I went and did a masters degree in Ecology (well, Conservation Ecosystem Management specifically) during covid which I really enjoyed. A lot of it was completely out of my comfort zone after 20+ years in tech but a surprising amount did translate, such as the maths/stats and writing R code.
I felt it made me a better 'thinker' if that makes sense? Learned to be more critical (in a good way) and consider subjects I'd never come across before. I even went and created (and won!) a business pitch to a government org to handle some habitat surveys which was a great experience.
For WeCombinate, I received 84 visits from HN or HN related (showhn.com etc) but for Payments Plugin I saw a spike up to 386 for one day straight from HN.
The WeCombinate post fell away very quickly with zero comments but the post with the Payments Plugin link stayed around on the bottom on the home page for about 6-8 hours.
Overall, I didn't see any conversions as a result of the HN traffic although I don't think HN is my target audience really.
Just thought I'd add some more data points into the conversation.
I felt it made me a better 'thinker' if that makes sense? Learned to be more critical (in a good way) and consider subjects I'd never come across before. I even went and created (and won!) a business pitch to a government org to handle some habitat surveys which was a great experience.