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For a while now I've been wondering about the industry and the people in it, and this story just makes me question it all so much more. It seems that the major

For a while now I've been wondering about the industry and the people in it, and this story just makes me question it all so much more. It seems that the majority of people who work in IT (or at least, those that contribute to the various sites) are acting like they are still in high school. You've got to be associated with this person or that site to be 'cool' and a 'guru' and if you're not you're nothing. It's getting beyond a joke. Congratulation, you got a mention on TC or HN, or you've been 'dugg' by lots of people. It doesn't mean your startup or product is actually good or useful you know. If that is all the marketing you are relying on then you've only got a 50% chance of success. The whole thing even extends to people. I'm not going to name names but there seems to be some sort of god-worshipping to people just because they write a blog. Yes, I enjoy reading them, yes I pick up things from people who have done it before, but it doesn't mean they're some sort of superstar ... and I'm not even going to talk about the "we've just got a new CIO who used to work at Google brigade" (oh, he worked at Google, he must be a hero). Thanks for reading.

unalone 18y ago
Partly it's because this is an industry that acts like it's very geared towards youth. The emphasis is on the young millionaires: Zuckerberg comes to mind. (I'm 18 and applying to YCombinator, so I fall into this category too.) The environment is much more geared towards the hotheaded youth. It's not that you have a few outliers that act immature that get kept in check: everybody is immature, and the outliers are the people who act mature. Beyond that: a lot of the people in this scene are the unpopular sorts. People like that often have a ramped up persecution complex: they feel like everybody's got to be against them. As a result, you get very ramped up fights over really stupid things. I get this a lot whenever I take the time to read Gawker - I followed the big Jakob Lodwick fight when it happened. Every side was awful. Gawker took potshots at Lodwick to get hits, people online started threatening him because he was a public figure, Lodwick worked up, and in the end he denounced the masses for being "common", Gawker still takes every chance it can get to diss the guy, and people like Ted Dziuba go out of their way to denounce him as pathetic and meaningless. It's a shame, because Lodwick does incredible work and Dziuba doesn't, and so the one takes it out on the other. (Then, of course, there's Connected Ventures, which makes a few good-but-overrated things and whose staff tries to act perpetually like they're frat kids. They're fun, but it doesn't help this attitude of people that it's okay to be over-the-top and conceited and loud about it.) It's an attitude that I despise, and it hurts the community at large.
- dbrush 18y ago
  "The environment is much more geared towards the hotheaded youth. It's not that you have a few outliers that act immature that get kept in check: everybody is immature, and the outliers are the people who act mature." My experience being a part of Y Combinator is that everyone is precisely the opposite, though my experience is limited them the people I've met directly a indirectly because of Y Combinator.
  - unalone 18y ago
    That's why I like YCombinator, and consequently why I like Hacker News: it avoids that level of immaturity. All the HN users who have YCombinator-funded companies tend to have great conversations. I can't think of a troll here who also was part of YC. That said, this is the exception. I can't think of many more online groups that are this adult.

unalone 18y ago

Partly it's because this is an industry that acts like it's very geared towards youth. The emphasis is on the young millionaires: Zuckerberg comes to mind. (I'm 18 and applying to YCombinator, so I fall into this category too.) The environment is much more geared towards the hotheaded youth. It's not that you have a few outliers that act immature that get kept in check: everybody is immature, and the outliers are the people who act mature. Beyond that: a lot of the people in this scene are the unpopular sorts. People like that often have a ramped up persecution complex: they feel like everybody's got to be against them. As a result, you get very ramped up fights over really stupid things. I get this a lot whenever I take the time to read Gawker - I followed the big Jakob Lodwick fight when it happened. Every side was awful. Gawker took potshots at Lodwick to get hits, people online started threatening him because he was a public figure, Lodwick worked up, and in the end he denounced the masses for being "common", Gawker still takes every chance it can get to diss the guy, and people like Ted Dziuba go out of their way to denounce him as pathetic and meaningless. It's a shame, because Lodwick does incredible work and Dziuba doesn't, and so the one takes it out on the other. (Then, of course, there's Connected Ventures, which makes a few good-but-overrated things and whose staff tries to act perpetually like they're frat kids. They're fun, but it doesn't help this attitude of people that it's okay to be over-the-top and conceited and loud about it.) It's an attitude that I despise, and it hurts the community at large.

dbrush 18y ago
"The environment is much more geared towards the hotheaded youth. It's not that you have a few outliers that act immature that get kept in check: everybody is immature, and the outliers are the people who act mature." My experience being a part of Y Combinator is that everyone is precisely the opposite, though my experience is limited them the people I've met directly a indirectly because of Y Combinator.
- unalone 18y ago
  That's why I like YCombinator, and consequently why I like Hacker News: it avoids that level of immaturity. All the HN users who have YCombinator-funded companies tend to have great conversations. I can't think of a troll here who also was part of YC. That said, this is the exception. I can't think of many more online groups that are this adult.