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These days good posts on HN have very few comments. Have the hackers left?

jimhi 7y ago
I have also noticed a general trend of less hackers lately. I think there was a temporary surge because the social network movie and all these tech companies IPOing and making everyone rich that finally died down recently. I think the application rate to Y Combinator itself also flatlined or decreased in the last couple batches
- r_singh 7y ago
  > I think the application rate to Y Combinator itself also flatlined or decreased in the last couple batches Would like to know more if you have a source.
  - jimhi 7y ago
    My source was estimating this with other YC folk, but here is what's publicly known. ~200 companies a batch and supposedly a 2-3% acceptance rate puts it at 6,600-10,000. They stopped updating their statistics: https://twitter.com/sama/status/618247698378985472 https://twitter.com/sama/status/618247698378985472 and https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-portfolio-stats/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-portfolio-stats/ If it kept growing they would have proudly put that everywhere. At the same time they introduced startup school which got 15,000 applicants, many of whom would have applied to Y Combinator but chose the startup school instead. My bet is it peaked around ~8,500 and decreased when they introduced the startup school program.
    - mvanga 7y ago
      Startup school companies were required to apply to the YC main program in order to be eligible for the $15k grant, and there were 30k companies that were part of SuS in 2019. Also, from the figures presented at the conclusion of the program last year, there were ~23k applications to the 2019 summer & winter batch in total.
      - jimhi 7y ago
        So roughly 10,500 then? These figures were shown at demo day?
        mvanga 7y ago
        There wasn't a specific breakdown, but I'd guess so. You can find the presentation here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/cq1fqp1zlkza3rf/SUS%202019%20By%20the%20Numbers%20-%20with%20Notes.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/cq1fqp1zlkza3rf/SUS%202019%20By%20...
- theodric 7y ago
  > less hackers fewer hackers
  - StavrosK 7y ago
    Now this is pedantry I can get behind.
TAForObvReasons 7y ago
It's 2:15 AM ET / 11:15 PM PT / 7:15 AM GMT, not exactly an active time for the US or Europe
Insanity 7y ago
I wouldn't say "very few", on the frontpage you can find posts with a lot of comments _almost_ all the time. Not every post on the frontpage though.
pjc50 7y ago
"Highly upvoted but few replies" is actually a good quality indication; it means there's not much to quibble with and the post is well explained. That's why HN applies a "flameware" penalty to highly commented posts.

I have also noticed a general trend of less hackers lately. I think there was a temporary surge because the social network movie and all these tech companies IPOing and making everyone rich that finally died down recently. I think the application rate to Y Combinator itself also flatlined or decreased in the last couple batches

r_singh 7y ago
> I think the application rate to Y Combinator itself also flatlined or decreased in the last couple batches Would like to know more if you have a source.
- jimhi 7y ago
  My source was estimating this with other YC folk, but here is what's publicly known. ~200 companies a batch and supposedly a 2-3% acceptance rate puts it at 6,600-10,000. They stopped updating their statistics: https://twitter.com/sama/status/618247698378985472 https://twitter.com/sama/status/618247698378985472 and https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-portfolio-stats/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-portfolio-stats/ If it kept growing they would have proudly put that everywhere. At the same time they introduced startup school which got 15,000 applicants, many of whom would have applied to Y Combinator but chose the startup school instead. My bet is it peaked around ~8,500 and decreased when they introduced the startup school program.
  - mvanga 7y ago
    Startup school companies were required to apply to the YC main program in order to be eligible for the $15k grant, and there were 30k companies that were part of SuS in 2019. Also, from the figures presented at the conclusion of the program last year, there were ~23k applications to the 2019 summer & winter batch in total.
    - jimhi 7y ago
      So roughly 10,500 then? These figures were shown at demo day?
      - mvanga 7y ago
        There wasn't a specific breakdown, but I'd guess so. You can find the presentation here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/cq1fqp1zlkza3rf/SUS%202019%20By%20the%20Numbers%20-%20with%20Notes.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/cq1fqp1zlkza3rf/SUS%202019%20By%20...
theodric 7y ago
> less hackers fewer hackers
- StavrosK 7y ago
  Now this is pedantry I can get behind.

TAForObvReasons 7y ago

It's 2:15 AM ET / 11:15 PM PT / 7:15 AM GMT, not exactly an active time for the US or Europe

Insanity 7y ago

I wouldn't say "very few", on the frontpage you can find posts with a lot of comments _almost_ all the time. Not every post on the frontpage though.

pjc50 7y ago

"Highly upvoted but few replies" is actually a good quality indication; it means there's not much to quibble with and the post is well explained. That's why HN applies a "flameware" penalty to highly commented posts.