Top all-time · #20385
Welcome to Alexpotato!
Personal blog · alexpotato.com/blog · on HN as alexpotatocareerbusiness
Welcome to Alexpotato! is a personal blog at alexpotato.com about career and business. Since 2014, 3 different Hacker News readers have linked it 26 times. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Linked posts include a career piece titled 'Why switching jobs is almost always a good idea'. Comments link the author's about page and mention a separate paintball coaching blog; none judge the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
What Hacker News says?
I started a podcast recently and two things are VERY in line with this post: 1. If you listen to tons of podcasts, you slowly internalize what is a good vs bad interview. e.g. you learn to automatically ask leading questions, direct the guest in an arc (if that's what you want to do etc). One of my guests was a professional sports journalist and he mentioned "How did you learn to interview people so well??" 2. I ask…
Comment linking /podcast/
on “To become a better writer, read as much as you can”Submitted Why switching jobs is almost always a good idea as a story · 106 points
HN discussionI recently started putting together an organized list of books I've really loved. It's organized and filterable by: - fiction vs non fiction - author - general themes https://alexpotato.com/books/?l=hn
Comment linking /books/?l=hn
on “Books I Loved Reading in 2024”Submitted What’s really going on in a salary negotiation as a story · 36 points
HN discussionThere is a blog linked in their HN bio ( http://alexpotato.com/blog ), but it's about paintball coaching. I'd be interested in checking out their other blog as well.
Comment linking /blog
on “Ask HN: Is having a personal blog/brand worth it for you?”Submitted How to tell if your manager believes in “heads I win, tails you lose” as a story · 24 points
HN discussionThis old blog [0] post about recruiters and LinkedIn is fascinating as: - recruiters used to claim they had "proprietary algorithms" for finding candidates - it really boils down to them just spamming LinkedIn - the mechanism the author used to determine the above was via "honeypot" profile Also, I've been VERY active on Twitter and have written many thread (indexed here [1]) and have written extensively about SRE/t…
Comment linking /threads/?hn=1
on “LinkedIn Larpmaxxing”Submitted How to answer: So how much do you make? as a story · 7 points
HN discussionHe's a man: http://alexpotato.com/career/about.pl
Comment linking /career/about.pl
on “Why switching jobs is almost always a good idea”Submitted “If he doesn’t work out, you can take his salary out of my bonus” as a story · 7 points
HN discussionA few years back, inspired by Derek Sivers [0], I decided to just make my own filterable book review list [1]. It was both a fun challenge (using vanilla JS to render) and has been fun to share with friends, Twitter mutuals etc. Plus, people know it's MY reviews so if they like my suggestions/tweeting/poasting/etc, they know the review is from me and not some bot. 0 - https://sive.rs/book 1 - https://alexpotato.com/…
Comment linking /books/?xl=hn
on “Authors hit by bad reviews on Goodreads before review copies are even circulated”Submitted What to say when they ask you: how much do you make as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSame! And I reviewed that one too: https://alexpotato.com/books/?l=hn#EndersShadow
Comment linking /books/?l=hn
on “In a rare disclosure, The Pentagon provides an update on the X-37B spaceplane”Submitted How to advance your career, one manager at a time as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThe article discusses how to move to different orbits while using less fuel and it reminds me of the line from Ender's Game [0]: "Fighting in a gravity well. That means it's cheaper to go down than up." 0 - If you've never read it, I have a short review of Ender's game here: https://alexpotato.com/books/?l=hn#EndersGame
Comment linking /books/?l=hn
on “In a rare disclosure, The Pentagon provides an update on the X-37B spaceplane”Submitted College paintball plus stats plus Perl/Sqlite = Success! as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSo I was working on a clone of Sid Meier's Pirates [0] but with a princess theme for my daughters. I figured it would be good to have some minigames in the above so tried making unrelated small turn based games as an experiment. That in turn led me to making a Soviet tractor factory simulator [1]. 0 - https://store.steampowered.com/app/3920/Sid_Meiers_Pirates/ 1 - https://alexpotato.com/games/tractor47/?l=hn3
Comment linking /games/tractor47/?l=hn3
on “Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)”Submitted How to tell if you have a bad manager as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThis 100% has the "vibe" of the original game but should include that if you sail "into the wind" it slows you down. Also, I've been trying to make a remix of SMP but with a princess theme for my daughters. Been experimenting with making other games to practice building out game mechanics and stumbled into making a game where you manage a Soviet Tractor Factory [0]. I'm interested to see if developing parts of Game…
Comment linking /games/tractor47/?l=hn
on “Pirates, a naval warfare game inspired by Sid Meier's Pirates”Submitted Why you should craft industry specific resumes as a story · 2 points
HN discussionA write up review of books I've read and there are a couple scifi books (and a bunch of other recommendations) here: https://alexpotato.com/books/
Comment linking /books/
on “Sci-Fi Short Film "There Is No Antimemetics Division" [video]”Submitted What a hiring manager thinks when you tell them what you want in compensation as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI've started trying to make some vibe coded games. The best analogy to use is AI image generation e.g. - someone posts a photo made with AI and your reaction is "that's amazing!" - then you generate an image and it's pretty good but not exactly what you want - then you try to get the AI to change the image to what you want and it's very difficult/requires a lot of steps More specifically, you can easily spin up a ga…
Comment linking /games/tractor47/?l=hn2
on “Being an old school web-based sports sim dev in the era of vibe coded games”Submitted How to tell if you have a bad manager as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted What an interview is really about as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted One more reason (business) networking is very important as a story · 1 points
HN discussion