Top all-time · #1830
Alex St. John
Personal blog · alexstjohn.com/WPgamesculture
Alex St. John's personal blog at alexstjohn.com covers games and culture. Since 2013, 40 different Hacker News readers have linked it 70 times, most often “Recruiting and Retaining Giants [pdf]”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (16) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Alex St. John's blog of essays on game development, Microsoft and tech careers. HN readers cite it as a source, and his 2016 posts on recruiting and women in tech drew heavy criticism.
- Recommended for · 1 comments
- Says the post has good details on why existing epidemiological formulas don't work when applied to software or game adoption.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 16 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
alexstjohn.com is your first and best source for information about alexstjohn. Here you will also find topics relating to issues of general interest. We hope you find what you are looking for!
Most-linked posts?
- Recruiting and Retaining Giants [pdf]8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2016-04-17
- Wage-Slaves4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-04-17
- Artificial Ignorance4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2017-04-29
- The Disney Lion King Disaster (2013)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-08-21
- Microsoft retaining "dead wood" employees2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-01-31
- Alex St. John: I Apologize2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-04-21
- Apple Ditching OpenGL?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-06-03
- No Singularity for You2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-06-19
- Enslaving the Masses (Alex St. John Doubles Down)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-04-18
What Hacker News says?
Alex St John has good details on why using existing epidemiologically formulas don't work: http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2014/01/23/forecasting-demise-f... Example: "The amount of time you spend sick with the flu is constant no matter how many of your friends ALSO contract the flu"
Comment linking /WP/2014/01/23/forecasting-demise-facebook/
on “Debunking Princeton”Submitted The Age of Nvidia as a story · 213 points
HN discussionhttp://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2013/01/04/the-disnesy-disaster...
Comment linking /WP/2013/01/04/the-disnesy-disaster/
on “Steam Sales 2015”Submitted The Evolution of Direct3D as a story · 127 points
HN discussionhttp://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2013/01/06/getting-fired-from-m... Typically, these people should run their own companies or consulting instead of working for other people.
Comment linking /WP/2013/01/06/getting-fired-from-microsoft/%E2%80%8E
on “Why I Was Fired From a Tech Startup and What My Boss Had to Say About It”Submitted What if we made video conferencing work? as a story · 109 points
HN discussion> Hell, his own offspring doesn't want anything to do with him. That is obviously not true. She even wrote blog post about him. That is a clear indication that, as a minimum, she cares a lot about him. And Alex is proud of his daughter: http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2016/04/21/i-apologize/ Daddy is very proud of her. She’s no millennial slacker that’s for sure.
Comment linking /WP/2016/04/21/i-apologize/
on “I Am Alex St. John’s Daughter, and He Is Wrong About Women in Tech”Submitted Apple Ditching OpenGL? as a story · 64 points
HN discussionAlex St John glorifies the benefits of slavery and Microsoft's imperialistic dominance of game developers in his own words [1], describing his infamous Toga Party / Roman Orgy / Slave Auction he threw in the Spartan Stadium at the 1996 Computer Game Developer Conference: >"Sex, violence and debauchery were all hallmarks of a great Roman “orgy” and I wanted to come as close to capturing that experience as I could get…
Comment linking /WP/2013/03/06/bunnygate-pt-2/
on “I Am Alex St. John’s Daughter, and He Is Wrong About Women in Tech”Submitted The Disney Lion King Disaster (2013) as a story · 35 points
HN discussionHis website [0] seems to be having database connectivity issues at the moment, but Google's cache caught it[1]. [0] http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2016/04/17/wage-slaves/#comment... [1] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rCVIzSi...
Comment linking /WP/2016/04/17/wage-slaves/
on “I Am Alex St. John’s Daughter, and He Is Wrong About Women in Tech”Submitted VR Is STILL a Stupid Idea as a story · 32 points
HN discussionI'm all for giving people the benefit of the doubt, but after reading through this it was pretty damn hard to justify any benefit of the doubt: http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/download/Recruiting%20Giants.pd...
Comment linking /WP/download/Recruiting%20Giants.pdf
on “I Am Alex St. John’s Daughter, and He Is Wrong About Women in Tech”Submitted Recruiting and Retaining Giants [pdf] as a story · 19 points
HN discussionHere's what she's rebelling against: http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/download/Recruiting%20Giants.pd... RULE 1: You don’t recruit and retain male engineers you recruit and retain Wives and Girlfriends * If the wife or GF is unhappy the engineer is gone * If the relationship breaks down the engineer is gone * The paycheck goes to HER * Why does SHE want her husband or BF to work for you?
Comment linking /WP/download/Recruiting%20Giants.pdf
on “I Am Alex St. John’s Daughter, and He Is Wrong About Women in Tech”Submitted How the driving force behind DirectX got fired as a story · 14 points
HN discussionCan someone tell me what the recent negative news around OpenGL (see for instance http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2014/06/03/apple-ditching-openg... ) means for the future of WebGL? I don't follow the graphics world from close, therefore my question.
Comment linking /WP/2014/06/03/apple-ditching-opengl/
on “WebGL on iOS8 Safari and WebView”Submitted Morons Judging Ballmer's Performance as a story · 13 points
HN discussionRoot against Microsoft all you want - I just think that stack ranking is too convenient a scapegoat. Valve and Google stack rank, too, but that doesn't mean they're not great companies. Also, Wikipedia's not necessarily an infallible source; see [1] for evidence that stack ranking dates back to '96 or so (at the latest). [1] http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2013/08/30/microsoft-review-tim...
Comment linking /WP/2013/08/30/microsoft-review-time-capsule-1997-bill-gates-ceo/
on “Microsoft's Concept Videos From 2000: Why Didn't Ballmer Build Any of It?”Submitted Doom for Windows as a story · 9 points
HN discussionIt sounds like you're attempting to carry the water for Elon Musk. Good luck with that. The very definition of a toxic brogrammer, Alex St John literally glorified the benefits of slavery and Microsoft's imperialistic dominance of game developers in his own words [1], describing his infamous Toga Party / Roman Orgy / Slave Auction he threw in the Spartan Stadium at the 1996 Computer Game Developer Conference (which…
Comment linking /WP/2013/03/06/bunnygate-pt-2/
on “Why Cities: Skylines 2 performs poorly”Submitted Fooling Ourselves with AI as a story · 8 points
HN discussionCompanies are generally seeking to hire the latter type of engineer; you are required to become one or you don't get (decent) work. Case in point: http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/download/Recruiting%20Giants.pd...
Comment linking /WP/download/Recruiting%20Giants.pdf
on “Pinterest Reinvents Itself to Prove It’s Really Worth Billions”Submitted Alex St. John: I Apologize as a story · 7 points
HN discussionHeh, no. WinG was a disaster. It took years before game developers trusted Windows again. From http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2013/01/04/the-disnesy-disaster... "Disney had done a deal with Compaq Computers to ship the Lion King Game pre-installed on a million Compaq Computers destined as Christmas presents for children everywhere across the country. The NEW Presario line had a NEW Cirrus video chip and NEW Cirrus vid…
Comment linking /WP/2013/01/04/the-disnesy-disaster/
on “Real Games for Windows (1994)”Submitted Things we can't compute as a story · 6 points
HN discussion> Was this seriously a talk that was given somewhere? Looks like it: http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2014/07/16/recruiting-giants-pr... > Do people actually accept this as actionable advice? Hopefully not, it's actually a bit shocking anyone in 2016 would write/present things like "RULE 1: You don’t recruit and retain male engineers you recruit and retain Wives and Girlfriends" or "Real engineers don’t burn out until t…
Comment linking /WP/2014/07/16/recruiting-giants-presentation-tomorrow/
on “Recruiting and Retaining Giants [pdf]”Submitted Wage-Slaves as a story · 5 points
HN discussionAlex St John glorifies the benefits of slavery and Microsoft's imperialistic dominance of game developers in his own words, describing his infamous Toga Party / Roman Orgy / Slave Auction he threw in the Spartan Stadium at the 1996 Computer Game Developer Conference [1]: "Sex, violence and debauchery were all hallmarks of a great Roman “orgy” and I wanted to come as close to capturing that experience as I could get…
Comment linking /WP/2013/03/06/bunnygate-pt-2/
on “Game industry vet draws ire from developers for defense of 80-hour workweeks”Submitted The story of Microsoft's own 3D Chip Design: Talisman as a story · 5 points
HN discussion
