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> This isn't a conflict of interest. It's developer marketing. > The article is basically marketing copy devoid of technical details. So since you agree with

> This isn't a conflict of interest. It's developer marketing. > The article is basically marketing copy devoid of technical details. So since you agree with OP that it's marketing, _perhaps_ it's not a stretch to suggest that it's a bit shady for the CEO of Super Cheap Cloud Product to author a marketing piece decrying the hidden costs of OMG So Expensive Cloud Products as though it's just helpful advice? > I think a huge part of the value of HN is lowering the barrier to entry to build great companies by providing a platform to announce and promote your product / team / etc. as well as educate people with quality content. We celebrate "Launch HN" and funding events, and are going to criticize a founder for building something awesome and talking about it? Apples and oranges. There's a big difference between "check out this thing I made" and "these products all have somewhat opaque problems _by the way I'm CEO of a competitor_".

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keithwhor 9y ago
Developer marketing != valueless. Every single $B dev co you know has invested millions of dollars in developer outreach and content. It seems the issue is that there's no "technical details" as if a post titled "the hidden costs of serverless" would be about anything but costs. Perhaps the original response expected "costs" in terms of technical debt - in which case, that actually is covered as well, making the criticism a little underwhelming. If you don't agree with the article, that's one thing. Can you pick out anything in the post that's counterfactual? Look - I'm the CEO of a cloud product that, in some sense, could be considered competitive with Amiram. I've made plenty of upvoted HN comments and Medium posts talking directly about our company and what we do - hell, there's one posted here if you scroll down. I take a great deal of pride in it, and I'm very enthusiastic about the future of the space. It's for that reason I consider the criticism a little unfair. If the criticism is simply, "be more direct with your marketing and assert yourself and your company" --- that's totally fine. But dismissing an entire article because it's actively providing advice and context because the CEO runs a company in the space (wouldn't that put him in the best position to understand the market?) is... well, like I said, kind of silly. If the above is, in fact, the actual criticism - perhaps we should ask A Cloud Guru if they'd be more willing to allow promotional posts to feature partners and neat products. A big problem with content marketing (generally) is the people who control the flow of content often ask for pieces to appear as neutral as possible, where a huge chunk of motivated content producers are actually trying to push a product or service (platform, consultancy, themselves and their career, their open source, you name it).
- nicodjimenez 9y ago
  Agreed. Ultimately we all want the best software to win. Which means we sometimes have to hear people out, regardless of whether there's self interest involved on the author's part.
  - onion2k 9y ago
    I don't think we all want the best software to win. If you're the CEO of a software company then you want your software to win even if you know it's not the best. You might choose to write articles about how the other software is actually worse because there are lots of hidden costs. If you did that then you'd need to make it very obvious that you have a partisan opinion though, otherwise it'd look quite dishonest.
- fanzhang 9y ago
  Yeah content marketing / developer marketing is really valuable -- to the company. That's why companies spend a ton of money on it. It doesn't necessarily imply there is massive value for the reader, although that can be the case. Having run content marketing, I can say that it helps reader substantially to know an article is written by an interested party. For example, if I were an expert in a field with two options A and B, and I ran a company that did only A, I would be tempted to release true facts that support A only. None of the facts released A would be wrong -- all would be correct. I could say "find a flaw with any of those arguments" -- and none can be found! But if a reader were to infer that A is much better when she reads true facts selectively released to support, she would be substantially wrong. Moreover, she would be able to deduce that if she knew I were rooting for team A. This is why being so hidden about your position is shady. I agree that the facts, when collected from many sources, help the reader a lot. But if the goal is to get the reader to make the right decision, the marginal article with "selective true facts" can be a curse rather than a blessing.

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keithwhor 9y ago

Developer marketing != valueless. Every single $B dev co you know has invested millions of dollars in developer outreach and content. It seems the issue is that there's no "technical details" as if a post titled "the hidden costs of serverless" would be about anything but costs. Perhaps the original response expected "costs" in terms of technical debt - in which case, that actually is covered as well, making the criticism a little underwhelming. If you don't agree with the article, that's one thing. Can you pick out anything in the post that's counterfactual? Look - I'm the CEO of a cloud product that, in some sense, could be considered competitive with Amiram. I've made plenty of upvoted HN comments and Medium posts talking directly about our company and what we do - hell, there's one posted here if you scroll down. I take a great deal of pride in it, and I'm very enthusiastic about the future of the space. It's for that reason I consider the criticism a little unfair. If the criticism is simply, "be more direct with your marketing and assert yourself and your company" --- that's totally fine. But dismissing an entire article because it's actively providing advice and context because the CEO runs a company in the space (wouldn't that put him in the best position to understand the market?) is... well, like I said, kind of silly. If the above is, in fact, the actual criticism - perhaps we should ask A Cloud Guru if they'd be more willing to allow promotional posts to feature partners and neat products. A big problem with content marketing (generally) is the people who control the flow of content often ask for pieces to appear as neutral as possible, where a huge chunk of motivated content producers are actually trying to push a product or service (platform, consultancy, themselves and their career, their open source, you name it).

nicodjimenez 9y ago
Agreed. Ultimately we all want the best software to win. Which means we sometimes have to hear people out, regardless of whether there's self interest involved on the author's part.
- onion2k 9y ago
  I don't think we all want the best software to win. If you're the CEO of a software company then you want your software to win even if you know it's not the best. You might choose to write articles about how the other software is actually worse because there are lots of hidden costs. If you did that then you'd need to make it very obvious that you have a partisan opinion though, otherwise it'd look quite dishonest.
fanzhang 9y ago
Yeah content marketing / developer marketing is really valuable -- to the company. That's why companies spend a ton of money on it. It doesn't necessarily imply there is massive value for the reader, although that can be the case. Having run content marketing, I can say that it helps reader substantially to know an article is written by an interested party. For example, if I were an expert in a field with two options A and B, and I ran a company that did only A, I would be tempted to release true facts that support A only. None of the facts released A would be wrong -- all would be correct. I could say "find a flaw with any of those arguments" -- and none can be found! But if a reader were to infer that A is much better when she reads true facts selectively released to support, she would be substantially wrong. Moreover, she would be able to deduce that if she knew I were rooting for team A. This is why being so hidden about your position is shady. I agree that the facts, when collected from many sources, help the reader a lot. But if the goal is to get the reader to make the right decision, the marginal article with "selective true facts" can be a curse rather than a blessing.