HN Explorer

Poll: HN readers, where's your residence?

775 points by sasvari ↗ HN
So fellow HN readers, where have you set up your residence?

(I'm aware of the fact that the majority is located in the US, but it might still be interesting to see if the HN community is getting more international.)

(Edit: NYC and SF area choice; England -> UK; split up Asia;Australia/+Oceania)

505 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 259 ms ] thread
dylangs1030
Being that the majority of users are in the United States, it might be interesting to see a poll showing how many actually fall outside the NYC and SF areas.
brackin
I'm not sure the majority are from the US. Maybe it'll be the largest item but the others together may outweigh it.
mooism2
When you say "England", do you mean "UK", or do you intend for residents of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to be included under "(Rest of) Europe"?

Edit: Thanks for updating the poll option.

willvarfar
Nordic would be an interesting breakout; I get the impression they are overrepresented

Because of the timing of posting this poll, I imagine the results to be skewed towards Europe too.

lowglow
San Francisco, all up in heeya!
danmaz74
It would be interesting to compare the results of this poll with the access statistics from the server...
eLobato
It's so nice that we can vote two options here. I spend half of the year in LA and the other half in Madrid :P
tcarnell
yay! I'm based in Madrid! and am looking for new projects come the new year... feel free to get in touch (tomcarnell.com)
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
johnfn
The timing of this poll is definitely going to throw off the results. It's nearly 2AM on the US West Coast, and most people are going to be asleep.
danmaz74
If it stays in the first page for 24 hours, the final result will be significant enough.
abp
(in)significant enough, yes. "(Rest of) Europe" goes out through the roof and now guess which of the EU-countries.
utvara
Do non EU countries qualify for (Rest of) Europe ;)
loxs
Nope, countries like Switzerland, Norway, Ukraine, Russia and Turkey certainly don't qualify... </sarcasm>
dkersten
Only countries that qualify for the eurovision contest count ;-)
willvarfar
Israel then?
dkersten
Pretty much any country kinda close-ish to Europe.
ordinary
We're currently 24 hours in. Saving results for posterity:

United States - NYC and SF area 1473 points

Canada 519 points

UK 590 points

(Rest of) Europe 1632 points

Australia/Oceania 271 points

South America 181 points

(Rest of) Asia/Pacific 247 points

Africa 76 points

(Rest of the) United States 2220 points

China 71 points

India 294 points

[dead] brackin
Although many Europeans are at work and may not be on HN, I'd expect to see the most votes from Asia.
brackin
Although many Europeans are at work and may not be on HN, I'd expect to see the most votes from Asia.
itmag
"Although many Europeans are at work and may not be on HN"

Uhm, that's exactly why I'm on HN.

[dead] dum
I would say the same thing.
kunley
OT, but frankly such attitude is recurring and I can't imagine how it is compatible with HN "ethos".

If you're at work, be effective there or change the work. What's to be so proud in slacking during work hours? Would you want such people working in your startup?

juliendsv-mbm
I don't think reading some news after lunch, or while having your morning coffee, is that bad for your productivity ...
kunley
When someone claims that he's on HN "exactly because he's at work", it's not sounding like some innocent morning coffee break.
itmag
Your comment keeps getting up/down-voted like crazy, which seems to indicate that there is a strong and opinionated divide on the topic of proper work ethic.

It would be a lot more interesting if people actually stated their arguments, though.

huxley
I don't know about anyone else, but I didn't sign up for any ethos and I don't like policing other people's "innocent coffee breaks" either.

If we're now shunning people for not maximizing productivity, you can count me out.

freehunter
No one can work 100% all day every day. You get 4-5 hours of good, solid productivity before you burn out. Take a break every now and then, you'll live longer.
itmag
Different ways to look at work ethic:

Mercenary (sneaky): "They're getting the exact amount of work from me that they manage to extract."

Mercenary (quid pro quo): "They're getting what they're paying for. If they want increased work ethic, they have to increase their pay ethic."

Mercenary (clever): "I will go above and beyond the call of duty in ways that get noticed by my boss."

Work ethic (intrinsic/weberian): "Work in the sweat of thine brow from dusk till dawn. I sleep well at night knowing I always do my utmost for my company."

Work ethic (LessWrong.com / game-theory): "It's utility-maximizing in the long-run to pre-commit to being the kind of person who has good work-ethic, even if there is no utility to be gained in a specific concrete situation."

Work ethic (soldier): "I'm a professional, I get the job done."

Hostile: "Fuck 'em!"

Snake: "Fuck 'em! But pretend to like 'em so I get a raise."

Survivalist: "Anxiety. Depression. Gastric upset. Make it through another day. They took my red stapler."

Ruthless prioritizer: "It's really too bad that I'm slacking off at work. But time/energy is scarce and my own projects have to take precedence, sorry."

Conscientious objector: "I'm not going to work hard for my company, 'cause they're at best neutral and at worst actively harming humanity."

Attention-span challenged: "[refreshes Reddit]"

aurelianito
Wow! Great list!
itmag
I find that in a discussion it's best to avoid the trench warfare of "you vs me" and instead try to understand as many perspectives as possible.

Intelligence: understanding a given perspective.

Knowledge: knowing of many different perspectives.

Wisdom: choosing the perspective that is most right under the circumstances.

wladimir
HN isn't that bad because you can read articles on how to improve your coding skills, learn about libraries that can help you be more productive by not reinventing the wheel, and so on. As long as it doesn't get in the way of work that has to be done, there's much worse ways of slacking off.
gbog
Most are not in startups I guess. For me it is the duty of your boss/company to give you enough interesting work that you don't even think about checking HN.
jann
The timing isn't really the issue. As danmaz74 said, it needs to be on 24h.

If you would start it during the day in an US-timezone, other time zones would be underrepresented.

eliben
Since you'd like to get reliable results from all over the world, there's hardly any single suitable timing for such a poll. The only hope is for it to stay visible for close to 24 hours.
seltzered_
that and I almost clicked united states half awake, before realizing the other united states (the rest of the states) was way down below.
qqqqqq
10AM over in Norwich. I wonder if this poll can survive until the end of the US day, though, since at the moment they're all asleep.
bluesmoon
Cambridge, MA, but recent transplant from the SF Bay Area
jorisvh
Belgium
Luc
Antwerp, or 'rest of Belgium'?
richoakley
South Africa :) And visitors always welcome!
kenver
Just got back from holiday there. How do you get any work done in that heat!?
kokey
I just got back to the UK from a 2 week holiday in SA. We went North of Pretoria where it was 38 degrees, but didn't feel too bad since it was a welcome break to the miserable cold in the UK and it was reasonably dry heat. I'm from SA originally, you get by with aircon in the office and in the car. Try having to wear a suit when the car's aircon is broken, it sucks.
richoakley
yeah it gets damn warm here! cape town (where I live) has a sea breeze so is a bit more moderate, though.
Synaesthesia
It doesn't get unbearably hot, at least in Pretoria, and the winters are really mild.
aangjie
Hmm... Europe leads.. would be surprised if US did not come out on top by tommorrow this time..

- provided poll stays on top of course...

aangjie
Looks like i was biased towards america after all.....surprising to know that, given that am in India..Hmm
mweibel
Switzerland
zumda
We are missing the option to chose 'Europe but somehow not really Europe'!
piranha
Hey, I'm from Ukraine and I thought that should be my option! :)
danmaz74
You mean not EU I guess... but how is Switzerland not really Europe?? :P
zumda
It's a running joke in Switzerland since we are in the middle of Europe but not part of the EU. At least it is very easy to find Switzerland on the Euro coin! ;)
itmag
Hey, and I thought that was the Helvetic sea :)
peng
Asia/Pacific should be split up more.

One vote category that covers 60% of the world's population and 30% of Earth's land area is not very specific.

Australia has 22 million people and Canada has 35 million, while Asia (Oceania not included) has 3,900 million, yet the former two get their own country-specific categories.

timknauf
Agreed. As a New Zealander I guess I would technically fall into 'Asia/Pacific', but I can't bring myself to choose that because NZ has next to nothing in common with any Asian nation. Consider providing the regional option of 'Australasia' or, better yet, 'Oceania' instead of just the single-country 'Australia'.
polemic
We're oceania..
timknauf
Yep, that option was added after I posted.
stelund
China is split out, which is 30% of population in of Asia.
eftpotrm
While that's not unreasonable, it's also IMHO not unreasonable for an English-language site to offer more specific categories for English-speaking regions than non-English speaking regions.