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Comment by erlanger | Hacker News Reader

Fluff.

Can someone explain why we're taking business advice from a college kid who's working on an embryonic startup, and other than that has only worked in internships? The red flag here is that the post does not relate any relevant business experiences and has a linkbait title. Here are some others that exhibit identical traits:

* http://jessicamah.com/blog/?p=641

* http://jessicamah.com/blog/?p=560

* http://jessicamah.com/blog/?p=417

* http://jessicamah.com/blog/?p=406

My personal favorite: http://jessicamah.com/blog/?p=372

Hiring advice from someone who's never hired!

Maybe instead of spending time burning the midnight oil for my small business, I should post linkbait and get the red carpet treatment like this "entrepreneur" has.

Edit: It's also pretty lame to submit your own blog posts.

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A bit harsh. I don't think this is deliberate linkbait (or rather votebait); I think it's mostly youthful exuberance. And she does have a point, even though she doesn't have a lot of data to back it up.

I think it's youthful exuberance too. The blog post is not bad but my guess is that she heard or read it from other people. It's not based on experience.

I remember when I was in college, we had a shortage of professors. They started hiring fresh grads and they taught courses such as project management, entreprenuer, etc. The new teachers were teaching from the book. Students never listened and we passed the course just by reading the book.

I think it's self-promotion, for better or worse.

It's your choice who you take business advice from.

I don't know her personally, but she's young, bright, trying really hard, and going to succeed.

You on the other hand, joined 29 days ago and are whining like an arrogant prick.

Edit: It's ok to submit your own post, because you are only voting for it once...

If somebody posted an article on Python best practices with no evidence of Python experience, you'd be singing a very different tune. But I guess double standards are OK.

I didn't say a thing about the poster's age, intelligence, effort, or destiny. My point is that people shouldn't be giving such strong advice when it's based on nothing of substance.

"arrogant prick"

ad hominem argument for the win.

I don't see a problem with someone submitting their own blog posts if they're topical.

I read it more as needing our advice.

Observation: if real life people are too nice, you can get plenty of brutal feedback online - but note that harsh words are no more necessarily true than are kind words false.

BTW http://google.com/search?q=entrepeneur+site:http://jessicama... didn't find any of the "entrepreneur" misspelling you mention.

My bad on the misspelling, I sometimes leave out the extra "r." The quotes imply that this person is in fact not much of an entrepreneur.

I agree.

Created 403 days ago, just to make this one comment "I agree" ?

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=azrealus

I should clarify: accounts with this usage pattern seem to be common practice for spammers, that have been discussed on HN before.

azrealus, if you are a real person, I apologize for jumping to conclusions. I certainly have no problem with a real person, usage frequency isn't important - although it is preferable to contribute something to the discussion more than "I agree", since an upvote signals that.

10ren I'm real. sorry for not writing more and for waiting 403 days :). I've just found my old account...

Oh man, I'm sorry! I feel so embarrassed, I'm going red and my face feels hot.

I'll never doubt your existence again. :-)

Ah, so we've now reached the point where we frequently cite poster tenure?

It's interesting that you don't find a 403 day old account with only 1 (content-free) comment a little odd.

It is odd, but I don't care much for the practice of inspecting user profiles, except when browsing submitted content.

Edit: I've thought about this a bit, and I think it's wrong to suspect users in this way. There are likely many who just vote on stories and don't feel the need to leave comments. Maybe the commenter is just getting their feet wet...

thanks erlanger...

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