Ask HN: Do you like the #BuildInPublic culture? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you like the #BuildInPublic culture?

33 pointsamrrs14 comments

Build in Public is quite popular these days. It also creates envy, jealousy and copy cats. What's HN's take on it?

Not saying this is the case for all of it, but the majority of the Build In Public content I've seen is in a writing style and attitude I personally don't like. Trendy hipster stuff, overly informal tone, emojis everywhere, invariably high JavaScript usage and focus on web stuff. There also seems to be strong influence from the "#Hustle" crowd.

I like reading tech blogs for interesting technical insights, left-field problems & solutions, etc. Lots of the Build In Public blogs I've seen seem to be borderline product updates with technical details sprinkled in, with accounts of very run-of-the-mill bugs and challenges. Makes me think it's just gimmicky marketing material.

No specific examples come to mind, and I do have a small sample size, this is just the impression I got from the content I've seen.

> There also seems to be strong influence from the "#Hustle" crowd.

This is what bothers me the most. Everything is a business nowadays. Blogging? Business. Building some kind of nice utility program? Business! Have some good advice to share? Build a course!

The build in public crowd seems to be more focused on KPIs than my boss is. I don't mind that people want to monetize things, but I hate that whenever you share something that you made just for fun, everybody expects you to "turn it into a business".

I really like when developers log changes as they happen, and poll their community on what they want to see next/what they think about minor changes. That's good content, IMO.

Unfortunately, the majority of "BuildInPublic" culture seems to revolve around unrelated lifestyle content and promotional material. Nobody is invested in their work as much as they are invested in their appearance, which is the major problem with taking any risks in public. Incentivizing your success makes it harder for you to share your failures, which leads to the same whirlpool of vapid, vain content that usually dominates Twitter.

It is a marketing strategy. Gimmicky at worst but genius at best in getting organic leads/traffic. I am beginning to see some value in it if you are a nobody because you can build an audience/following which can only help.

I am surprised to see such a cynical view of #BuildInPublic on the pretense that it's thinly veiled marketing.

What kind of marketing do you think is good marketing if not this? What's not to love? The content isn't being auctioned off to the highest bidder and injected into your eyeballs, the content has to be written well enough to leave you with a strong impression of the writer, sometimes you learn something relevant to your own work (sometimes not), and it's marketing that a solo-founder can accomplish without losing too many clock cycles to goals outside their core mission.

The only negative I see is when the writer jumps the shark and begins to see themselves as a written content producer when it was clear their original goal was to build something and tell others about it. This issue doesn't seem specific to #BuildInPublic, though. It's a tale as old as time regarding people trying to turn personal joys into monetizable careers.

I love this take. That's a really wholesome point of view. Will try to adopt it more myself.

I'd say I used to love it. I love the transparency and the communal learning that happens. But like all internet phenomena it has become full of people who just use it for cynical marketing purposes.

I personally don’t think it’s a culture. I’d call it a marketing strategy. I can be wrong of course. Curious to hear what others think.

If you have a large audience it can be quite profitable to document the journey, make youtube progress videos.

Some people would rather spend time entertaining people, than dedicate more time to a project

I do it sometimes because I work alone all the time. It's nice to get feedback and encouragement. It's cool to highlight work that is mostly unseen otherwise. I can also talk about my industry, the tools I use, the thinking behind what I do, and other related things.

Participation is entirely optional. I choose how much I'm willing to share.

I'm a beginner. And I have just one fear. That I'll be ridiculed. I've found this culture hard to accept. Even opening public GitHub repo was strange step for me. But I realized latter that no one actually cares about my mistakes. Haters gona hate. So it was a hard start for me. Now I love it.

A lot of interesting takes here.

My take is: #BuildInPublic works are often carried by indie hackers/solopreneurs. Working in public is a way for them to keep their motivation high, by having an additional purpose - they need something to report to their audience.

I do it for

(1) accountability: what did I work on, what is next. The internet is my boss. (2) logging my perspective: I will never know my thoughts and feelings at that specific point in time when looking back from the future if I don’t write them down now

I like it. It shows me what is possible.

Of course there will be some deception and show-off, but it is easy to look through those.

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