I'm sure I'll burn karma, but let me say it again: there are companies out there generating real, long term value, but the HN news stream ignores most of them.
A perfect example is Guidewire, the company I worked for previously, which is up nearly double its IPO price and is rocking the earnings, which has been voted the best place to work in Silicon Valley for two straight years, and which has contributed a JVM language back to the community, but which is in an unsexy industry (insurance, enterprise software.)
Consumer Internet companies get far more attention than they deserve because their business model involves using your time. There's a massive number of far more interesting, profitable companies in tech that you rarely if ever hear about.
"Consumer Internet companies get far more attention than they deserve"
There is an agenda on HN just like there is an agenda on avc.com by Fred Wilson, or for that matter Techcrunch, or the NY Times.
Which is fine. It's their sandbox and they can run it any way they want. It doesn't cost anything to read so therefore as the much overused at this point saying goes "we are the product". (There are of course other things mixed in there of course but the bias is apparent. I'm not seeing anyone else able to post "help wanted" on HN but YC companies.)
A perfect example is Guidewire, the company I worked for previously, which is up nearly double its IPO price and is rocking the earnings, which has been voted the best place to work in Silicon Valley for two straight years, and which has contributed a JVM language back to the community, but which is in an unsexy industry (insurance, enterprise software.)