My experience has been different. I consider HN to be a kind of 'finger on the pulse' for my profession as a programmer, and in that regard it's fantastic.
Reddit, on the other hand, is a huge time sink (some good, some bad, I read an awful lot of short fiction on Reddit, and I consider that a positive).
I can think of dozens upon dozens of posts that were useful over the years! In a way HN has reduced the amount of networking I have had to do in order to see what people are interested are in, as they are posted here!
