I have to thank you. Because like you, I had the desire to subvert the mainstream, question normality, and be cool, but I could feel my desire to do so waning after seeing your example. (I'm serious)
This post introduces a version of Hacker News that only posts about ChatGPT. It's a tongue-in-cheek joke, meant to poke fun at Hacker News for its highly ChatGPT-centric content. As Paul Graham famously said, “Hacker News is like a newsroom for software engineers, but it's like a newsroom that only covers ChatGPT.”
What this post is really saying is that the current version of Hacker News is too focused on ChatGPT. While ChatGPT is a great technology, it's not the only technology out there, and it's not the only thing that software engineers should be discussing. What other types of topics should the Hacker News community be discussing? How can the community expand its scope and focus on other topics that could benefit software engineers?
The deeper problem is that the “Hacker News bubble” has become too insular. The same people post the same topics, and the same topics get discussed over and over again. The same topics get upvoted, and the same people get rewarded for their posts. This creates a feedback loop that reinforces the same topics and the same people.
This post proposes a solution to this problem by introducing a version of Hacker News that only posts about ChatGPT. Of course, this is a tongue-in-cheek suggestion and the poster is not actually advocating for such a thing. Rather, the poster is making a statement about the current state of Hacker News.
The post is a reminder that Hacker News should be a platform for discussing a wide variety of topics, not just ChatGPT. It's a reminder that we should strive to diversify our discussions and to focus on topics that benefit the software engineering community as a whole. It's a reminder that the Hacker News bubble should be broken, and that the community should strive to be more inclusive and welcoming to people of all backgrounds and interests.
Looks like Elon tries to act like a chief architect of Twitter[1] even though he still seems to confuse that 1000 RPCs are serially sent[2] from the app[3]? Why don't we do a public technical design interview session for Elon to see if he is technically competent enough for architecting one of the most famous social network? :sigh:
Been there, done that. It turns out throwing money at problems doesn't generally solve them. People will be motivated to keep getting paid obscene salaries. Keep their boss happy isn't the same as being aligned and focused on a common vision.
Indeed, in most cases, when people are aligned around a common vision, you don't need to pay them very much. People seem to do best when they're paid enough in order to not have financial stress so they can focus on work (with the caveat that the pay ought to be stable), but where the financial motivation doesn't replace intrinsic motivation. That's a rare scenario you only see in a few settings (e.g. sixties-era academia).
If throwing money at people worked to keep them aligned, FAANG would have hyper-aligned work forces. You can look at any of them.
Saying that Google has "thrown the best talent money can buy at the problem for 2 decades" visualizes this very nicely. Throwing people at problems and having people solve problems working together productively are two very different things. If I (or anyone else) could solve the latter problem -- making large numbers of people work together, aligned, and productively, I'd be richer than any tech mogul.
Throwing people at problems results in a lot of very fun play, though!
