1. The person on Twitter doesn't exclusively ask Ryan about the business. He specifically asks how he spends his day. Even if the asker wanted to know more about the business and less about his day, Ryan's response is appropriate given how the question was phrased.
2. Ryan does talk about which business activities he focuses on. He specifically mentions how he used to handle newsletters, wireframes, support emails, and marketing plans but now focuses on strategy, product, and team communication.
3. Ryan is a CEO of a venture-backed company and people, including ones on HN, are sometimes interested in the lives of people like him, both the personal and professional aspects. The personal details he shared helped me understand how he's able to maintain work-life balance, notwithstanding the demands of a CEO, which I find personally useful.
4. As to your complaint of him specifically mentioning his iPhone, one of the other commenters put it best: "Because his identity revolves around the brand of his phone and he's just begging for your validation. OR The post is full of specific details and he owns an iPhone."
If you want Ryan to be more specific, you could ask him on his blog. But I think it's unreasonable to expect that Ryan should have had the foresight to be more specific, and then subsequently criticize him for not being specific.
>"The person on Twitter doesn't exclusively ask Ryan about the business. He specifically asks how he spends his day."
Wrong. He asks: "can you blog about how you spend your day running your biz?" followed by "What biz activities do you focus on now that the product is up?". "Biz" is referring to business, in case you didn't pick that up.
>" Ryan is a CEO of a venture-backed company and people, including ones on HN, are sometimes interested in the lives of people like him, both the personal and professional aspects. "
I'll tell you what his life is like: it's just like yours, or anyone else who has a work-day. Do you really think that somehow being a venture-backed CEO of a tiny company changes your life? That's incredibly naive.
>"As to your complaint of him specifically mentioning his iPhone"
I didn't complain about it, someone in the comments did. His reply was what interested me.
>"If you want Ryan to be more specific, you could ask him on his blog."
No, I don't care to read his blog. As I've said, I have no interest in his day-to-day life. I care about reading HN, and this article appeared today. It's the only reason I stumbled on it, mostly because it had such an eye-catching title.
In fact, I'm quite amused that people find this post enlightening and insightful, when I find it to be...obnoxious might be too strong a word, but definitely self-promoting and lacking any substance. Apparently some people agree with me. Life is funny like that.
Heh. i was actually just quoting 2001... ut after I posted that quote - I read the article.
I actually agree with your assessment - this post is terrible. It denotes a work day austensibly running a business where the CEO spends 28 hours per week "tackling todos" with very little time for anything that comes up.
I would love to go to work at 11 (from home, after feeding wife, hitting gym, getting kids rady for school, lawyering up, etc)...
"Wrong. He asks: "can you blog about how you spend your day running your biz?" followed by "What biz activities do you focus on now that the product is up?". "Biz" is referring to business, in case you didn't pick that up."
Wow. Well, he's the CEO isn't he? He can answer the question he thought should have been asked.
1. The person on Twitter doesn't exclusively ask Ryan about the business. He specifically asks how he spends his day. Even if the asker wanted to know more about the business and less about his day, Ryan's response is appropriate given how the question was phrased.
2. Ryan does talk about which business activities he focuses on. He specifically mentions how he used to handle newsletters, wireframes, support emails, and marketing plans but now focuses on strategy, product, and team communication.
3. Ryan is a CEO of a venture-backed company and people, including ones on HN, are sometimes interested in the lives of people like him, both the personal and professional aspects. The personal details he shared helped me understand how he's able to maintain work-life balance, notwithstanding the demands of a CEO, which I find personally useful.
4. As to your complaint of him specifically mentioning his iPhone, one of the other commenters put it best: "Because his identity revolves around the brand of his phone and he's just begging for your validation. OR The post is full of specific details and he owns an iPhone."
If you want Ryan to be more specific, you could ask him on his blog. But I think it's unreasonable to expect that Ryan should have had the foresight to be more specific, and then subsequently criticize him for not being specific.