Stephen Elop Costs Nokia 10 Million Dollars of Lost Profit Every Day - <AUTHOR> http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/07/stephen-elop-costs-nokia-10-million-dollars-more-of-lost-profit-every-day-he-stays-with-nokia.html

<comment><USER2> Ahonen is deluded and has no idea about the state of the smartphone competition. He seriously seems to believe that Symbian in its current state is up there with Android, iOS and Windows Phone:

 _You the reader may think that Symbian was a dead OS, it was undesirable, it was failing in the market, it was obsolete etc. That all may have been true of the older versions of Symbian, up to September 2010. It is not true now. The facts are irrefutable. From October 2010, Nokia had an honest hit OS that powered increasing sales, increasing ASPs and most importantly for Nokia - dramatically increased profits! Only a complete fool would step on this incredible success, and kill it._

He thinks the Nokia N8 is a great phone. It isn't. I had it for 5 months until I gave up and switched to a Samsung device (after 10 years with Nokia).

Symbian^3 on the N8 didn't deliver half of what was promised. Horribly broken web browser, no portrait keyboard, unusable app store that spent two minutes downloading updates for itself whenever it was opened, outdated version of the Qt API on the device... The list goes on.

Nokia said last year that there would be quick updates to Symbian to fill in the missing functionality. Rumors said that a revamped browser would be available by the end of 2010. Then Nokia officially extended this deadline to Q1/11. Guess what? The new browser still isn't available for the N8. The update, now called Symbian Anna, may be available to N8 users next month, if they're lucky and their operator approves of the OS update...

This lethargic pace of development makes it clear that Symbian development was out of control and the whole OS is unsalvageable. They had thousands of engineers working on this system, but it had grown so complex that they apparently couldn't even update the browser without breaking everything, leaving the OS stuck with a 5-year old branch of WebKit.

Nokia never understood software. Giving it up and letting Microsoft have total control of the user-facing operating system is the best thing they could have done.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, the entire blog post is clearly not neutral at all. Claiming that people LOVED Symbian ... It had fallen so far behind.

Nokia faced a similar platform hurdle to Apple in the mid-90's, they needed a modern OS, and brought one in from outside. It is a painful transition but I think they made the right decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Probably the worst analysis you will read today.

How bad is it? He spends 12 paragraphs "justifying" 7% future growth alternative scenario based on the 7% observed growth from Q3 to holiday Q4.

Then he doesn't use this. He instead goes with a linear assumption of decreasing market share. Again ignores the holiday quarter and historical decline (-14% drop from Q4 09 to Q1 10 in a much better environment for Nokia). And spends the next 20-30 paragraphs fencing with straw men.

<comment><USER5> > How bad is it? He spends 12 paragraphs "justifying" 7% future growth > alternative scenario based on the 7% observed growth from Q3 to holiday Q4.

Haha, that's incredible. Lies, damned lies and statistics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Now in the Steve Ballmer era, Microsoft is interested only in screwing > everybody, including its own developers

Come on, atleast try to pretend that you didn't have a predetermined idea of what you want your solution to look like before you make up your numbers.

This really causes the authors credibility to take a hit here.

<comment><USER7> I would agree with you if the subject were anybody but Microsoft. But it seems extremely rare for any big business partnership with Microsoft to go well for the other party (unless their plan all along was to exist solely as a nice in the MS ecosystem or sell to MS altogether).

I think there's enough evidence to call it a debatable fact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have to say that I think Toni is wrong over symbian. It has the same set of basic problems that Windows Mobile 6.5 had, basically it's a system designed for resistive screens in a capacitive world.

Nokia needed to make that decision to kill off Symbian in the same way that Microsoft made the decision to kill off Windows Mobile in both cases there is only so much lipstick you can put on a pig.

The decision process then becomes what OS choices are available to you:

Maemo - Dead killed by Meego but I rather liked the N900 I have and in many ways it's a better OS for hackers than Android (On the N900 it came with a terminal, a copy of vi and getting root is a simple download from the repositories) .

Meego - Alive but unclear if it's ever going to be good enough and it's probably at least a year away from shipping commercially (note this is at decision time presumably around December last year) Judging by the progress on the back port to the N900 it's still not all there. <http://wiki.meego.com/ARM/N900/Status> (see the notes on receiving a call)

iOS4 - Good luck there

Android - Definite maybe here but then you're in a very me too space.

Windows Phone 7 - Plausible and possibly Nokia are able to push Microsoft into giving more customisation than other vendors.

If you're the Nokia board that leaves you with three options - Meego,Android and WP7. I think they've done the right thing by putting Meego on the back burner and going with WP7.

Toni seems to have a hard on that Elop is a trojan horse, sadly while I don't think announcing the death of Symbian was a great idea it's really hard to see why anyone with an iPhone or Android phone would buy a Symbian phone. The N8 burnt a lot of folks with it's poor firmware (and slow upgrades) So I think Nokia was ALWAYS going to fail hard this year.

I like the look of the N9 and N950 but after my N900 experience I wouldn't buy either of them as who (outside of the OSS folks) is going to develop for them commercially?

WP7 has it's problems the Mango update took too long and I don't believe that tethering is properly supported (some phones have a "modem" mode in their test menu) but when I've had a quick play with it I rather liked it (and I haven't heard many users complaining) The developer tools and APIs seem to be getting there.

Finally I would like to point out that when I buy a Nokia phones (9500 & N900) the OS seems to get killed so I'm not very trusting in Nokias long term plans.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is the same guy who predicted that iPhone sales would peak in April 2010. Judging by the length of his blog posts his mind is a cluttered mess. Do not blindly trust his opinion even though he may sometimes be right.

<http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/04/20/tomi-ahonen>

</comment><comment><USER10> I am sure WP7 + Nokia will be a winning strategy. But it can not work until the phones are available! Android would be a good choice also unless the system become so encumbered with patent costs if become unusable, which is possible.

</comment><comment><USER11> While it's clear Symbian is going nowhere in the smartphone space (it could have a temporary future in the high-volume dumbphone segment as S40 gets pushed down by better hardware) and that MeeGo took ridiculously long to mature into a non-competitive-but-cute OS, the idea to bet Nokia's future on the unlikely success of Windows Phone 7 is one of the stupidest mistakes I ever saw. The only explanation would be that this was the _only_ way Nokia could raise the money needed to continue operating.

But this whole thing looks suspicious to the point I can risk a couple predictions:

\- Microsoft will become immune to lawsuits for violating Nokia patents (either by eventually acquiring whatever will be left a couple years down the road or by licensing them for peanuts as part of a WP7-related deal). This may be particularly relevant with W8's new interface.

\- The patents will be sold to a fund that will then use those patents to extort Android phone makers (Apple is probably already immune), creating a pressure for manufacturers to endorse WP7 as a patent-safe alternative

\- Elop will retire or be hired by a company where Microsoft holds a stake, either directly or indirectly.

<comment><USER12> > While it's clear Symbian is going nowhere in the smartphone space (it could > have a temporary future in the high-volume dumbphone segment as S40 gets > pushed down by better hardware) and that MeeGo took ridiculously long to > mature into a non-competitive-but-cute OS, the idea to bet Nokia's future on > the unlikely success of Windows Phone 7 is one of the stupidest mistakes I > ever saw.

Why was this stupid? The Android space is way too cluttered to really make an entrance. Nokia probably couldn't get much marketshare from Samsung or HTC in either the high-end or low-end Android markets at this point. They have years of experience in getting the software to work with their hardware, and are making great phones at this point. Nokia, as a newcomer, can't really compete with them.

Symbian is basically dead, so what would they put on their phones? Win 7 makes a lot of sense in that context, especially with the discounts that they're surely getting from MS. Google doesn't have much incentive to give anything to Nokia, considering the overall success of Android with everyone else.

<comment><USER11> > The Android space is way too cluttered to really make an entrance.

It's a huge market and Nokia's handsets have always been very high-quality. I doubt they would have a problem competing on quality.

> Win 7 makes a lot of sense in that context

Why? Any other manufacturer has been able to make it sell? When the same manufacturers that sell Android well can't make an attractive WP7 phone you start suspecting the difference between the products may be the problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have an n9(50) myself. It's the best mobile device I've ever had... I think they are beeing foolish because Microsoft forced this move.</comment>


The Curse of Smart People (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=201407#01 <comment><USER3> My pet theory: much of 'gut feelings' and intuition boils down to having our internal black box predict the behavior of other people. When you are 'average', this often simplifies to reasoning about what you would do in the same circumstances, which is relatively easy. If you are 3 standard deviations out, you'll have to compensate that consciously, which is inaccurate and difficult and slow. This is like how UI designers have difficulty to discern which parts of their UI are hard to use, while the end user could do so effortlessly.

Smart people end up having to run SmartPerson + NormalPersonVM(pre-alpha) in parallel. Normal people just run NormalPerson natively. Then they complain about bugs and slowness ('smart people are out of touch with reality!', etc.)

<comment><USER4> Agree. One of my friends is pretty smart (at least, above above-average) and works in the tech industry. When he was young he had to "simulate" his emotions to "look like a normal person." He had to think what normal people would feel under his situation and tried to feel that way (or tried to make himself looked feeling that way in front of people). For example, he thinks that crying on funerals is illogical, because the dead are dead already, nothing can bring them back and the dead would surely rather see people they love live happily instead of in sorrow. But no. Until he escaped from the environment he was born he had to live like a normal person, and tried to cry on funerals.

<comment><USER5> Not to diagnose your friend, but more as a general note: that kind of perspective sounds (from my admittedly unqualified perspective) much more typical of people on the autism spectrum or certain other non-neurotypicals than it does of "smart people" in general. It might be worth noting that there's some (mostly-anecdotal) indications that tech, particularly programming itself, may have higher incidence of people on the spectrum than other fields.

<comment><USER6> > Not to diagnose your friend

Then please don't.

<comment><USER5> His friend might not be on the autism spectrum, and it would be blatantly irresponsible to claim he was based on such limited evidence with no qualifications - which is why I didn't.

Rather, I stated that _that kind of mindset_ is _usually more common_ in individuals on the spectrum. It is, in fact, one of its most common and defining features - even if, on its own, it's not sufficient for a diagnosis. It's relevant to the discussion, even if it's not relevant to his friend in particular.

What further qualification could I have added to make myself clearer? I definitely don't want to be encouraging lazy net-diagnoses, as they're harmful to the people who have such disorders, so I'm genuinely curious how you would rather I have phrased this.

<comment><USER7> You could not have qualified that statement more. It's just hard to communicate ideas because the response prediction engine we build in our minds operates with a high degree of uncertainty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I strongly believe that we should not easily segregate people into a smart kind and a not-so-smart kind. Intelligence comes in many ways and the genetics and upbringing of a person will make their intelligence manifest in different ways.

Someone being good at something, does not automatically equate to a high level of intelligence or smartness but rather a high degree of familiarity with the topic. Familiarity can be acquired either through a lot of practice or from a predisposition to understand quickly, which is intelligence or smartness.

However, what can be said is that a person who is good at almost everything, necessarily has to be smart because there wouldn't be any time to practice everything in depth. Conversely, I'd never call a person smart who's good at one thing but doesn't understand anything else.

The author says that smart, successful people are cursed with over-confidence due to them knowing one thing very well. But how can you call a person smart if they do not even possess the ability to properly self-reflect. Is that not the one thing that should define smartness?

Rationalizing things away, ignoring signs that interfere with one's world- view, and being over-confident are all traits of not-so-smart people. Just because you know how to code, does not mean you are smart.

I'd say the result of this anecdote should've been that it turns out that people can be good at their jobs and be idiots at the same time.

<comment><USER9> > The author says that smart, successful people are cursed with over- > confidence due to them knowing one thing very well. But how can you call a > person smart if they do not even possess the ability to properly self- > reflect. Is that not the one thing that should define smartness?

I've more often heard the opposite stated, that people who are smart have a tendency to see multiple sides of every issue and struggle to come to decisions, whereas people who are less smart are more prone to see complex things in black and white. If only we had a readily available example of that phenomenon...

<comment><USER10> The Dunning–Kruger effect?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > very easy to describe all your successes (project not canceled) in terms of > your team's greatness, and all your failures (project canceled) in terms of > other people's capriciousness.

I see this belief in probably about 80% of people I encounter, and it has little correlation with how smart one is.

I like to hang out with people who take responsibility for their failures rather than complaining about how circumstance, "The Man", or other people have it in for them. Such people are far more interesting. Unsurprisingly, they're also far more successful.

<comment><USER12> It's the same kind of thing as how when you accidentally cut someone off while driving it's because they were in your blindspot and you're having a bad day and it's the first time that's ever happened etc etc... and when someone else cuts you off they're an idiot who shouldn't be on the road and they probably always drive badly.

<comment><USER13> This is called the fundamental attribution error [1]. I thought it was a well- established phenomenon, but apparently its validity is contested.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here's a summary for why smart people are "cursed":

If you are two or 3 standard deviations about the mean, you'll quickly realize society is optimized and caters to the average intelligence. You'll find it very boring and frustrating having to deal with rules and decisions that do not make sense. You must continually push yourself to stay entertained and meet like-minded people otherwise you'll get very depressed that everything is meaningless.

-t. "smart" person

<comment><USER15> This almost seems like a cliche or a troll. I think smarts also lead people to miss the world around them and trivialize anything that isnt a "challenge". To some very smart people I know -- chill out and laern to enjoy the absurdity and mundane as well as the challenge. Be bored once in a while. Know satisfaction in the simple.

<comment><USER16> To me that doesn't sound like the curse of the "smart" people, it sounds more like the curse of the arrogant people.

Smart people understand that there is a reason that pointless / absurd rules are there. Usually the reason is not that everyone else is too stupid. The problem is usually that people have conflicting interests, and there just isn't a simple solution.

<comment><USER17> 1000 times this. Raw brain processing power doesn't have all that much to do with one's disposition to the world. Wise people realize that the smartest human is still hopelessly incapable of really understanding the universe. Smart people can come up with better models of reality, but they are still subject to the chaotic nature of the universe just like the rest of existence.

Forming and dwelling on a belief that society wasn't created for you is something that can happen for a variety of reasons. The healthy thing is to accept the things you can't control and figure out how you can best get along in the environment to which you are subject. For the very smart, there has probably never been a better time to be alive in terms of applying ones gifts.

<comment><USER18> > Wise people realize that the smartest human is still hopelessly incapable of > really understanding the universe.

Still the best theories that physics has to offer are the best that humankind has found in recorded history. And they were only found because there were people that did not tolerate this situation (being incapable to understand the universe).

> Smart people can come up with better models of reality, but they are still > subject to the chaotic nature of the universe just like the rest of > existence.

The moral should rather be: Because of this fact, sit down and develop better mathematics that will lead to us understanding this kind of chaotic situations much better in, say, 50 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder how much human potential we're wasting by putting "smart people" on a pedestal instead of having higher and better utilization of regular people. Regular people are far more capable than working at McDonalds, Walmart, Amazon, or whatever wage slave job BigCo is offering.

It's pretty hard to prove, but I bet that we're barely even at 1% utilization of humanity's potential, given our technology and population.

<comment><USER20> Imagine if the world's nail salon workers could spend their time curing cancer, fighting hunger or homelessness instead of the useless primping of rich people's hands and feet. If we only had an economic system to allow everyone to reach their fullest potential despite circumstances of birth, and social priorities where personal vanity was not placed above the good of humanity. In 500 years time maybe we'll get there.

<comment><USER18> > Imagine if the world's nail salon workers could spend their time curing > cancer, fighting hunger or homelessness instead of the useless primping of > rich people's hands and feet.

The nail salon workers could use their free time for this purpose if they wanted. They (perhaps with some rare exceptions) don't do it. On the other hand: The fact that someone is willing to give money to the nail salon workers for getting hands/feet pimped shows that someone values this kind of work.

<comment><USER21> well, i think the point is two-fold.

first, that it can be more difficult for people to get an education (and in many cases, a professional job) depending on their background and thus have a much higher barrier to "cure cancer" type work. simply saying that they could is all well and good, but it ignores some harsh realities of life.

second, the fact that people value something does not necessarily make it important. so what if someone values their nails being done? who does it benefit? capital is a distribution of resources in order to maximise output. some of that output is chaff, but i'd argue that less chaff and more useful product is better for a society to prosper.

<comment><USER18> > second, the fact that people value something does not necessarily make it > important. so what if someone values their nails being done? who does it > benefit? capital is a distribution of resources in order to maximise output. > some of that output is chaff, but i'd argue that less chaff and more useful > product is better for a society to prosper.

Markets form a democracy: Everybody can vote with their wallet what they want and consider as important.

<comment><USER19> Perhaps if everyone started from the same point this would be true. However, not only has everyone _not_ started from the same point, there are forces -- those who already have money -- who are spending money in an effort to brainwash those who do not into doing things that benefit them indirectly.

<comment><USER18> > Perhaps if everyone started from the same point this would be true. However, > not only has everyone not started from the same point

By deciding to have children or not (and if yes: how many?), parents vote about the distribution of the startup positions for the next generation.

EDIT: In other words: Poor people should rather be angry about their parents than about the system.

<comment><USER19> I honestly don't even know what to say...

1\. "Parents vote about the distribution of the startup positions for the next generation." What?

2\. "Poor people should rather be angry about their parents than about the system." Are you serious? What good is that going to do?

Sorry, but you must be living quite a privileged, or sheltered life if you believe these things.

<comment><USER22> Reproduction has a very well-earned taboo thanks to the terrible eugenics trends of the early 20th century. But, this taboo prevents us from seeing some things clearly. One of those things we tend to avoid thinking about as a society is the who/when/why of parenting, and the long-term effects of those decisions (or lack thereof).

The movie Idiocracy satirized one aspect of this, but it still doesn't get much discussion in terms of family planning on a societal scale -- whether to encourage or discourage childbearing, whether some groups should be encouraged more than others and the moral questions thereby raised, etc.

So, acting shocked and invoking "privilege" doesn't move the conversation forward, when there is ample underexplored territory in which to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Perhaps "smart" is too un-nuanced by conflating the real performance of many types of intelligence areas (social, emotional, political, spatial, logical, etc.) into a singular narrow attribution based on brief interactions? (Also yet another example highlighting where language constrains thinking.) And therefore the overvaluing of maximizing possession of one strength at the detriment of avoiding complementary strengths in other areas? Effectively, a personality monoculture where greater personality diversity would likely have tangible benefits (leadership, sales, marketing, strategy, design, etc.)

<comment><USER24> Smart is a hard thing to talk about. Like the concept of "quality". There are hundreds of different kinds, and I can't really describe it, but you and I both know it when we see it.

I can forgive them for being overly broad with "smart". You're also right that it's not one thing, but it's just hard to talk about, because it's like a wet bar of soap.

<comment><USER25> The human brain is insanely good at consistent dimensional reduction. Our conscious interactions struggle with the same task; it's Herculean to approach general purpose ordering in many-dimensional situations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> My experience has been that most "smart" people are actually high-functioning autistic savants. I mean, if they were actually +2 std deviations above on the whole enchilada, their lives wouldn't be such a mess.

You can make a lot of money and still be a hot mess. Look at celebrities. Alpha nerds are just a variation on the theme.

<comment><USER27> I don't disagree with you. But celebrities have a far wider audience. Your rockstar programmer doesn't have that.

A lot of social problems disappear when you're accepted as a famous accomplished person. So a celebrity can be weird and not face the same social isolation.

<comment><USER28> Technical skills have higher economic value but lower social status than skills in the arts. An eccentric painter or musician achieves a level of cachet that an eccentric programmer doesn't. Dysfunction has a certain glamour if you have artistic talent; there's no such thing as a tortured engineer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The author may have been headed somewhere with that idea, but he didn't get there.

<comment><USER30> I think there was a germ of a theory why companies full of smart people do dumb things, or are sometimes evil, or something like that; but it didn't get that explicit because it might criticise the employer too directly.

<comment><USER31> Tentative new title: "The Curse of Stifled People"

Well, maybe that sounds a bit mean, but the constant fear of saying something wrong about one's employer (past or present) is a bit sad sometimes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I am fascinated by the number of comments made by people who actually think they're so smart, it's the society (made of billions of people) that's dumb.

1 Mind > 7.5B Minds ?

I tend to think these companies don't hire smart people. They hire psychologically deviant people who will both comply without a problem, and who will do mean things to others because they have a superiority complex... a little like german engineers during WWII ;)

<comment><USER33> "1 Mind > 7.5B Minds ?"

In some cases, yes. 7.5B people didn't discover relativity or invent the airplane. Some few specific people did.

"I tend to think these companies don't hire smart people. They hire psychologically deviant people who will both comply without a problem, and who will do mean things to others because they have a superiority complex... a little like german engineers during WWII ;)"

Maybe you're just trolling. But do you have any possible reason to think this is true? It certainly doesn't seem like it based on any experience _I 've_ ever had, that's for sure.

<comment><USER32> Invention is a continuous process.

If you can't detect deviant people in these companies, you might consider reading JG Ballard for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I like how everyone has a different opinion about how a smart person has to be, but in most cases people are referring to certain traits that do not correlate with intelligence (and frequently could indicate deviation in either direction), and that's plausible since intelligence is such an abstract notion.

For instance, recognising patterns, and acting on those patterns are two different things. One might notice that acting on the patterns can bring him success/economical safety and what he considers joy or effortlessly having goods. But the other one can make a step further and consider that in the steady state he will not be any happier. If both happen to make this logical step, they might have to make a decision based on their preferences, which is highly subjective.

For me, intelligence is not comparable. To be more honest, I think there is only a partial order, and for that, I'm not sure.

<comment><USER35> A worldview is like a sampled model of an ultrafilter which is in reality more like a leaky sieve

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Author takes issue with the following attitude in a certain way.

> Smart people, computer types anyway, tend to come down on the side of people > who don't like emotions. Programmers, who do logic for a living.

There's another way to take issue with that, though. In _The Righteous Mind_, Jonathan Haidt argues that emotion-processing is critical to decision making (and that we use emotion-processing to guide reason), citing some work that people with damaged emotion processing suffer analysis paralysis on simple tasks.

It's an interesting idea. Of course, emotion processing etc. is also the stuff that causes us to have a negative emotional reaction on seeing weird code. The rest of the book argues as to how we form moral opinions, but that part was interesting without the stuff about morality.

<comment><USER37> _" In _The Righteous Mind_, Jonathan Haidt argues that emotion-processing is critical to decision making (and that we use emotion-processing to guide reason), citing some work that people with damaged emotion processing suffer analysis paralysis on simple tasks."_

The balance between logic, emotion and decisiveness is a theme explored in Star Trek S1E16, _" The Galileo Seven"_ [0], [1] Spock taking command and following ^flawlewss logic^ almost gets them marooned and killed. I have a theory smart people who assume a rigid logical mindset make the worst leaders.

Reference

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Galileo_Seven](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Galileo_Seven)

[1] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708465/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708465/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> The lesser known Curse of Smart People, but one that follows directly from this this article, involves hours spent reading about wifi routers and signal processing.

</comment><comment><USER39> > Working at a large, successful company lets you keep your isolation. If you > choose, you can just ignore all the inconvenient facts about the world.

Is this why social justice extremism is so popular in Silicon Valley? I mean, social justice is critical to a well-functioning and fair society, but the brand of it that SV folks tend to sell is fairly detached from the realities of living in a human civilization.

<comment><USER40> What do you mean by this?

<comment><USER6> As well-off as people are, they tend to view problems they don't face as solved. Therefore they turn their attention to what _they_ view as a problem. In a very crude example, the Bay Area people don't care about the wars in the Middle East - they're not a problem as far as they're concerned. Their exclusion from places they want to work and the climbing housing prices though, yuck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> It sounds to me a bit that the company had a culture where premium is given on looking smart - so people took great efforts to look smart. Which lead to rationalizations and inability to admit mistakes (I can not just say that I made decision cause I did not knew better, I have to find smart sounding reasons).

Any positions higher then junior programmer needs to make intuitive decisions. Everything above junior programmer position deals with uncertainties - <USER2> it is prioritization, organizational decision (who to hire, what position to put new person in), architectural decisions when working with new technology and so on and so forth. You make a lot of value judgement. If everyone is pretending all those decisions were logical, then there is collective denial going on. That is not the same thing as everyone being smarter then all other companies around.

Tl;dr: A lot of rationalization going on is not consequence of everyone being smart, it is flag of workplace where people cant afford to talk honestly about mistakes and decisions.

</comment><comment><USER37> _" What I have learned, working here, is that smart, successful people are cursed. The curse is confidence."_

Things to remember when smart people appear confident:

\- the correlation between confidence and ability to actually "do" something can be low

\- smart people can live in their heads

\- smart people can overestimate their expertise in areas they may be familiar or ignorant of, equally

\- street smarts can kick smart, smarts arse

A quick question I ask is, _" Have you done this before?"_. I use this question to determine perceived verses actual smartness.

Here's an example of why you need to do this. Back in '10 I went on a 220km hike from 200 meters above sea level to 2,228 (about 7300ft). [0] I was with a mixed group of people, fit, smart and motivated. On the last day, mid point to the final destination, we took a photo at the summit of the highest point in Australia. Lots of smart people in that photo, PhDs, Masters students etc. By the end of the day, one suffered frost bite, three got lost and of the finishers who covered the entire distance, maybe 20% came away without some sort of injury. Why?

      "Have you done this before?"

A lot of smart people ^thought^ running and riding then walking 30+Km/day was easy. A lot didn't think going into an alpine area in early autumn would be cold. The PhD with blue lips who I marched off the coldest place in Australia wore jeans and jumper, had taken a 600ml container of water and no food. [1] The three who sparked a search, decided to take break in a hut, but not inform anybody. [2] Now nobody really got hurt or lost. But they could have, had luck not been on their side. Smartness breeds a certain type of arrogance that left unchecked, can get you into trouble quickly.

Time and time again I remind myself, depending on the circumstances, _" street smarts"_ whip _" smart smarts'"_ arse.

Reference

[0] @samh, "Australian Economist who lost bet will walk from Parliament to Mount Kosciousko" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1126054](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1126054) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1126078](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1126078)

[1] At the top the wind was 50km/hr and in fog. [https://flickr.com/photos/bootload/4603144874/in/album-72157...](https://flickr.com/photos/bootload/4603144874/in/album-72157623796441755)

[2] Tail-end charlie (me) also missed checking inside the hut. [https://flickr.com/photos/bootload/4797709801/in/album-72157...](https://flickr.com/photos/bootload/4797709801/in/album-72157623796441755/)

[3] [https://flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157624081287855](https://flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157624081287855)

[4] [https://flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157624081287855](https://flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157624081287855)

<comment><USER42> > "Have you done this before?"

Very nice. And to estimate _robust competence_ , perhaps:

"Have you focused on this? Long-term, with reflective practice, and embedded in a critical community?"

I don't know how to make that pithy. "Is this your thing?", "Is this your life?", "Are you a contender?", ...?

I'm interested transformative improvement of science and engineering educational content, through greatly increased use of domain expertise. So I've spent a lot of time scraping against the limits of people's expertise.[1]

The steepness with which people's expertise drops, as you move away from their primary focus of effort, is greatly and pervasively underestimated.

There's a news story genre, an example of which is "Harvard MBA's confused about what causes Earth's seasons!" But why is this surprising? If the last time someone focused on something was in middle school, then their having a middle school understanding of it shouldn't come as a great surprise.

A professor wizzy in their own subfield, may have a graduate student's grasp of nearby subfields, an undergraduate's grasp of the rest of their field, and a high-school grasp of other fields.

A non-biology MIT professor may have no idea what DNA is. An MIT chemistry lecturer no recognition of dimensional analysis. A Harvard physicist, hard- nosed and empirical, in teaching "just has a feeling for it", "intuitively knowing" what will work and not and how well. If you want to find out what crayon color to use for the Sun, don't ask a random first-tier astronomy graduate student - they will almost always get it wrong.[2]

The unadorned adjective "smart"... has startlingly large negative utility.

[1] [http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/MHjx6](http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/MHjx6) Scientific expertise is not broadly distributed - an underappreciated obstacle to creating better content

[2] [http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/Jw6yo](http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/Jw6yo) "What color is the Sun?" \- An example of science education pathology.

<comment><USER43> > A non-biology MIT professor may have no idea what DNA is.

I would be fairly shocked if more than 0.1% of the time this was the case.

PS: I loved the second link!

<comment><USER42> > shocked if more than 0.1%

MIT has ~1000 non-emeritus professors. So order 0.1% would permit 3 cases. But that's including biology, and non-science/non-engineering, which I didn't include. So it's at least low order 1%. And I'd be unsurprised if it's at least several percent. And not shocked by ten.

Consider an old professor. They may well have not had a biology class in high- school or college, let alone graduate school. And never touched biology professionally. And either not have had kids, or was not deeply involved in their science education. So we're down to "ambient general knowledge". What percent of the general population of PhD's with only ambient exposure, have any idea what DNA is? And many professors are among the busiest people I know. Imagine asking a serial startup CEO, what do you mean you don't know who entertainer-X is, aren't you watching TV and following popular culture? Well, no. So no need for shocked?

Very rarely, a professor giving a talk, will put the audience on the spot. A room of EE/CS professors may not recognize astronomical tidal forces. Half a room of MechE profs may think red blood cells are thinly scattered in blood.

Sure, common curiosity trims the numbers. But it's not universal. A now- retired physics professor might respond to a suggestion that they use biological examples in their intro physics problems, with "WHAT! You want me to teach... _biology_?!?!?!".

At the other extreme, there are a few impressive polymaths. But even there, out of field, competence is uneven and has holes. Impressive, impressive, WTF basic misconception, impressive... Similar to comments that when Hans Rosling started doing immigration, he tripped on some basic misconceptions.

Out of field, one isn't "embedded in a critical community". Part of how science works, is people being very afraid of being embarrassed by getting it wrong in front of their peers, and so putting in the effort and questioning to avoid that. Out of field, no one cares. One still has some habits of thought, but the edge isn't there.

And baseline unmotivated competence is not high. There's an old video[1] made out of Harvard, which includes graduating MIT and Harvard students, given a battery, one long wire, and a small lightbulb, and asked to make light. And failing, and failing, and...

[1] [https://www.learner.org/resources/series26.html](https://www.learner.org/resources/series26.html)

Re "PS: I loved the second link!", thanks! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Being "smart" is not easy. From conflicts with others because of Dunning- Kruger effect [1], because your own ego (no matter how "smart" you think you are, you're not that "smart" in the whole "smartness spectrum"), etc. So in the end, most "smart" people learn to deal with his own ego, idiots, and just try to be nice, because life is very short for fussing and fighting [2].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qyclqo_AV2M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qyclqo_AV2M)

</comment><comment><USER45> Based on this article, the curse of "smart" people appears to be lack of self- awareness.

</comment><comment><USER46> Hubris born of success (overconfidence, arrogance) is "stage 1" in _How the Mighty Fall_ by Jim Collins:

[https://charlierose.com/videos/12443](https://charlierose.com/videos/12443)

Humility (know you don't know, always be asking questions), a focus on the greater good (is it about you or something greater than you?), and having a "growth mindset" are part of the antidote:

[https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/29/carol-dweck- mindset...](https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/29/carol-dweck-mindset/)

</comment><comment><USER47> The author and some comments tend to confuse skills, success, and intelligence. I think the author describes successful and skillful software engineers who are far from being highly intelligent. It just happened that their skills of constructing program is highly valuable in the current market conditions. Which feeds their arrogance and leads to all kinds of ugly consequences. The hardware engineers of the 20-th century had the same issues. The main hero of the movie Falling Down is an excellent example of such guy.

</comment><comment><USER32> LOL. What you call "intelligence" is simply being a prick :)

</comment><comment><USER48> Outside of software, my favorite example of this principle is Donald Rumsfeld. He's clearly one of the most brilliant people to have ever worked in government, and yet through overconfidence he contributed to the worst foreign policy blunders in modern US history and got thousands of people killed. So it seems that being smart doesn't necessarily help with making good decisions, especially in complex situations with incomplete data.

<comment><USER35> I'm not saying I'm skeptical, but I am saying I want to learn more about Rumseld's brilliance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> But isn't the fact of being smart _and working at a big company_ selecting for exactly this trait?

</comment><comment><USER50> Reading the article, I wasn't sure which ones were the smart people there: those who are confident that they are smart, hence successful, or those who constantly question their smarts, but are successful nonetheless?

</comment><comment><USER51> Very true. I use to say that I'm too smart to be confident :-P

</comment><comment><USER35> How many rabbit holes have I been down, and would I prefer discovering more of them or following one to its end?

</comment><comment><USER32> I also tend to think you DONT need 5 days of interview to detect that someone is smart... ;)

</comment><comment><USER52> "bing around a bit..."

Lol is that really a thing?

</comment><comment><USER53> I worked at Microsoft too, in one of the best divisions full of the smartest developers in the world. I worked with some truly amazing individuals, some outright geniuses in their field, in fact. Some of the lessons I learned from my coworkers while I was there I still carry with me and value very heavily. But I wouldn't say I was awed as the author was. Nor was it my experience that there was a distinct lack of clueless people. I interacted with a number of folks that didn't have what I would consider a full toolkit of talent, skills, experience, and judgment (maybe my standards are higher than the author's, I don't know).

I'd say the problems that exist in that environment and in that group of people (and other similar groups at dev shops all around the world) go well beyond the ability to rationalize anything. The biggest problem I've experienced consistently, everywhere, is a lack of caring about the right things. A lot of engineers live in a little fantasy bubble divorced from the real world. Separated from the consequences of their actions, separated from a connection with the actual practical _use_ of their product by real humans. They too often don't have an understanding of how what they're working on fits into the "real world" and instead just enjoy twiddling the knobs and levers behind the scenes because that's a fun hobby for them.

A big problem I've seen consistently is the willingness to accept the status quo regardless of the way it is because it "works". And this is one case where being "smart" and capable can actually be a detriment. Being smart and capable means that you can take an incredibly broken tool or process and still make productive use out of it. And to some extent there's a pride or a bravado that comes from doing so (relevant xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/378/](https://xkcd.com/378/)). But that sort of thing is self-defeating. It doesn't matter that you _can_ get by with horrible internal tools, because in reality existing in that state destroys an enormous amount of productivity. Programmers too easily fall into the trap of thinking that the hard way is the better way, and you see this in code too where devs think they're smart by writing complicated "sophisticated" code for no good reason when plain old run of the mill highly readable code would be vastly preferred.

As the author touches on the curse of excessive confidence is also a big problem. You see a lot of developers who fall into the know-it-all trap and think that because they completed a challenging degree program, work in a highly paid highly impactful field, and have some degree of expertise in some tiny corner of that field that somehow that makes them einsteins or something. The reality is that no matter how much you as an individual can possibly know your ignorance will always outweigh your knowledge by huge orders of magnitude, even within a given field. A big problem this causes is developers not realizing their limitations in certain areas and just papering over those problems, perhaps even thinking that they are fundamental to the discipline or the field in general. I've seen countless examples of systems put together by very smart very competent devs who had some significant gap in their overall skillset and instead of seeking outside help or advice or taking the time to learn something new they instead just came up with some horrible hack rooted in stuff they _were_ comfortable with but applied in a totally inappropriate manner. And those hacks are often so deep into the system that it takes a ton of work to refactor them out and away, on top of all the problems caused by the system being fundamentally flawed in design. Whereas spending just a few days or a week of time learning something new could have resulted in a much more robust system from the outset, if they'd simply have checked their confidence a bit.</comment>


Show HN: My Thesis on Unsupervised Learning of Disentangled Representations - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.07114 <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN!

This thesis was the culmination of more than a year's worth of fulltime research. It was a blast to do, and in an exciting area. I've currently transitioned to a research scientist role at a defense company after completing my two Master's. I'd love to hear your thoughts or discuss anything!

I'm currently working on another DL project in my freetime with some collaborators. The goal is to build large sparse networks in a scalable way: [https://www.harshsikka.com/creating-managing-and- understandi...](https://www.harshsikka.com/creating-managing-and- understanding-large-sparse-multitask-neural-networks/)</comment>


How to get 30k Hacker News visitors to your website - <AUTHOR> https://marketingexamples.com/content/drive-traffic-from-hacker-news <comment><USER3> This is the wrong way to look at getting traction on HN. The more you do it, the more likely you are to fail, with the modal case being that none of your posts get any attention at all. I can't tell you how many people we see who think that a clever title and posting at the right time and attracting upvotes in a tricky way will get their content noticed. It pains me to see people spending their energy on something that we know from experience won't work.

What matters is whether an article is interesting. That's what you should spend your effort on. An interesting article doesn't mean you'll get noticed, but an uninteresting article means you won't. Articles that try to make a system out of how they succeeded on HN always miss this point. In reality, what happened is that they hit on something that the community found interesting. (In this case, it was how Nike sold its first shoes.) Then they try to generalize based on the mechanical tricks they used. But those are not what made the article interesting.

What makes this difficult is that it's hard to produce interesting articles repeatedly when your motivation isn't curiosity but marketing your business. With most content marketing articles, you can feel what the author was solving for: "What's a thing that HN would find interesting that we can use to market our startup?" You can even imagine the brainstorming session that led to that topic getting selected. There's a limit to how interesting such content can ever get—if it's not something even the author is intrinsically interested in, why would it excite readers?

<comment><USER4> For those who don't realize it, dang is the lead moderator for Hacker News.

I've gotten some of my own writing to the front page of HN. Titling things well is hard and very important, but the content also needs to be good.

For some quick and dirty data:

I used to track pieces of mine that made the front page. I've had several, maybe as many as a dozen, that got at least 10k page views.

My best piece got over 50k page views the first 24 hours. That was in January of this year. It took me about two weeks to write it.

It wasn't content marketing. I'm a blogger. It made me no money whatsoever.

In a nutshell: Take any write-ups about "How to get X amount of traffic/sales/whatever from HN!" with a grain of salt.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Doreen.

Good points and I do agree. I honestly think we're arguing from the same side. One of the points the case study makes is to not overthink and think about "marketing".

To quote the last line of the case study: "He isn't a marketer on Hacker News, he's a Hacker News user on Hacker News."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Choose the correct title and your startup can be projected to thousands._

If you're selling a product that HN readers will buy then that's awesome, and well worth doing. Those of us who sit and read /newest will happily upvote things that are great.

If you're selling something that will appeal to a different group of people who don't read HN, or to the mass market so HN readers won't make much of a dent in the metrics, then it'll just spike your bandwidth costs for a while with no upside. If that's the case then focus on marketing to your potential customers. Ignore everything else. 30K views from random people who won't buy what you're selling is vanity.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I do in fact make this point in the case study:

"The point is that once you start hanging with your perfect audience, conventional marketing goes out the window. You don't have to try so hard.

Find the place where your tribe hangs out. Show up, help people out, talk about what you're doing, and the rest will take care of itself."

Hacker News is useless, unless you blog / product is aimed at the Hacker News archetype.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the most important point is in the final paragraph:

 _" Find the place where your tribe hangs out. Show up, help people out, talk about what you're doing, and the rest will take care of itself."_

The article starts out sounding like it's about effective marketing, but as it progresses, the unavoidable conclusion becomes that it only works because he's sharing content relevant to HN, in a way that appeals to HN, because he himself is a HN user.

Marketing as an insider of the crowd you're marketing to is trivial. Marketing as an outsider is hard.

<comment><USER7> This exactly. I've tried couple of times with my side project on show HN - [https://tardis.dev](https://tardis.dev) (aimed at algotraders) and it didn't pick up, but on the other hand on reddit algotrading sub I received useful feedback and even few paying users.

<comment><USER8> Sites that display content based on upvotes are inherently chaotic, you can get published or denied for no reason at all. They are just biased into being useful, but there are no guarantees.

A set of small communities, like on Redit, have a much more predictable behavior. If you have content that interests one of them, it is very likely that it will get picked.

<comment><USER6> I think there are ways to game it, actually. You need someone else to give you that first upvote. I think/assume that those first few upvotes will make it visible to more people which will hopefully attract more upvotes. Of course the content still needs to be good enough to get those upvotes; but it makes it more likely to dodge the risk of good content going ignored because nobody sees it.

<comment><USER7> I've tried that in limited scope, didn't change much, but perhaps content wasn't good fit for the audience and I accept that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I recently posted one of my silly side-projects to HN and it reached the front-page; I'm not really into analytics and user tracking, but I was curious about how much traffic was generated.

So, I just awk/grep'ed Apache's access.log [1]. The results were about 23k requests from 17k unique addresses in a couple of days and then a longer tail for about a week, but haven't checked since.

[1] [https://tpaschalis.github.io/show-hn-sunlight- live/](https://tpaschalis.github.io/show-hn-sunlight-live/)

<comment><USER10> That's interesting. We use IIS, I wonder if there's a similar means for doing analytics at that level instead of the analytics library on the front end approach. I'll need to look into that a bit, thanks.

<comment><USER11> You can set up awstats for IIS:

[http://www.damirscorner.com/blog/posts/20150105-HowToConfigu...](http://www.damirscorner.com/blog/posts/20150105-HowToConfigureAwstatsForWindowsAndIis.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interestingly, I wrote a similar analysis 7 years ago. 30k visits was also what I saw! [https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2012/11/whats-the-front-page-of- hac...](https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2012/11/whats-the-front-page-of-hackernews- worth/)

I had a couple of moderately popular posts in June this year. HN sent 31,588 views directly - plus associated views from apps. A post of mine in March got 36k.

I wonder if HN has reached a local maximum of readers?

<comment><USER13> I take it you're always reaching _some_ small subset of HN readers - <USER2> by the kind of people who visit links by the kind of people actually interested in the topic, etc. I know that of the links that I do upvote, I probably only visit a tiny fraction of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The contrarian in me is fighting the urge to click on this story.

<comment><USER15> Finally, I can legitly skip content and read comments first.

<comment><USER16> That's what I did. The most ridiculously obvious click-bait.

<comment><USER17> Click-bait implies deceptiveness, but the article content is consistent with the promise in the title.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > LESSON 4 - HOW TO SHARE

> ...

> What I've noticed some people do is put out a tweet directing people to the > newest page. This gives their followers an easy route to find their post.

I'm pretty sure this method gets flagged. It's easy enough to detect a bunch of users landing on the new page with Twitter as a referrer all upvoting the same article. The mods and the community don't appreciate sockpuppeting (unless you're in YC of course).

<comment><USER19> Oh oh oh, so true. I love that you just called this out.

<comment><USER20> It's so true. Every time a YC startup launches, there is an upvote ring from YC I think. They reach front page so quickly. Sick practices :(

<comment><USER3> Posts that start with "Launch HN" get placed on the front page similarly to how job ads do. These are the two formal things that HN gives back to YC in exchange for funding it: [https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...](https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&query=by:dang%20launch%20job%20ad). The difference is that job ads can't be upvoted and decline in rank as a function of time, while Launch HNs can be upvoted and get ranked like regular stories after the initial placement.

Posts by YC startups after their initial launch don't get any special treatment. If a submission doesn't say "Launch HN", it's subject to the same rules as everything else.

Edit: HN also displays YC alumni names in orange to other YC alumni.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What the hell is going on with this website? The post pops up in a modal (which is not focused, so my cursor keys and space bar didn't work to scroll at first) that only takes up about a third of the screen. Close it and there's a bunch of article links with giant thumbnails.

</comment><comment><USER22> Except that people have admitted to gaming the upvote system here many times in the past so its not all organics-based. I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of top articles had been shilled to N 'friends' / 'associates' / 'colleagues' etc before they had reached number 1.

If you look at all the new submissions there are many interesting articles and most of them only get like 1 or 2 upvotes. So either its all random luck or people are coordinating it like they do on Reddit. But ofc: I will trust this totally legit website about marketing that everything is hard work, organics, yada-yada-yada, here's my email bro and ill be sure to click your referral links too ;>)

</comment><comment><USER23> Many thanks for posting this. It's really useful to find guidance on how to do stuff to more effectively engage HN readers with a website or project.

Of course, all my efforts so far have failed to engage the sort of people I want to engage. But then I've been here for less than a month - not an excuse, I know - and I am still trying to work out what sort of tone/content a post/comment needs to convey to get people to engage with it.

The other problem I'm suffering from is a lack of self-discipline: every day I come to HN with the intention to make an impactful post or comment, but then I click on some links and find myself drawn into articles and conversations that have nothing to do with my work/projects, but are just too interesting in their own right to be ignored ... and suddenly the clock's gone forward another hour and I've done nothing productive! HN is too addictive (but I'm not ready to quit it yet!)

I'll not post any links to my projects etc in this comment - maybe I'll try out Lesson 2 tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER24> Perhaps by posting an article titled "How to get 30k Hacker News visitors to your website"?

<comment><USER25> Yes, my first though was: Is this title meta? Am I being baited?

<comment><USER26> Indeed we are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I m quite baffled by meta posts claiming that hacker news has a different culture that anywhere else. Sure its not facebook but it s very similar to mid-level moderated subreddits. Major plus is there are no images.

</comment><comment><USER26> I recently tried sharing an article I wrote for CryptoSlate about general stuff happening around gaming and it was flagged. I have no idea why. It wasn't spam. I wasn't selling anything. Honestly, a post on how to game HackerNews seems way way way more spammy than what I had flagged. I just wanted to share content that I had created. I don't expect I'll ever get 30,000 of you to look at one of my links.

</comment><comment> Pete-Codes If anyone want to read an interview with Adriaan van Rossum who made Simple Analytics which was mentioned in Harry's post you can grab it here: [https://www.nocsdegree.com/how-this-developer-is- competing-w...](https://www.nocsdegree.com/how-this-developer-is-competing- with-google-without-a-cs-degree/)

</comment><comment> Pete-Codes I also got 30k views for No CS Degree the other week. Should have answered every comment but hard when there are like 200!

<comment><USER28> FYI if the comment count goes above the number of points (after a certain number of points, ~45, I forget) - your submission gets penalized and drops off the front page really fast.

So there are times when you might want to hold off on adding comments if it's close to that threshold.

<comment> Pete-Codes Thanks for the tip!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Write an article with the title "how to get X users to your website" and pretend you're not click baiting

</comment><comment><USER30> This is plain garbage. The best way to get visitors to your website is to create good content. No marketing, no click-bait or other garbage, just good content.

<comment> slava-k Hm, it is very doubtful that good content is simply enough nowadays. With tons of information in the internet, "just good content" can hardly be discovered by itself. There are should be ways for target audiences to find it, share it and engage with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I posted a question [1] to see if there is any interest for octopus deploy alternative (fdeploy.com) but got zero replies. I'm still developing the tool for my personal use though.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20506088](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20506088)

Edit: just noticed that there was indeed 1 comment. Made my day :)

</comment><comment><USER32> Right. If HN readers are your exact target audience, then it's totally worth it.

After we got featured on HN for awhile, whenever I hangout at some tech communities, there will always be someone saying "yeah, I came across the post about TablePlus (my product) on Hacker News the other day. Tried already"

That feels good tho. Also a good way to start a conversation and ask for feedback.

</comment><comment><USER33> > Notice how Adriaan links the Hacker News way with [1]. This shows he knows > the platform and also puts his links in a more prominent position.

Unacceptable!!! The first link should always start with [0], not [1].

Joking of course! But I still prefer [0].

</comment><comment> Pete-Codes Nice post! I think it's interesting how every website has their own culture and what is totally fine on Product Hunt wouldn't be fine here etc.

<comment> jonathan-kosgei Agreed! We had quite a few false starts on HN before getting any traction.

<comment><USER34> This isn't the first post of TS either, but it looks like it is his first successful one.

FWIW, had a few failed "Show HN's" myself. You certainly need a certain amount of luck in order to get enough upvotes to be noticed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I did not click this link and won't.

</comment><comment><USER36> [https://sweetmusicstudio.net](https://sweetmusicstudio.net)

</comment><comment><USER37> How to make it to the HN front page: write an article about how to make it to the HN front page...

</comment><comment><USER38> This making it to the top posts pretty much drives the point home ^^'

</comment><comment><USER39> That is super useful, thanks for sharing this!

</comment><comment><USER40> Did you actually manage to get 30k from this?

<comment><AUTHOR> No this got 5k views

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Use the title "How to get 30,000 Hacker News visitors to your website"

</comment><comment><USER42> actually, i'm not clicking on that.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Ever since I knew of Hacker News, I've always been interested in the massive leverage it provide to both startups and individuals.

Choose the correct title and your startup can be projected to thousands. Write a thoughtful comment and you can make 20 sales. Ask the right question and you can end up with a Silicon Valley job (that actually happened)!

I came across Simple Analytics [1] a privacy-focused startup which pulls in huge traffic from HN. Fortunately all their traffic was all "/open" so I could compare traffic spikes with their founders [2] Hacker News activity and understand what really does works on Hacker News.

[1] - [https://simpleanalytics.com](https://simpleanalytics.com)

[2] - [https://twitter.com/AdriaanvRossum](https://twitter.com/AdriaanvRossum)

<comment><USER43> Yeah, it's just the title. I was on top for like 16h or so because I had a catchy title and some way of supporting that title within the content.

Comments were far different. Almost all of them were negative and highly unconstructive. I don't mind criticism, but I really mind criticism from which I can't learn anything. One HN reader actually took the time to write a constructive comment. I don't know who it was nor did I thank him at the time, but that one constructive criticism was way more helpful than all the traffic boost I got.

</comment></comment><comment> slava-k Thank you for sharing this - Almost all the info in the article is new to me. Definitely worth reading

</comment><comment><USER44> Super interesting, thanks for sharing. I had never read about anyone managing to get consistent traffic from HN.

<comment><USER45> I think a few sites get consistently highly voted, because they're known for, and produce, good content. Gwern.net might be one.</comment></comment>


Putin Shows His Hand - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/10/11/opinion/joe-nocera-putin-shows-his-hand.html?_r=1

<comment><USER2> Please stop routinely posting political stories to Hacker News. Only the ones that offer some special intellectual interest are on-topic here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). Even then, the bar is high.</comment>