Precisely why HN is like no other site: no matter what the subject or how arcane the field, SOMEONE reading any post is an expert. It's like one of those companies that finds you an expert for a price, except here it's free.
I am on the other end of those "find an expert for a price" (I'm the "expert") and I always expect to be asked touch questions that are hard to answer.
Once -- once! -- I was contacted by a domain expert looking for someone else to discuss some arcane tech issue (he was trying to decide if he should commit to a new display technology for their next gen design, or if it was too risky. I didn't make any decision for him or anything, just discussed the issues with him).
Typically the questions I get are from people who aren't really sure about the right question to even ask, typically in marketing or corporate strategy, and typically mid level (not new hires but not the VPs or senior directors either). They always have a particular question they want answered but don't even know enough to phrase it properly ("we're looking into strategic direction for our next level offering and our teams are recommending either writing it in C++ or using the blockchain" -- not an actual question!)
This actually makes sense. If they understood a bit about they domain they would already have contacts, hopefully ones they trusted, to help them decide. The kinds of people who pay (well, get their company to pay) to "speak to an expert" are not idiots, merely domain-ignorant and smart enough to know so. So what I end up giving is a kind of off-the-cuff interactive survey white paper to someone who hopes I don't know who they actually are (well, where they work).
It’s not tangential at all: they don’t hire me, they contract with a company that has relationships with a ton of “experts” and that company makes the connection, handles billing etc. they also have expert witnesses (often the same folks) etc. I have no idea how those guys find me. Word of mouth I presume.
I am really curious about the company that you work through. Place I contract with right now really could use some of that expert advice(not software engineering issue)
I wouldn't call myself an expert. I didn't spend a whole lot of time there (although something tells me I still spent too much time and should have GTFO'd the first time I heard the word "decisioning" being used entirely steaightfacedly). And Hackernews is full of people who think themselves experts and have strong opinions, but are really nothing of the kind, particularly in the field of health and medicine. The real experts tend to keep quiet while the pseudo-experts post anecdata about how everything from rolfing to mewing changed them from bedridden invalids to Matterhorn-conquering climbers.
