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  There is no chance I'll be a job creator, no matter how driven.

If you're a software developer, at least you could be a job creator for yourself. And perhaps for many developers this is more enjoyable than managing other people, since most job creators are more busy managing or finding customers than actually creating fun stuff like software.

Can totally understand where you're coming from, but finding and recognizing your agency amidst all the mess and noise is kinda the beautiful thing about life.

The journey sucks a lot, but at the end of the day that's all we got, not the different destinations we traverse to and from.

Some roads are plated in gold, but others are broken and run down.

It's easy to have your sentiment when your road is the former and not the latter.

It's totally survivor bias for sure, but falling into (and surviving) years of depression and coming from third world conditions to the US help shape and contextualize a lot of meaning. It's easy because the path now is plated gold, and for sure, some people their entire path is broken. :/

But when it's broken you think about just walking and not smelling any of the shit... Just left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot...

> My family was totally broken, like one hundred percent shattered.

Mine was too.

> There is no chance I'll be a job creator, no matter how driven.

That need not be the case, all it takes is a lucky break, worked for me.

Resonance. I can see / understand this. I hope to not limit serendipity though, and the same for your case too. In the end, it's all a chasing of the wind.

There are many counter examples to your anecdote. Larry Ellison comes to mind, but there are others (in fact, most of our most successful people come from very broken backgrounds).

It's what you do with that drive/anger/passion/frustration/motivation/defiance that counts.

It takes a lot of risk, and guts to strike out and create jobs - and more often than not it doesn't work out... but that's all part of the game.

It's one thing to be really good at what you do... to even be the best. It's another thing entirely to convince other really good and sometimes the best people to work for you, your company, and your ideas.

Correlation: Look up Sam's comments about his parents. Think of pg's background. Of the successful people from broken backgrounds, they were usually successful by moving on to affluent universities where they recovered.

It's one thing to be really good at what you do... to even be the best. It's another thing entirely to convince other really good and sometimes the best people to work for you, your company, and your ideas.

This is in fact the central argument of my original comment: Merit is mostly communication, and your ability to communicate is defined by the context you grow up in. Not in spite of it.

When the world shapes you, reshaping yourself is not the only thing that matters. Your old mistakes can brand you for life.

Your ability to communicate is actually quite exceptional. Whatever has led you to lose faith in yourself, I assure you it should not be because you fear you lack intrinsic merit.

Thank you. I have far less hope than it seems, due to something recent that closed some doors forever. But you made me feel a bit better, if only for a fleeting moment.

Please have a wonderful year.

The 'broken background' anecdote sounds nice, but the majority (>50%) of the forbes 400 these days comes from upper middle class backgrounds. These kids are the majority at elite schools which are feeders for the best career opportunities.

Another person that is a counter-example and outlier: Franklin Story Musgrave.

A modern-day polymath, he was a NASA astronaut, Disney Imagineer, and physician among other things. He holds six academic degrees.

He, too, had an extremely troubled upbringing.[1]

In his own words, "I came from an extraordinarily dysfunctional family, full of abuse and alcoholism. And eventually everyone within the family had committed suicide."

[1] http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/mus0int-1]

You are just like more to drown in self pity then do something for yourself. It's much more convenient. Much easier. I grew up same as you. Probably much worse. Hard work, perseverance and a lot of reflection helped me overcome the shortcomings you deem insurmountable.

Fuck off. You don't know anything about me or the horrors I grew up with, how hard I've worked, or a single thing about me. You and your kind are why it's so hard to go through life. You can't relate because you were not so unlucky.

This is the first and last time I have ever spoken to an HN member like this, and I say that not out of pretense, but to illustrate both the gravity and the finality of my background that no one will believe.

I sincerely hope it was all a fluke, and that I was really the only one in the world to go through all of that. It's not even worth trying to understand.

I'm glad you were able to have a happy life. Please enjoy it, and hug whoever makes it all worthwhile.

Yes, you are a very special little snowflake. Nobody overcame hardships in life.

Haha. Perhaps this exchange will be able to explain some things to some people, after I really say what I'm going to be saying.

It's such a perfect illustration of the entire life, start to finish, like a waking nightmare.

Goodbye.

Or perhaps you shouldn't be so arrogant and dismiss everyone else's problems so readily. "I have suffered infinitely more than you could ever comprehend". Vanity is definitely Devil's favorite sin, and it lurks in the strangest of places.

Goodbye to you too.

I didn't say you didn't go through harsh things. I apologize if that's how it felt. I'd probably have reacted the same way; sorry. I'm glad you got through it, honestly.

The world can make you feel so worn. There's sometimes just no chance left.