Poll: Hacker News Person of the Year in Tech | Hacker News Reader

Poll: Hacker News Person of the Year in Tech

80 pointsRyanMcGreal43 comments

As per the names suggested in this Ask HN post - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6800515 - here is a poll listing all the names.

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I want to vote for Elon Musk too, but Edward Snowden is too important. Also, why are there no women listed? Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer made lots of news this year.

As a European I don't even know who Sheryl Sandberg is, but googling her it seems she's not really practising what she preaches: http://valleywag.gawker.com/revealed-sheryl-sandbergs-unpaid... ;)

Sheryl Sandberg wrote a very influential book about (her perspective on) being a woman in today's workplace called Lean In.

She's often described as the emotional heart of Facebook and is one of the few truly powerful women in tech and the only one currently directly engaging in the debate on the issues associated with that.

You can watch her truly inspiring talk on TED to get an idea of what it's all about: http://www.ted.com/talks/sheryl_sandberg_why_we_have_too_few...

> She's often described as the emotional heart of Facebook

That's an interesting role I've never heard of before. Is there an equivalent at Apple and Google?

She was the emotional heart of Google until her emotions got the better of her and she defected to Facebook.

Hmm, so Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer "made lots of news"... is that why they should be included?

One is a corporate hack who had a book ghost-written, the other is a corporate hack who once dated Larry Page and landed a nice 5 year gig at Yahoo.

They have done nothing for technology. Nothing. They should not be included just because they're in the filter bubble of internet gossip.

If you want to vote for someone, on merit, who happens to be female, try Limor Fried of Adafruit.

I just added the names that were put forward in the original Ask HN post. I've added Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer to the poll options.

I can understand that you were excited to be the one to create the poll, but I think you did a very poor job of it.

By the time you added the most recent names to the poll (22 minutes after creating it) at least one name already had 100+ votes.

You've also inexplicably put Narendra Modi on there (misspelled) even though he's not in tech.

It's not inexplicable including Narendra Modi, he just put all the names down that were in the original thread. The original thread didn't specify tech as being important.

Adding additional names because somebody else asked for it is hardly a major issue, it's just the nature of HN polls - there's no time to do a nomination phase then voting because if you don't act straight away, you're not going to get on the front page and nobody will vote.

(Although this seems to have been flagged off anyway...)

I think putting Snowden on here is cheating, especially among this crowd. Yes, what he did was extremely important. Yes what he did had a tech impact, but the majority of the impact was societal, IMHO. I voted for him on Time, but here I have to vote for Musk.

All tech's impact is societal. That's the point of tech.

And Snowden's technical ability was instrumental to what he did. So I think he fits quite nicely into the category.

I'm sure many of Yahoo's employees and investors appreciate Mayer's efforts, but I don't think she really had a big impact on anyone else.

I have to admit that I don't know much about Sandberg, but her Wikipedia page doesn't really show anything worthy of a "person of the year award." Perhaps you can enlighten me?

How about Malala Yousafzai? She's amazing. Not really a tech person, but advocating for education is one of the best ways to nurture technological innovation.

Edward Snowden is much less about "tech" and a lot more about privacy revolving mobile phones, internet and a lot more, like banking information, centralised processing of CCTV camera footage, etc, etc.

obviously its because guys don't care about women's issues

I was hoping to vote for CowboyNeal.

Along those lines, anyone else remember Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf being promoted by Slashdot for some ridiculous poll?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_the_Angry_Drunken_Dwarf

Snowden currently winning: http://hn-poll-rank.herokuapp.com/rank?post=6801294

Thanks for making that app. I'm too brain-dead to sort the options otherwise.

Thanks for the comment. I truly care about what you think.

I don't think Elon Musk is a very good candidate for this year. Last year seemed more eventful for both Tesla and SpaceX.

plus, he doesn't like fuel cells

First Past the Post poll? Really? We're supposed to be smart nerds; with more than two candidates we should be using a preferential voting system, not FPTP. Even the Academy Awards and the Heisman trophy are selected with preferential voting systems. We're letting ourselves be outsmarted by football players? Someone make a Schulze Method poll already.

Edit: okay, it looks like it's Approval Voting; I didn't realize you could vote for multiple. That's a lot better but still not as good as the football players!

One vote per voter or are multiple votes allowed?

The system was provided by Diebold, if that's any help.

Narendra Modi!! Surprised to find him listed here. I am an Indian.

Second that. He may be a good or bad politician depending on the person's viewpoint, but there is almost nothing he has done for technology. The closest he comes to tech that is covered on HN is to have covered a lot of area in his home state with solar projects.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who isn't happy with the other choices (like why include Sheryl Sandberg but not Mark Zuckerberg, and Narendra Modi), but I wanted to vote for Edward Snowden anyway.

Who are these people and why is Richard Stallman among them?

Narendra Modi is not a technology person. He's a factional leader in India. Apparently responsible for the deaths of a few thousand people, no less.

Modi 2014.

Is it possible to remove Narendra Modi's name from this list before someone creates a Facebook meme out of this page.

Edward Snowden?

He's on the list now, so now my comment looks like I'm questioning why he's there. I am not. He wasn't there when I first posted that (or, I've lost my mind)

Nice try, NSA.

Terry A. Davis

Not in the list but I would vote for Cmd Chris Hadfield. He was fantastic during his space mission.

Naval Ravikant

Keith Alexander

No, there are no down-vote buttons on polls.

You could create a new poll that include him and Obama (also, you can change the polling question)

If I don't win (and I don't deserve to) I give all my points to Rich Hickey.

Would love to know who at HN had the epiphany that their Person of the Year in Tech list left out Marissa Mayer & Sheryl Sandberg. As of 9:38am today it was 100% male; checked back at 10:05 and there they are, tacked on at the end.

Yep.

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