Surprising, and not if you've been reading enough.
Very generally surprising in that maybe we expect folks to be a bit more technical at hacker news.
Less so when we realize how widely varied technology and businesses are and you can be a hyper smart, productive and technical and know nothing about how other technology works.
I worked with someone who I managed to establish a working relationship with a very capable engineer at a previous job. Without getting into details he did some chip design and once you got "in" with him he was a great asset to work with if you were on the support side (where I worked at the time). I made a joke once when his phone was having a problem that some of our equipment must be between his phone and the server and it was having X problem (something we were working on). I'm 90% sure he actually didn't realize that the equipment the company made was ultimately something that could in fact be between his phone and the server. He was amazing at his job ... just didn't need to know that thing to be that way.
Very generally surprising in that maybe we expect folks to be a bit more technical at hacker news.
Less so when we realize how widely varied technology and businesses are and you can be a hyper smart, productive and technical and know nothing about how other technology works.
I worked with someone who I managed to establish a working relationship with a very capable engineer at a previous job. Without getting into details he did some chip design and once you got "in" with him he was a great asset to work with if you were on the support side (where I worked at the time). I made a joke once when his phone was having a problem that some of our equipment must be between his phone and the server and it was having X problem (something we were working on). I'm 90% sure he actually didn't realize that the equipment the company made was ultimately something that could in fact be between his phone and the server. He was amazing at his job ... just didn't need to know that thing to be that way.