It is kind of ironic that so many professionals come to HN for a breath of fresh air, after which they continue building the UX they were escaping from in the first place.
The hope is that the audience for these posts, generally indie developers building new sites from scratch, will one day be able to shape the existing large sites that can afford to employ the majority of developers.
The reality is that the existing large sites that can afford to employ the majority of developers have PMs that mandate the horrific UX we encounter day to day.
Right -- I joke that HN's design weeds out people who both a) need a site to look glamorous, and b) are incapable of modifying it on their end to look that way. That probably has significant overlap with UX designers who determine other sites' looks!
The culture has shifted over the last 15 years or so. Initially it was indeed for YC and YC adjacent founders, but it evolved into a general tech news and tech workers forum. I'm not sure of any other good startup-specific forum that hasn't descended into spamming links rather than cultivating good discussion.
- it is a lack of disinformation, people here tend to push conversations in the right direction
- it is a lack of advertising and bullshit articles
It is like Craigslist. Everyone and their mother has tried to re-design craigslist, with yearly graveyards of competitors.
The problem is CL's interface isn't the product. It is _already_ extremely useful, and so to get people to leave CL you'd need to give a value add on top of what seems to already be a pretty feature packed service.
