You're conflating two entirely different ideas. The point here is that you should be able to explain an idea briefly if you understand it well. In the other article you reference, the author had 90
different ideas to relate. Each point in that article was indeed brief; many of those 90 points were only one sentence.
I read your comment in the other article, and I agree with the consensus that it wasn't helpful (to be brutally honest). There is no hard fast law that says you can never learn more than 10 useful things running a company. In fact, I'd say that assumption would be grossly false. There is also no law saying that out of 90 things learned, 10 things will magically be much more important than the other 80, such that they could be separated and treated with more emphasis.
Your suggestion to the previous author was to separate out 10 of the ideas, and to put the other 80 in a post-script or follow-up. But why? To make it more link-baity? Your suggestion came across as, "Hey, you could get more views if you pandered your writing (nay, your thought process) more to the lowest common denominator of reader."
However, clearly the author a) had no interest in doing that, and b) didn't need to, since they made it to front page of HN!
Frankly, I agree with that author. If I have something useful to say about running my company, then my target audience is people who run their company seriously and who make it their lifelong mission to learn. And those are typically not the people who only read Top-10 lists.
Furthermore, the author's article stood out and was very effective, because, how many 90-point lists do you see posted to HN? In this case, being different worked beautifully for the author.
I'm sure you can see the irony in suggesting to a successful entrepreneur that they might have been more successful in some successful endeavor, had they instead done it like everyone else.
I read your comment in the other article, and I agree with the consensus that it wasn't helpful (to be brutally honest). There is no hard fast law that says you can never learn more than 10 useful things running a company. In fact, I'd say that assumption would be grossly false. There is also no law saying that out of 90 things learned, 10 things will magically be much more important than the other 80, such that they could be separated and treated with more emphasis.
Your suggestion to the previous author was to separate out 10 of the ideas, and to put the other 80 in a post-script or follow-up. But why? To make it more link-baity? Your suggestion came across as, "Hey, you could get more views if you pandered your writing (nay, your thought process) more to the lowest common denominator of reader."
However, clearly the author a) had no interest in doing that, and b) didn't need to, since they made it to front page of HN!
Frankly, I agree with that author. If I have something useful to say about running my company, then my target audience is people who run their company seriously and who make it their lifelong mission to learn. And those are typically not the people who only read Top-10 lists.
Furthermore, the author's article stood out and was very effective, because, how many 90-point lists do you see posted to HN? In this case, being different worked beautifully for the author.
I'm sure you can see the irony in suggesting to a successful entrepreneur that they might have been more successful in some successful endeavor, had they instead done it like everyone else.