Top all-time · #3978
Aha! Blog
Company blog · blog.aha.iobusinessstartupsproductivity
Aha! Blog is the company blog at blog.aha.io, writing about business, startups and productivity. Since 2013, 19 different Hacker News readers have linked it 359 times, most often “Hey Product Managers — Stop Pissing Off The Engineers”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-28, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (8) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Commenters, several from the company, link its posts on remote work, collaborative text editing, cover letters, and sales-engineering friction. Readers value the cover letter and sales-engineering posts as practical advice.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 8 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Daily inspiration for product managers and company builders. Join more than 300,000 monthly readers who learn the secrets to our phenomenal growth and best practices for meaningful personal and company success.
Most-linked posts?
- Hey Product Managers — Stop Pissing Off The Engineers2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-06-24
- This Is How to Build a Collaborative Text Editor Using Rails2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-04-19
- The 2017 New Normal for Engineering Teams2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-01-31
- Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-04-03
- The new journalist is an algorithm2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-12-11
- How I Convinced Our CTO to Switch from CoffeeScript to ES62 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-09-10
What Hacker News says?
I wrote a full comment and then deleted it because our blog talks a lot about this. At the risk of being downvoted for pushing my employer's blog, I'll leave you with a blog post: https://blog.aha.io/remote-workers-vs-office-workers/ Notable bits: > People get more done when they have autonomy > the office is filled with distractions. This is especially true for those who are in an open-office space, where they are…
Comment linking /?s=remote
on “InVision has no physical headquarters and all 700 employees work remotely”Submitted Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads as a story · 172 points
HN discussionAs a gentle introduction to OTs, one of my colleagues did a Rails Conf 2018 presentation on implementing collaborative editing. His blog is here https://blog.aha.io/text-editor/ including a simple implementation in Ruby.
Comment linking /text-editor/
on “Lessons learned from creating a real-time collaborative rich-text editor”Submitted How I was unbanned from Hacker News as a story · 72 points
HN discussionMy company wrote a blog post a while back with some tips for a good cover letter -- it's not specific to engineering but I think it's super helpful anyway: https://blog.aha.io/the-best-cover-letters-that-ceos-love-to... Two key takeaways (in my opinion): - If you care about the job, do a little bit of research about the company. What does the job posting focus on and how do you align with that? What's their engineer…
Comment linking /the-best-cover-letters-that-ceos-love-to-read/
on “Ask HN: Writing cover letters for tech jobs”Submitted Kanban can not save you from the engineering death spiral as a story · 60 points
HN discussionI think you can read the post and come to a very different conclusion and one that I have written about in the past. The MVP is a curse for ambitious technology companies that want to grow. In an increasingly transactional world, growth comes from long-term customer happiness. And long-term customer happiness comes when customers adore your product or service and want you to succeed. You should be thinking about wha…
Comment linking /index.php/the-minimum-lovable-product/
on “An MVP is not a Cheaper Product, It’s about Smart Learning”Submitted Kanban – The Secret Engineer Killer as a story · 43 points
HN discussionI work for Aha![0]. I'm wary of trying to define the culture of one company in terms of another, so I'll just tell you about where I work, and you can decide. We are a fully distributed team, and we build a lovable product. We published a book called Lovability[1] to help explain how we do it. We support each other, congratulate each other, and push hard to make it happen; these things require trust and talent in ev…
Comment linking /signs-you-love-your-job/
on “Ask HN: Companies with a culture similar to Basecamp's?”Submitted Product Managers, Stop Pissing Off The Engineers as a story · 38 points
HN discussionYes. I think they are related to the "scrumdamentalists" who I have written about in the past as well. See -- The Holy Scrum War - http://blog.aha.io/index.php/the-holy-scrum-war/
Comment linking /index.php/the-holy-scrum-war/
on “Kanban – The Secret Engineer Killer”Submitted Hey Sales Guy - Stop Pissing Off The Engineers as a story · 30 points
HN discussionAgreed. Thanks for the comments. We actually wrote recently about a "goal first" approach where you start with the strategy and why you are doing something and then clearly articulate the features in a collaborative way. Consider checking it out here - http://blog.aha.io/index.php/goal-first-a-product-roadmappin...
Comment linking /index.php/goal-first-a-product-roadmapping-how-to/
on “Product Managers, Stop Pissing Off The Engineers”Submitted Show HN: Visual Charting Tool as a story · 18 points
HN discussionWe went through exactly the same thing ( http://blog.aha.io/index.php/pissing-away-our-money-with-goo... ). You can opt out of the in-app ads completely by adding "adsenseformobileapps.com" to the excluded domains.
Comment linking /index.php/pissing-away-our-money-with-google-display-ads/
on “Are you wasting your AdWords budget on in-app ads?”Submitted Aha.io Mockup tool as a story · 16 points
HN discussionThe article is also the first of it's kind I've seen that gives salespeople comprehensible and actionable advice on how to improve. If they're salespeople worth their salt they'll be able to help leverage this newfound understanding to better sell their feature requests. I do agree that ideally this nuggets of wisdom would not have been hidden in such a ranty article though. P.S. Their equivalent post aimed at produ…
Comment linking /index.php/hey-product-managers-stop-pissing-off-the-engineers/
on “Hey Sales Guy - Stop Pissing Off The Engineers”Submitted How to run a remote team meeting as a story · 16 points
HN discussionI am the lead developer on Aha!. We built it to help product managers and developers collaborate on features and roadmaps. We have been working around the clock (well, almost) for the last few months and today we finally allowed open signups. We ran a private beta ( http://blog.aha.io/index.php/great-beta-programs-a-contraria... ) and got lots of great feedback from a group of really engaged users. This was a big ch…
Comment linking /index.php/great-beta-programs-a-contrarian-view
on “Show HN: My New App for Building a Roadmap”Submitted Show HN: Presentation Editor to Showcase Product Roadmaps as a story · 15 points
HN discussionVaries, but generally a product owner is focused on taking the strategy and translating it down into actionable tasks. They work across teams and roles to make sure the team is executing properly. It tends to be more tactical than strategic. They don't have to know how to sell or market products well, or how to get those products into the market successfully. On paper (a narrower scrum view) they are responsible fro…
Comment linking /the-product-vs-project-vs-program-manager-role-confusion/
on “Ask HN: What does it mean to be a product owner?”Submitted The Alpha Engineer as a story · 14 points
HN discussionSubmitted My name is Justin Weiss – this is why I joined Aha! as a story · 13 points
HN discussionSubmitted Aha.io makes it affordable for startups to plan great products as a story · 13 points
HN discussionSubmitted Show HN: Aha mobile app (built with React Native) as a story · 12 points
HN discussionSubmitted Smash more bugs as a story · 12 points
HN discussionSubmitted My Name Is Sankho Mallik – This Is Why I Joined Aha\! – Aha\! Blog as a story · 12 points
HN discussionSubmitted How Do You Build a Company Without Venture Capital? as a story · 11 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why I Joined Aha as a Remote Rails Developer as a story · 11 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why Remote Employees Crush Office Cube-Dwellers as a story · 11 points
HN discussion
