Top all-time · #9155
Osman Osman
Personal blog · somehowmanage.comprogrammingcareerproductivity
Osman Osman writes Somehow Manage, a personal blog at somehowmanage.com about programming, career and productivity. Since 2020, 8 different Hacker News readers have linked it 62 times, most often “Is revenue model more important than culture?”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-06-26, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Linked posts from 2020 argue that code is a liability rather than an asset and that revenue model matters more than culture for a startup. HN readers cite them in discussions of agentic coding and startup strategy.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Osman (Ozzie) Osman Hi! I'm Osman, most people call me Ozzie (or Oz or O). I build products and teams that build products (and occasionally, teams that build teams that build products). TOP POSTSYou get to know people best by seeing how they think, and I think most clearly when I write. Here are som
Most-linked posts?
- Is revenue model more important than culture?4 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2020-09-20
- Things to do before and after you write code2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-09-06
- You Don’t Have to Manage, but You Still Have to Lead2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-10-22
- Hire people you believe in – believe in the people you hire2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-10-18
- “Code is a liability, not an asset”2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-10-17
What Hacker News says?
I'm not who you replied to, but yes, that's my main concern: Bluesky is still a company building a thing to pay back the money it owes investors. I worry that Bluesky becomes the de facto central actor and, due to having no stated business plan and a countdown to repay the money they took, pulls a Google, leveraging its dominance to introduce proprietary, breaking changes. Yes, right now, the tech, team, interviews,…
Comment linking /2020/09/20/revenue-model-not-culture-is-the-dominant-term/
on “Bluesky announces data federation for self hosters”Submitted Disrespectful Design – Users aren’t stupid or lazy as a story · 402 points
HN discussionI love this piece. I philosophically agree with most of it (in fact I wrote a previous HN front-pager* called Disrespectful Design). But a bunch of the advice is just not practical because of, well, human psychology. For example, there's a lot of research showing that in competitive markets, people lazily choose the product with the most visible brand (or that is most accessible, ie in your face at the shelf on the…
Comment linking /2020/09/13/disrespectful-design-users-arent-stupid-or-lazy/
on “User Disengagement”Submitted Is revenue model more important than culture? as a story · 238 points
HN discussionData is not a substitute for good judgment, for empathy, for proper incentives. The article focuses on governments and bureaucracies but there's no better example than "data-driven" tech companies, as we A/B test our key engagement metrics all the way to soulless products (with, of course, a little machine learning thrown in to juice the metrics). I wrote about this before: https://somehowmanage.com/2020/08/23/data-…
Comment linking /2020/08/23/data-is-not-a-substitute-for-good-judgment/
on “What Data Can’t Do”Submitted Things to do before and after you write code as a story · 117 points
HN discussion> Software is going to pile up because developing it is now cheap. https://somehowmanage.com/2020/10/17/code-is-a-liability-not...
Comment linking /2020/10/17/code-is-a-liability-not-an-asset/
on “Lessons for Agentic Coding: What should we do when code is cheap?”Submitted Hiring Myths Common in Hacker News Discussions as a story · 116 points
HN discussionIt's always sad to see products that were truly innovative when they came out end up getting neglected and sunset due to large co M&A-based strategic decision-making. Disclaimer: I'm one of the co-founders of Monarch Money, a (paid) competitor to Mint founded by the original PM on Mint.com. I had written a HackerNews front-pager a couple years ago about why Revenue Model is More Important Than Culture [0], and my co…
Comment linking /2020/09/20/revenue-model-not-culture-is-the-dominant-term/
on “Mint is shutting down, and it's pushing users toward Credit Karma”Submitted Why Are Discussions about “Hiring Being Broken” So Broken? as a story · 5 points
HN discussionLink for anyone looking for it https://somehowmanage.com/2020/09/20/revenue-model-not-cultu...
Comment linking /2020/09/20/revenue-model-not-culture-is-the-dominant-term/
on “AMA: I'm Eric Ries (The Lean Startup) & Author of New Bestseller Incorruptible”Submitted “Code is a liability, not an asset” as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Hire people you believe in – believe in the people you hire as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted “Hiring Is Broken” Discussions Are More Broken Than Hiring as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Data Is Not a Substitute for Good Judgment as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Using Systems Thinking to Understand Personal Finance as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Small Difference in Developer Productivity Can Amplify over Time as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Taxonomies of Technical Debt as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Push vs. Pull-Based Urgency as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Revenue Model, Not Culture, Is the Dominant Term as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Breeding Codemonkeys: The Software Engineering Overspecification Death Spiral as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted When AI Does the Work, Who's Accountable? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Step Behind the Bleeding Edge: A Philosophy on AI in Dev as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Plenty Enough as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted AI is Awesome but it's Exhausting as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Patterns in Mindless Products vs. Mindful Products as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Writing an LLM Agent in 50 Lines of Code (Or No Code at All) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Web3: Vegas vs. the Promised Land as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted You Don’t Have to Manage, but You Still Have to Lead as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Not Being a Manager Doesn’t Exempt You from Engineering Leadership as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
