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Comment by jere | Hacker News Reader

>That's why I simply can't believe that he (or anyone for that matter) writes these things for a purpose other than to express their occupational superiority and financial success to everyone else.

You're telling me Patrick published his 2006, 2007, and 2008 reviews to boast about making a minimum wage income?

>Stories like Patrick's usually involve a rare amount of luck and certain intangibles that most people don't possess (things like a large network, notoriety, etc.)

If you want to call six years of work luck, sure. Or as Jefferson said, "I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it."

The same argument in video form: http://unicornfree.com/stacking-the-bricks/

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I'm really bemused as to why anyone would blog about making minimum wage. At this point, though, he wouldn't be publishing his income unless it was something noteworthy that he wanted to express to everyone. Also, your post rests on false assertion that he succeeded based only on work, which is not the case. Plenty of people work tirelessly for years only to fail miserably or never advance in a meaningful way. In success, intangibles always come into play. Any assertion otherwise is indefensible.

You don't want people to blog about failure. You don't want people to blog about success. You don't want people to blog about any endeavors which could be tainted by luck (all of them).

I'm not sure where your extreme negativity stems from, but reading things doesn't seem to be something you enjoy. Maybe pick up a different hobby?

I just don't like people flaunting their success. Even if other do enjoy it as some sort of aspirational motivation, the sentiment is understandable, I think.

The sardonicism and patronization isn't necessary.

The fact that Patrick wrote these sorts of posts even when his results weren't particularly great indicates to me that he's not writing these posts out of a desire to "flaunt" his success.

Flaunting isn't necessarily a conscious act. He may have good intention, but the very fact that he is listing his inordinately large income is going to make a lot of people envious of him or dejected by their own meager success.

Or, it could be inspiring them, as it obviously is if you read through many of the comments here. They can say, hey, he went from making basically nothing a few years ago and now it's making a lot of money. This is possible if I work at it.

I just recently had a very similar conversation with a younger friend who is in school. I showed him a detailed look at my business and what it takes (and importantly) what it doesn't necessarily take to make money. This is extraordinarily useful information to someone who hasn't tried going out on their own yet. People can and do make lots of money selling software. I think it's really awesome to know that someone is making 40k from Bingo Card software.

I really think people should leave ruswick to himself. He seems to live a life of not seeing anything good in others work. So people should not bother responding to him. Read his blog and you would see some negativity about app.net, branch

http://danr.us/arc

Another reason why you shouldn't respond to him, is that rather than take people's thought onboard that his negativity is unfounded in this instance, since Patrick did thesame when earning $1000, he is rather seeing it as never say anything negative about Patio11 on HN, which is not the thrust of people's response to him. See his tweet on that http://twitter.com/DanRuswick/status/285136357037326336.

People that want to hate will see reason to hate. People that want to be bitter with whatever positive post others make or whatever success they experience, will find a reason to do and would justify it, just as ruswick is doing.

It is okay to criticize patio11 or anyone if you are not blinded by pessimism and jealousy.

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