here without reacting; these few negative replies are an extreme minority of the total population your words have reached.

Thank you for your concern. But I'm fine.

Choosing to engage with a specific comment is not necessarily evidence that I'm all up in arms about it. It is an unfortunate truism that there is generally more to say when people have a difference of opinion than when they see things the same way. It is unfortunate because it tends to promote an appearance of fightiness rather than conversation in online forums, even when the explicit goal is conversation, as it generally is for me personally.

I've participated here nearly ten years. Rest assured, I have some familiarity with how the forum operates.

(Between my old handle -- Mz -- and this one, I have more than 40k karma. If it were under one handle, I would be respectably high on the leader board.)

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