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Comment by johnfn | Hacker News Reader

The timing of this poll is definitely going to throw off the results. It's nearly 2AM on the US West Coast, and most people are going to be asleep.

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Since you'd like to get reliable results from all over the world, there's hardly any single suitable timing for such a poll. The only hope is for it to stay visible for close to 24 hours.

If it stays in the first page for 24 hours, the final result will be significant enough.

(in)significant enough, yes. "(Rest of) Europe" goes out through the roof and now guess which of the EU-countries.

Do non EU countries qualify for (Rest of) Europe ;)

Nope, countries like Switzerland, Norway, Ukraine, Russia and Turkey certainly don't qualify... </sarcasm>

Only countries that qualify for the eurovision contest count ;-)

Israel then?

Pretty much any country kinda close-ish to Europe.

We're currently 24 hours in. Saving results for posterity:

United States - NYC and SF area 1473 points

Canada 519 points

UK 590 points

(Rest of) Europe 1632 points

Australia/Oceania 271 points

South America 181 points

(Rest of) Asia/Pacific 247 points

Africa 76 points

(Rest of the) United States 2220 points

China 71 points

India 294 points

The timing isn't really the issue. As danmaz74 said, it needs to be on 24h.

If you would start it during the day in an US-timezone, other time zones would be underrepresented.

that and I almost clicked united states half awake, before realizing the other united states (the rest of the states) was way down below.

Although many Europeans are at work and may not be on HN, I'd expect to see the most votes from Asia.

"Although many Europeans are at work and may not be on HN"

Uhm, that's exactly why I'm on HN.

:) indeed.

OT, but frankly such attitude is recurring and I can't imagine how it is compatible with HN "ethos".

If you're at work, be effective there or change the work. What's to be so proud in slacking during work hours? Would you want such people working in your startup?

I don't think reading some news after lunch, or while having your morning coffee, is that bad for your productivity ...

When someone claims that he's on HN "exactly because he's at work", it's not sounding like some innocent morning coffee break.

Your comment keeps getting up/down-voted like crazy, which seems to indicate that there is a strong and opinionated divide on the topic of proper work ethic.

It would be a lot more interesting if people actually stated their arguments, though.

I don't know about anyone else, but I didn't sign up for any ethos and I don't like policing other people's "innocent coffee breaks" either.

If we're now shunning people for not maximizing productivity, you can count me out.

No one can work 100% all day every day. You get 4-5 hours of good, solid productivity before you burn out. Take a break every now and then, you'll live longer.

Different ways to look at work ethic:

Mercenary (sneaky): "They're getting the exact amount of work from me that they manage to extract."

Mercenary (quid pro quo): "They're getting what they're paying for. If they want increased work ethic, they have to increase their pay ethic."

Mercenary (clever): "I will go above and beyond the call of duty in ways that get noticed by my boss."

Work ethic (intrinsic/weberian): "Work in the sweat of thine brow from dusk till dawn. I sleep well at night knowing I always do my utmost for my company."

Work ethic (LessWrong.com / game-theory): "It's utility-maximizing in the long-run to pre-commit to being the kind of person who has good work-ethic, even if there is no utility to be gained in a specific concrete situation."

Work ethic (soldier): "I'm a professional, I get the job done."

Hostile: "Fuck 'em!"

Snake: "Fuck 'em! But pretend to like 'em so I get a raise."

Survivalist: "Anxiety. Depression. Gastric upset. Make it through another day. They took my red stapler."

Ruthless prioritizer: "It's really too bad that I'm slacking off at work. But time/energy is scarce and my own projects have to take precedence, sorry."

Conscientious objector: "I'm not going to work hard for my company, 'cause they're at best neutral and at worst actively harming humanity."

Attention-span challenged: "[refreshes Reddit]"

Wow! Great list!

I find that in a discussion it's best to avoid the trench warfare of "you vs me" and instead try to understand as many perspectives as possible.

Intelligence: understanding a given perspective.

Knowledge: knowing of many different perspectives.

Wisdom: choosing the perspective that is most right under the circumstances.

HN isn't that bad because you can read articles on how to improve your coding skills, learn about libraries that can help you be more productive by not reinventing the wheel, and so on. As long as it doesn't get in the way of work that has to be done, there's much worse ways of slacking off.

Most are not in startups I guess. For me it is the duty of your boss/company to give you enough interesting work that you don't even think about checking HN.

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