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> it's how I've started to feel about a lot of Hacker News, especially when my employer is the topic. When people presume the absolute worst -- in spite of more reasonable (and more likely) alternatives -- there's nothing fun to read or interesting to learn. I lose reasons to keep coming back. Couple of points from someone who survived working for the Evil Empire when the entire technology world wanted to see "M$," "Micr0Squ1sh," "MacroSloth," and many other clever puns crushed under the weight of first the Department of Justice and later Netscape/Mozilla and Apple and Google. First, you get used to it, especially faster once you realize it's not personal. The people making the comments are just seeing your company and what you do from the outside. They don't know your personal or professional reasons and, sometimes, rationalizations for those decisions. But you still really should come back and read the words and maybe even rebut them when you feel like it. Why? Because... Second, there's a reason people are making these comments. Are they good reasons? Maybe. Are they your customers and do they, quite literally, hold the fate of your paycheck and continued good fortune and success in your hands? Damn right. Hiding from the negative feedback is just as much a "bubble" as negative feedback is on HN. You know what sucks worse than negative words on Hacker News? Negative words spoken at friendly social gatherings by people who aren't emotionally and financially invested in the technology industry because once those happens, your company is SCREWED. You can't stop people having the feelings they do about your employer but you can ask why those feelings exist and what you can do to change them. Sometimes there's nothing but, often, there really is something. |
That post was both an answer to the OP's question and a refutal of the idea that the only way here was evil.
I think it's important for people to recognize an echo chamber and to realize its ramifications. At the same time, I agree that it's important for employees to understand how their products/actions will be perceived (even those of us who don't work on projects that get written about here).
Thanks for sharing. =)