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Comment by monksy | Hacker News Reader

DHH has been cursed by success and he doesn't even realize it. This is a rather tone-deaf and unfortunate article.

From what I get from the article is: You can't be like me, but the best you can do is to better yourself. It's a completely demotivating and dangerous message.

It completely ignores the role that luck played, ignored the factor of social connections, and the struggle it takes to get to where he got to. He waxes on a lot in the article and completely ignores the economics of why he succeed and others didn't.

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I think you may need to forget who the author is for a second and reread this.

He admits luck plays a huge role in success [0] (especially if you're using the success of others to measure your own success).

He's saying competing with yourself is the best way to measure success and achieve fulfillment. This probably stems from a lot of people using him as a barometer of success in tech. Comparing yourself to others is a great way to be miserable forever.

[0] "Besides, you only have limited influence on whether you’re going to succeed at whatever you put your mind to. It’s by no means within your exclusive sphere of control. There are so many things that have to come together at the same time. Only a couple of which you own."

There's many better ways to explain the role of luck in success, but I felt the way he mentions that was an add-on to his whole message of "don't bother." Competing with yourself improves you, not your positioning in the real world. When you improve yourself and the real world is more bountiful, that's a minor side effect purely based on your context and environment.

In the whole article, he doesn't bring up examples of others to make his point. His only source in this is himself from his point of view.

> From what I get from the article is: You can't be like me, but the best you can do is to better yourself.

That's not what he's saying. His message is - it's not impossible that you'll be successful, but it's just not very likely, so don't hung up on that too much. Jordan Peterson has made a similar point, where he said that only a small minority of people entering a workforce will have careers (which imply substancial degree of self-direction and fullfillment), and the rest will just have jobs. So don't invest too much into trying to have a career, as you're likely regret it 10 or 20 years down the road.

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