5 ms·

Having been on HN for 15+ years I have found it fascinating to witness the fawning and adulation over pg blog posts completely reverse and everyone has turned o

• Daishiman 4mo ago
  15 years ago things were quite different: * There were far fewer tech billionaries. * The tech billionaries were not publicly associating with far-right figures or cryptofascist belives, or at least were doing so quietly while promoting ideas of technology as social progress * A lot of the tech startups were seen as fighting entrenched interests grounded in regulatory capture and people had the illusion that the next generation of companies supplanting these wouldn't succumb to the same factors. * Donald Trump as a phenomenon of current politics did not quite exist yet, so we didn't have to witness these people sucking up to him That's just for starters.
• tim333 4mo ago
  One thing I noticed is on HN where PG no longer hangs out the comments have gone negative whereas on twitter/x where he posts people are positive (https://x.com/paulg/status/2066124279448559907 https://x.com/paulg/status/2066124279448559907 on earn $1bn). I guess people who like him follow there.
  • smallmancontrov 4mo ago
    "Reply guy" culture is notorious for breeding sycophancy.
• justincarter 4mo ago
  I still like to read pg but he keeps writing about things outside of his domain. Here for example I trust him to talk about growth rates and how startups work. But I don’t trust him to talk about wealth inequality and how political leaders respond to it.
  • smallmancontrov 4mo ago
    Growth rates are central to wealth inequality: the r>g observation (due to Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century) is that both historically and recently the returns to capital exceed the growth rate of the economy. Trusting someone whose fortune was built on "r" and is staked on "r" to do anything other than cheer-lead his own balance sheet would be nuts. Hear him out, but please hear what Piketty (& fiends) have to say as well.
    • alvah 4mo ago
      > (& fiends) Freudian slip?
      • smallmancontrov 4mo ago
        Ha! Red suits them.
    • kingofmen 4mo ago
      > the r>g observation (due to Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century) is that both historically and recently the returns to capital exceed the growth rate of the economy. They do if you cherry-pick your economies, starting points, definitions of "capital" and "growth", and cutoff points, yes.
      • smallmancontrov 4mo ago
        You have to cherry-pick a lot harder to make r>g go away. Plotting it vs time makes this clear because you can clearly see what caused what.
    • justincarter 4mo ago
      Yes, I agree. The combination of minimal inflation and extremely low interest rates is not something pg created, but something he did benefit from, and he doesn't seem to realize that.
  • guywithahat 4mo ago
• roughly 4mo ago
  If you met anyone, anyone at all, who’s views on the world hadn’t changed in the last 15 years - and I don’t mean this last 15 years, I mean any 15 year period - what would you think of them?
  • roenxi 4mo ago
    That isn't a very interesting question. If someone thought that murdering innocents was a bad idea 15 years ago and still thinks it today, gold star. If they think murdering is OK as long as you get away with it, then the length of time they've held that view really doesn't influence how dangerous they are. The nature of the view matters, not how long it is held. It is quite possible for someone to have thought about their views before they formed them and maintain stable opinions over 15 years because they are aligned with objective reality. That is good. Then there is the opposite where they've got ridiculous views that don't make sense and they stick with them despite all evidence out of stubbornness. That's bad. But again, the exact view and the nature of the evidence is what matters.
    • deaux 4mo ago
      You're misrepresenting the question. The question is about "views on the world". The world has not stayed stable.
      • roenxi 4mo ago
        What would it mean for someone not to notice that the world is changing? Are we talking people who don't understand that smartphones have been invented? People who can't comprehend that the world is changing are exceptionally rare and almost by definition would need to have mental problems around their ability to form memories. The world is about as stable as it always has been. World War II isn't even 100 years ago. If someone's view 15 years ago was 'the world is stable' then yes they are going to be facing a lot of contrary evidence. But that is because it is a wildly optimistic view with no foundation in evidence or argument.
        • 4mo ago
• ropable 4mo ago
  It's almost as though people and culture change over time. To be less glib, that amount of time is more than ample to see a generational change in a sector as fast-moving as technology. Perhaps some robust push-back on his ideas better represents the a zeitgeist of people being less happy with a maximalist winner-takes-all attitude to business or personal success.
• YZF 4mo ago
  There is a real shift I think plus maybe a new generation. I blame the pandemic and social media.
• joquarky 4mo ago
  The new generation is struggling with self-determinism and individualism. This should not come as a surprise when they are forced to live with roommates because they can't afford a house or even an apartment to themselves because every cent is being analyzed for optimal extraction from them.
  • abletonlive 4mo ago
    > This should not come as a surprise when they are forced to live with roommates because they can't afford a house or even an apartment to themselves because every cent is being analyzed for optimal extraction from them. Just so you know, the new generation is investing earlier than the previous generation. Gen Z is also outpacing millenials on home ownership https://www.npr.org/2026/05/15/nx-s1-5791499/gen-z-homeownership-increase https://www.npr.org/2026/05/15/nx-s1-5791499/gen-z-homeowner... The idea that the latest generation is not benefiting from the current situation is in your head, not reality.
    • anonymous908213 4mo ago
      Let's take a hypothetical scenario. A has 97% of the wealth. B has 1% of the wealth. C has 2% of the wealth. Your argument is that because C > B, C is benefitting from the status quo. In the US, the median age for first time homeownership increased from 29 to 40 since the 1980s when the stat began being tracked. That is reality, not an exceptional anecdote that is so out of the statistical ordinary it warrants being paraded as a puff piece in a newspaper.
• alvah 4mo ago
  The HN readership has changed massively in that timeframe, from the earlier Hackers and Painters / libertarian ideology to a much more socialist outlook. I could speculate about the reasons for this, but my theories would probably attract even more downvotes than just pointing out the obvious change in tone will.
  • rjbwork 4mo ago
    I'm interested in hearing your reasons, tbqh.
    • nixon_why69 4mo ago
      One trend that's bigger than tech is that educated professional class has massively consolidated into the liberal column in the wake of Trump, it used to be more like 66/33 lean liberal. So that's going to impact any professional class community, whether it's tech or not.
      • eudamoniac 4mo ago
        I'm not sure this is true. I consider this website very much to the right of most web fora.
        • nixon_why69 4mo ago
          I was talking about the broader professional population, there's polling on this and they've (we've) really consolidated left as the right wing has become more and more about culture war.
  • crote 4mo ago
    The hacker crowd has always had a heavy socialist or even communist component - sharing and coöperative work is a big part of the FLOSS community, after all! I'd say HN is slowly catching up with traditional SV startup culture dying, and seeing more non-VC-funded people flowing in as sites like Reddit enshittify. Those people identify more as tech workers than as early startup employees who aren't a billionaire yet. Combine that with recent economic and political developments, and it isn't exactly surprising that a growing part of HN isn't a big fan of the über-wealthy tech elite trying to make their life worse.
• dismalaf 4mo ago
  The people on HN have changed. It used to be founders and people doing things. Founders of some now huge companies were on HN. Interesting and well known hackers too. Now it's SWEs who work in big tech, hate their jobs and are afraid of being laid off who just parrot politically expedient current talking points. x.com is more interesting these days, even for tech.
  • nixon_why69 4mo ago
    Tech has changed, back in the early 2000s it really felt very creative, the growing big companies were inventing new things and defining the web. They were also much smaller, more idealistic and in their "youthful vigor" stage. These days, most people's experience at a big tech company is a political dystopia where everyone is optimizing for their promo packet. That's going to get you 2 different audiences.
    • golergka 4mo ago
      Back in 2000s tech was about websites to share "I can has cheezeburger" photos and now we're literally in the middle of technological revolution that seemed like scifi less than 10 years ago. Not only AI, but biotech, space, fusion, robitics, even gussian splats. Solo software engineer can't create on of these now. But there's so much more invention of genuinely new, exciting new things going on that we can be involved with. Yes, big corps suck. Always have, always existed, 20 and 40 years ago. Startups of 20 years ago have become big corps of today; now, new ones are in this "youthuful vigor" stage.
      • reasonableklout 4mo ago
        But you just hit the nail on the head: "Solo software engineer can't create on of these now". The current boom in AI and the cloud/social media boom in the recent decade have required ungodly amounts of capital for their resident companies to get off the ground. It's no longer a creative endeavour that basement hackers can participate in. In many ways it is toxic to the original nerd/hacker ethos by shutting out newcomers to the field and increasing wealth inequality, hence the hostility you now see on HN.
• kelnos 4mo ago
  I've been on HN for a similar amount of time, and I've seen the same shift in opinion on pg, but my conclusion about why is different. From the mid '00s through early '10s, pg was a much more grounded, down-to-earth person. Sure, he'd sold Viaweb and was doing quite well financially, but he was still working hard and was very close to the startups he was advising and was funding. I attended Startup School back in 2006 and thoroughly enjoyed it and thought it was a genuinely useful experience, even though I never went on to start a startup. Fast forward to today: pg's net worth has gone up a ton, and he's moved on to bigger and different things than his old roles at YC. He's not the same person he was 20 years ago (who is!), and his writing reflects that over time. Much of his old work still resonates with me (I go back and re-read my favorites from time to time), even though I'm a bit more cynical (or perhaps just more realistic) about startups these days, but most of the new stuff he writes feels out of touch. Plus he sometimes tries to write about things well outside his wheelhouse, and gets much of it trivially wrong, which tends to turn me off. The thing that really made me shake my head at this particular essay was that he used Facebook and Airbnb as examples in an article about how it's possible to make heaps of money without cheating. Just... wow.
• golergka 4mo ago
  Compared to 2011, HN turned from optimistic techno-enthusiasts who couldn't wait to see new stuff around the corner into an aging millenial club, just like reddit. I used to come here every day and talk to people, and how I hardly do it once a month. I think it's mostly demographics. Most people my age (I'm 38) have to come to terms with the fact that their most energetic age and most of their opportunities are already behind them. When faced with uncomfortable reality, many start looking for something or somebody else to blame for this. Not only billionaires, but tens of thousands of millionaires have played their cards better than I and others like me. They had the same opportunities, sometimes even less, but they have shown better judgement, strength of character and pure talent. Admitting this is not pleasant.
  • intended 4mo ago
    You can continue to show strength of character, that isn’t something that stops. Things are measurably darker. Hell, we went from “do no evil” being a motto for Google to being removed entirely. Early Tech had a genuine claim on trying to be better than firms that had come before.
  • foldr 4mo ago
    > tens of thousands of millionaires have played their cards better than I Why would it be an unpleasant realization that you are less successful than 0.00012% of the world’s population? There is arguably something sick about a system that can make a significant number of people feel this way.
  • butlike 4mo ago
    > When faced with uncomfortable reality, many start looking for something or somebody else to blame for this. I'm always curious as to why something that happens to 100% of humans remains 'uncomfortable.' Like there's nothing in genetic code making aging (or death, I suppose) less uncomfortable. It's kind of fascinating.
• seventytwo 4mo ago
  Bound to happen in a society that’s been increasingly warped and purchased by people like PG in the last 15 years
• causal 4mo ago
  But it's just not a high quality essay. This writing would have few if any upvotes coming from a random Substack blog. I still really like some PG essays, but PG used to be a much better writer.
• johnea 4mo ago
  Criticism may be more common, but the downvoting has not changed. See the post above, where I criticize him and am being downvoted into oblivion...