I can save threads to read later but manually checking threads that I like to save to see what others say seems to be incredibly tedious.
I wasn't thinking about a Chrome extension, which might be a better solution, but instead a way to ping the site periodically to get the total number of comments and then send out a text message or something to people (with an associated web interface for people to subscribe).
Of course, it'd be nicer if that was just built into the site, but it also gives the opportunity for some of us to build our own solutions if we're so inclined :-).
On a side note, I've been putting some work recently into pulling data from the HN Who's Hiring threads and shared some of that today here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7687128
Unfortunately, there weren't any comments so I'm not sure if people just didn't see it or just weren't interested in asking the same questions I have related to the listings that get posted :-(.