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At the simplest level the answer is... someone posted this to HN and other users upvoted it enough for it to reach the front page. We write things up for one m

At the simplest level the answer is... someone posted this to HN and other users upvoted it enough for it to reach the front page. We write things up for one main reason: find new employees. We want people to know what sorts of things we work on. So we try to explain them in a lot of detail. A secondary reason is that it's sometimes helpful to learn how someone else solved a problem. Real world examples can be helpful and sometimes more helpful than abstract discussions.

rektide 4y ago
I was quite there with you, until you said: > We write things up for one main reason: find new employees. JFC, vomit in my shirt, gross. What kind of Ayn Randian misery world do you live in? I think a lot of people write things because they think it's interesting & worth discussing & has merit. It doesn't necessarily have to be for self or corporate gain. It's ok if people just want to help other people, want to share? No? Yes? Is it so objectionable that we have a broader human cause, that we want people to do well & know more & understand better? Do we have to reduce everything to the utmost petty corporatistic parasitism? Or just more broadly: can we not ascribe motive so quickly, with such cocky self-assurity? (Especially to such incredibly vulgar/short ends?) Let's leave some possibility of intent open, yeah, please?
- nindalf 4y ago
  You think the person you’re replying to is slandering Cloudflare by saying they write blog posts primarily to build their brand among potential hires. I don’t think he’s slandering Cloudflare. I think he’s captured their intent well. I say this because jgrahamc is the CTO of Cloudflare. He has been for years.
  - rektide 4y ago
    Very very good point & I didn't know that.. But I'm still not sure that actually really matches employee's motivations for writing these things.
    - jgrahamc 4y ago
      See my comment above. I agree about employee motivations. I was talking about Cloudflare’s motivation to have the blog and spend all the effort on it.
- syntheticcorp 4y ago
  The commenter you’re replying to is CTO of Cloudflare, so I’d say they likely know why the company makes these blog posts.
- jgrahamc 4y ago
  I haven’t read any Ayn Rand so I’m not totally sure what that means but, as I said, the main reason Cloudflare has a blog like that is to attract new employees. Of course, there are all sorts of others reasons such as giving our employees the satisfaction of having their work made public, helping them write better, hopefully making potential customers think we are cool and want to buy stuff, getting feedback from the outside world (I particularluly love the “why didn’t they do X” type comments because sometimes we learn something useful) and so on.

rektide 4y ago

I was quite there with you, until you said: > We write things up for one main reason: find new employees. JFC, vomit in my shirt, gross. What kind of Ayn Randian misery world do you live in? I think a lot of people write things because they think it's interesting & worth discussing & has merit. It doesn't necessarily have to be for self or corporate gain. It's ok if people just want to help other people, want to share? No? Yes? Is it so objectionable that we have a broader human cause, that we want people to do well & know more & understand better? Do we have to reduce everything to the utmost petty corporatistic parasitism? Or just more broadly: can we not ascribe motive so quickly, with such cocky self-assurity? (Especially to such incredibly vulgar/short ends?) Let's leave some possibility of intent open, yeah, please?

nindalf 4y ago
You think the person you’re replying to is slandering Cloudflare by saying they write blog posts primarily to build their brand among potential hires. I don’t think he’s slandering Cloudflare. I think he’s captured their intent well. I say this because jgrahamc is the CTO of Cloudflare. He has been for years.
- rektide 4y ago
  Very very good point & I didn't know that.. But I'm still not sure that actually really matches employee's motivations for writing these things.
  - jgrahamc 4y ago
    See my comment above. I agree about employee motivations. I was talking about Cloudflare’s motivation to have the blog and spend all the effort on it.
syntheticcorp 4y ago
The commenter you’re replying to is CTO of Cloudflare, so I’d say they likely know why the company makes these blog posts.
jgrahamc 4y ago
I haven’t read any Ayn Rand so I’m not totally sure what that means but, as I said, the main reason Cloudflare has a blog like that is to attract new employees. Of course, there are all sorts of others reasons such as giving our employees the satisfaction of having their work made public, helping them write better, hopefully making potential customers think we are cool and want to buy stuff, getting feedback from the outside world (I particularluly love the “why didn’t they do X” type comments because sometimes we learn something useful) and so on.