Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use?

Most resonant quote from the article: "For more senior roles, look for dynamic range in their confidence levels." Great mental model of the types of senior people I've enjoyed working with.

I've found it's always more worthwhile to debate and work with people who have to consistently match their predictions against reality. In my life, that's been engineers that ship and money managers who tracked against a benchmark. Everyone else I'm happy to let them have the comforts of their opinions.

adamsmith · 7h ago

> it's always more worthwhile to debate and work with people who have to consistently match their predictions against reality

Yes! Fast, clear feedback loops provide such a boost!

aaroniba · 4h ago

To what extent do tight-knit teams adjust their interpretation of confidence levels on an individual basis to reflect their ratio? Like, "Overconfident Oscar expressed a tiny bit of doubt, so he must not really have high conviction at all." Or, "Underconfident Uma expressed slightly more conviction than usual, so we should pay attention."

Also, from my experience, it seems like (and this isn't a strong opinion) doing competitive high school debate teams turns people into Overconfident Oscars.

Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use?

Ask HN: What to Learn for Math for Modeling?

Ask HN: What to do when you suspect your interview is with a state operative?

Ask HN: How much better can the LLMs become assuming no AGI

Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

Ask HN: Services for Shutting Down a Startup?

Ask HN: How to teach a 4 year old to code?

Ask HN: Anyone working on bringing software back from US clouds?

Ask HN: Where can I see a live octopus in Maine?

CompactifAI Inference API

Ask HN: How can I recover and run my old mobile game from the 2010s?

Petition to stop Google from restricting sideloading and FOSS apps

Ask HN: Did modern AI's coding abilities make you lose interest in programming?

Anthropick.com Redirects to ChatGPT

Ask HN: What are the best Google alternatives in 2025?

Ask HN: GitHub Copilot down?

Ask HN: What to Do with Old iPads?

Ask HN: Windows 11 Update Fail – Linux Distro Suggestions?

Units of Economics of LLMs. Reply to Ed Zitron's "AI Is a Money Trap"

Ask HN: Best codebases to study to learn software design?

Ask HN: Does sentience put stress on the brain?

Ask HN: How to Learn to Build Agentic AI Systems (Like Claude Code)

Ask HN: Is there a temp phone number like temp email?

Ask HN: What measures are you taking to stop AI crawlers?

Out of curiosity: what kind of people use this "forum" (I mean Hacker News)?

Ask HN: Why are so many services rejecting Google Voice numbers for signups?

Ask HN: Is backlink trading still a problem worth solving?

Ask HN: What should I use to run React Native tests on a device?

Stop squashing your commits. You're squashing your AI too

Ask HN: Are AI filters becoming stricter than society itself?

Tell HN: any reasonably used DB will likely outlast the programs using it

Ask HN: Any experienced devs who use AI extensively in their work?

Ask HN: I just abandoned my PyCharm subscription, what should I use now?

Ask HN: How do you find early stage startups to join

Ask HN: How are you attributing your AI usage when developing software?

Patient Lisp Hacker Seeks Same for Long Walks Through IPL-V Code

Ask HN: Has anyone else used online communities that are archetypically "savvy"?

The Four Styles of Confidence on a Team

Comments (3)