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Comment by GuB-42 | Hacker News Reader

You are on HN, managed by Y Combinator, a startup incubator. If that's your reference, you will have a biased view since building companies and "going pro" is literally the reason why this community exists.

Not only that but programming is a highly marketable skill, it is relatively easy to turn that hobby into a well paid job so of course people will discuss that.

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> "going pro" is literally the reason why this community exists.

I'm just here for the free coffee.

yea, i just like reading articles about people falling 15,000 feet from the sky.

yea, apparently not having a spleen is helpful if you are falling 15,000 feet from the sky. considering this operation for myself.

Also having a knife stuck to your belt, instead of your knee pouch.

Money is also nice

I've worked for some companies that had draconian IP assignment contracts. The worst was General Motors. It basically said that if I invented anything that they might possibly use in business, then it belonged to them. This was back when they made locomotives and kitchen appliances as well as cars. They had their fingers in almost every possible industry.

Part of my response was to keep potentially profitable ideas inside my head until after I left to work somewhere else. Even today, I hesitate to do any hobby that an employer might want to confiscate.

Fortunately, most places I've worked since GM are only interested in stuff related to the business that they do. If you program on the side, they see that as you are keeping up with new technology and training yourself - which is a very good thing. Almost every interview I'm in has some form of the question "how do you keep up to date?" I'm always older than the interviewers and they really want to know how to keep up with stuff. It is hard.

I posted this link yesterday in a thread about "work for hire" and intellectual property assignment contracts:

https://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=153046

That kind of explains the general attitude around here of when someone introduces a new experimental tool or alternative, and the comments are full of "you should be using x, y, z because it's the industry standard and that is what scales!"

That’s because it generates interesting discussion beyond just replying to everything with “nice post bro, keep it up.” Now we get to discuss the pros and cons of the options.

I'm not sure it does.

Yeah HN is a bubble within the tech bubble that's highly focused, among other things, on making money.

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