Ask HN: How opiniated Is HN? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How opiniated Is HN?

11 pointsjanikvonrotz22 comments

I am long time lurker here and recently I got fed up of the overall pro BigTech sentiment.

So I am curious. Where are you at home and who do you work for? Is HN really just made out of Silicon Valley tech workers?

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> Where are you at home and who do you work for?

In my office :) Southern Europe if that's the question, and I work for myself, contractor/freelancer jumping between existing relationships and kickstarting new startups trying to find product-market fit.

Never visited the US, never had any plans to visit the US and don't have any relationships with anyone/anything from the West coast in the US, FWIW.

I'm here because HN is filled with interesting people from all over the world, even encountered a childhood (programming) hero once or twice and managed to get questions answered. The wide range of people is why I keep coming back after almost two decades of being here.

I mostly use https://news.ycombinator.com/active as a "frontpage", it's sorted by most active discussions rather than "trending upvotes", as I'm mainly here to read and write comments, rather than finding new articles. I think using any of the other "lists" as a frontpage might give you a different impression, because I certainly feel like HN is more "Pro BigTech" than any other websites, if anything I'd probably say the opposite, but probably the truth sits somewhere along the middle.

>I am long time lurker here and recently I got fed up of the overall pro BigTech sentiment.

That's just like your opinion man.

I'm a european Python developer for a private ERP company, grown from 1000 to 6000 employees in the last 7 years or so.

You asked this question at a time when Europeans are just getting up to go to work, and most SV folks are fast asleep. I would not expect responses to reflect an unbiased sample.

I’ve also noticed marked differences in average sentiment across the course of the day, which likely also reflects time zone effects.

There are non-SV types here as well (myself included), but yes, HN is made by and for a very particular subset of the dev world. And, ironically, that subset is not "hackers".

Lots of hackers on here, not to be confused with crackers. There's a constant stream of stories about hacking hardware and software.

The top story right now is someone being a classic hacker, hardware flashing bricked nest thermostats.

There are, yes. I'm among them. But we are not really the target audience, we're just in an overlap in the Venn diagram.

Back in the 1980s I wrote an inspection reporting system in Turbo Pascal, with handhelds programmed in PL/N, a proprietary variant.

I was a sysadmin for about 15 years. I made gears for about 5 years before long covid yeeted me out of the labor pool.

I'm a Region Rat, born and raised in Hammond, Indiana. Now I live in the cheapest house in Munster.

Obviously I'm not an SV tech worker. ;-)

I am in Texas working from home for a DC defense contractor. I have never worked for any company based in California and I have been a corporate software developer for almost 20 years.

I am in the UK and retired after 50 years of it.

If you only look at the front page you will get that impression. Not if you look at newer stuff. I use hnapp.com for that.

[That's why I am here!]

I don't think I'm pro-bigtech or particularly anti-bigtech.

I'm pro-use-shit-that-works and I'm anti-exploit-people-to-fill-coffers. Unfortunately, BigTech seems to shift out of the first realm and firmly into the second fairly quickly. People so enamored with the fact that it could be done, that they don't bother to think if it _should_ be done. The current AI-industry-wide financial circle-jerk that is sure to end in tears. Shoving AI down everyone's throats in some attempt to draw a profit from the hugely inefficient (and rarely useful) ai blob. So many on-screen adverts that reading an article without uBlock should earn you some kind of reward just for being able to make it through all the distractions and page layout oddities. It's enshittification in the name of profit, and it sucks.

And it's completely lacking kindness, an essential virtue for the world. Reliability, Functionality, Kindness. These are my lowest bars for life.

(also, not SV - not even 'murican!)

> I got fed up of the overall pro BigTech sentiment.

Not saying this isn't true, but maybe this is your own bias that makes you think that way.

Mostly small companies. Not really startups as HN would understand the term, but some tried to be. But now working for big (but sub-faang) tech.

Not a SV employee, never have been. Online since 79.

IIRC, from some old post, 60% USA, 30% Europe, 10% Rest of the world. [Hi from Argentina!]

People like stuff that makes them cash. It's a subconscious bias that's hard to escape.

HN seems actually fairly anti big tech and especially anti AI

I spend a ton of time here on HN. I live on the west coast between California and Washington. Lived and worked in Silicon Valley but ended up moving 74 miles away to the coast and commuted in (before internet). Retired now. I miss the old days: mountain Charlie’s bar in Los Gatos, Saint James Infirmary, Cal’s hamburger’s in Sunnyvale. Mustard Mikes hotdogs on Skyline highway. The Vortex nightclub in Palo Alto. Shopping at the old Fry’s store for TTL chips. Back in 1986 my rent was $293 a month for a room in a really nice house now worth $2.5 million.

I'm retired from SV tech, and built early computers from S-100 boards and lots and lots of solder (hasn't affected my brain). Like Kevin Kelley, and Ted Nelson "Computer Lib/Dream Machines" and maybe even Jobs and Woz, always felt that computers should liberate people.

I've despised "big tech" even when it wasn't so big, as in a certain creep dumpster-diving to get the source code for BASIC.

I've written down ideas for liberating kinds of tech, but it occurred to me that they often just try to undo the damage that's been done by sociopaths leveraging technology, and some of the worst offenders with a brilliant new business model: Sell ads. Low hanging fruit at the expense of print media.

And I experienced the internet before ads.

> Advertising is a poison that demeans even love – and we're hooked on it: George Monbiot (2011) [0]

Still worth trying. The times demand it.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/oct/24/advert...

There are many real hackers here, brought by the "hacker" in the hackernews name. But it is definitely a minority less vocal than the tech bro majority.

I live in Berlin and I am self-employed. I earn a living from simplifying German bureaucracy for immigrants.

I am quite stereotypically left-leaning, and hostile to greedy behavior and "move fast and break things". I mesh pretty well with the vibe on HN, because most people here seem pretty jaded about Big Tech, finance bros and the like. I also like how polite the conversation is.

> pro BigTech sentiment

I would say that your impression comes mostly from the fact that majority of users here, in my view, are from north america, and big tech is inherently "made in usa", as europe is completely impotent in the tech sector(mostly due to the lack lack of financing and high level of bureaucracy). so i would say that it skews the overall opinion. but i would not say that people in here are some kind of "yes men" or die hard fanboys if silicon valley.

on the other hand, i care very little about the "sentiment" or opinion of others in here, so it might be just flying over my head.

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