Same here!
I am now actually working in compilers, which is one thing I'm really passionate about, but not something I was doing professionaly. I managed to turn a toy project and some blog posts into an actual job at almost 40, so, thank you HN!
saagarjha · 18m ago
If I might ask what does you employer need compiler experience for?
leeoniya · 27m ago
same. except was an oss lib on github.
bijant · 36m ago
Agree with the gist of 1. & 2. but was hoping for a more analytic-scientific approach to measuring the impact of the HN Front Page. That is probably impossible though. If you invent github/sliced bread then hitting the front page might be the best thing to happen to your idea. If your profitable business of scamming grannies gets the same exposure it will probably be removed from the iOS/Android App Stores within minutes. Launching Dropbox here is likely somewhere in the middle.
This means that there is one more piece of advice:
"If your post didn't hit the front page in the first attempt, try again later".
8organicbits · 4h ago
For one popular project of mine that hit the front page I had a 2% sign-up rate. It was a free service that used GitHub for authentication, which likely helped.
I had a Netlify landing page (CDN), and the web app was a Django app on a single DigitalOcean droplet. I didn't see any complaints of performance issues / resource usage stayed low.
dmitrygr · 20m ago
Not sure if "have a CDN" advice is as sure as is claimed. My projects site has been #1 on the front page many times, and my dinky little $3/mo VPS had no issues at all in any of those cases.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzpU8-jCV7k&t=100s
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44292103
And heres the analytics from that time:
https://imgur.com/XGsiot4
I don't reallly bother tracking sign ups as its a totally free app, but from then to now, it looks like i've picked up about 1600 new accounts.
Of course, it means that a post needs to have more than suitable keywords. So, I never sacrifice the quality of a post just too boost its SEO.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7833251
That was over 11 years ago.
I still work there.
The Value of Hitting the HN Front Page - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44584461 - July 2025 (6 comments)
I had a Netlify landing page (CDN), and the web app was a Django app on a single DigitalOcean droplet. I didn't see any complaints of performance issues / resource usage stayed low.