Assuming most of the readers are in developer jobs, I'm interested in knowing if people in completely different professions e.g. law, medicine, plumbing, cooking etc read this site.
I work in accounting (manufacturing, non-tech) and read HN daily. The discussions here are often balanced and insightful. HN feels quite mature. I learn a lot here - how to be a better mentor, how to be mentored, how to cope with depression, etc. I'm interested in tech (as a consumer), but not as a engineer.
I work in purchasing (manufacturing) and I'm react hobbyist.<p>Due to the fact that my career turned in the automotive direction (too long story why that happens), the change of industry will probably never come.
Saving money to transfer to IT job is not easy with a 2 + 2 family and a new home.<p>In general in the office is like:
"Did you saw yesterday the game in TV? It was amazing"
"Naah, I'm working now on a Reddit clone"
and they just don't understand me.<p>IT or to be more precise programming is my passion or maybe a dream.
That's why I return everyday on HN and read Dan Abramov tweets
Sure, you can see professionals from all kinds of backgrounds chipping in, just read some threads?<p>Naturally, techies have more exposure to the platform, but the diversity of topics and desired quality of content is attractive to a much broader audience than just "devs".<p>Also: not everyone working in IT is a dev :-)
I'm into sales copywriting (direct response marketing) and HN is my homepage. I love to read it daily because of intellectual discussions and also to check if my Internet is working.
I am a pro gambler and I read HN almost daily. I'd like to change my career soon and I am hoping HN will help me decide what my next step should be (I have basic experience with MySQL and PHP).
I'm in Sales/Marketing and I read HN every day. With that said, I work in the tech industry. I hardly ever chip in, though, because of the more technical focus within the comment threads.
I used to be in the trades. I read hacker news when I started getting into programming and now I work full time as a software engineer. So.. yes non-tech folks read hacker news!