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Comment by Alupis | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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]

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