I'm sorry that happened to you. The comments here are generally high quality and I've learned quite a lot from them, but there are things I've learned from experience that go against conventional wisdom here.
Although not as drastic a case as yours, I think it's often worth being critical of what one reads here and keeping one's ideals until actual experience makes one incline one way or the other.
I would say if you take hacker news advice about what works, you're a bit of a fool. HN readers are in the pool of people who would be your competition.
In my case, I was talking about technical things like data structures and IMGUI/RMGUI, which I don't think anyone feels motivated to trick others about. :)
Although not as drastic a case as yours, I think it's often worth being critical of what one reads here and keeping one's ideals until actual experience makes one incline one way or the other.