Ask HN: What’s Your ROI in Browsing Hacker News?

I really like how critical HN can be sometimes. It makes you reflect on what you're writing very carefully.

There's also a bunch of subject matter experts lurking here. There's nothing better than when you have lay people discussing say, nuclear reactors and an actual nuclear physicist or engineer chimes in.

As far as content, I really read it more for the weird little obscure articles that are terribly interesting, more than I do for keeping up on tech. However, it is interesting to skim the comments of a submission for a particular technology stack: it really helps give insight into where that particular tech is going and how it's actually used in the real world.

There's also a lot of deeply personal, candid stories on here that I enjoy reading. HN is a forum run by a startup accelerator after all, so there's no shortage of people who have tried and failed repeatedly here. It's a wealth of knowledge and experience I'm very thankful to have.

Discovering patio11, codinghorror, tptacek, ahoyhere etc has made tremendous impact on my career / ways of thinking. I would have never negotiated higher salary or shipped my own apps / books without reading their HN comments / blog. It allowed me to work lesser hours and earn money from products.

A random article on hacker news completely changed how I job search. This has led to several jobs I don't think I would have found otherwise.

The article was not about job search, it was a post reviewing a tech talk about technology that as you say may have been "too technical" for me at the time

This is not to say that I use hacker news for job search

Mostly, it keeps me thinking. I see what people are doing, what they have to say about the latest news, what the latest startups are trying to accomplish. Whatever I think of it all, it invokes some critical thought on the bigger picture of this industry. And I thereby avoid getting caught up in the details of my own work and stagnating.

My ROI is pretty high considering the changes I've been seeing in myself lately. It's a huge step up from reddit and 4chan - I cut those websites out of my life and started browsing HN exclusively not too long ago. My mood has changed, I'm less cynical/jaded, and when I make a comment, I consider the person on the other side of the computer screen. This site is a bit slower, so I've also been getting more work done.

Since you are asking for the 'Return On Invest', I think there are two sides to this medal. I didn't have any large returns, but I like the content that comes up, so I try to limit the resources I invest.

I observed that giving my brain new(s) information in the morning makes it harder to concentrate later the same day. So I try to avoid visiting HN in the morning and wait until the afternoon.

To improve the noise to signal ratio, I also added a little widget to my new-tab-page showing me the current top 3 news of the 'best' list. That way I don't have to constantly monitor the site and don't miss the big stories either ;-)

I've directly found two jobs through HN, so already that's a massive benefit for me. Aside from that, I feel it's given me a much better grasp of both the breadth and depth of the tech industry.

It's the only place I ever manage to have substantive discussions of medical science. Given my diagnosis, this positively contributes to my failure to be dead yet.

Longtime lurker. I owe my entire career to HN. I was always into programming but never understood the business/startup side behind it. Thought you just had to get a job and unless you were super lucky or rich there wasn't any other way. Discovering HN has shattered this notion and allowed me to live my life the way I always wanted to.

Sometimes rarely I see something that can help me in my job. The recent announcement of v8 Javascript speed improvements was useful to know, and I’d probably not know without HN. I didn’t read the full article but I know if our performance tests suddenly get better when that browser version comes up it might be them not us.

I stick with a saying I came up with: “Make Knowledge Actionable”

I gain the most value from Ask HN posts. I used hckrnews.com to identify the top ones. I look at the top comments on these posts. If there are any good insights, I note them and favorite the post.

Immeasurable. I don't do any social media, or networking. HN lets me know what's hot, and I can filter whether or not I need it myself. HN brought me Golang, and I wouldn't have found it so early otherwise.

Same as with twitter: negative ROI. I just hate-read it and get pissed off at all the nitpicky assholes going "well, actually" at each other to no end. It's sad, but I don't know how to stop.

I got a lot of visitors from Show HN