Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by wenc 2219 days ago
I'm with you about not drawing firm conclusions from potentially biased anecdata from that one post. Also we don't know if that number is gross or net.

That said, I have been reading this sub daily for the past 2 months now and yes there's variability but in general, most agree the work is paying (check out the sub's history in the last 2 months).

It sounds like customers are tipping better, traffic is reduced so trips are shorter, gas is cheaper, parking is more abundant, and order volumes are up. These conditions are temporary and are not sustainable in the long term of course, but it's worth seeing the situation for what it is right now. It sounds like it is possible to do well in these times.

The sub is a window into what folks (admittedly a biased sample) are actually experiencing, as opposed to theoretical conjecture based on our (sometimes disconnected to reality or outdated) priors, etc.

In my line of work, I often overhear stuff from field service people, and it's always fascinating to me how different reality is from what say, software engineers are thinking. The discrepancy between "systems as found" and "systems as imagined" is interesting to me is all.

That's just one subreddit. There are other watering holes.

1 comments

Software engineers should know what they are trying to achieve but don't pigeonhole their common sense. Having many channels of input, not to mention interviews and sometimes interrogations in subreddits, creates more signal from the noise and order from the chaos.