You think the HN community has a problem with these posts because it's filled with people who can already execute on the "million dollar consultancy" or "make 100k online" business models? That the backlash is coming from the "thousands" of "hacker entrepreneurs" resenting the "millions" of "microISV" people taking over the site?
Give me a break. The backlash is from people who are so intensely jealous that they find the idea of making any money outside a job unseemly and would get back to bitching about how evil Valley VC is.
"The backlash is from people who are so intensely jealous"
Behaviorally, I'm wondering if some of the jealousy is coming from the "aw shucks" tone of these posts.
After all, in high school, nobody was ever jealous of the cliche kid with horn rimmed glasses that studied all the time, never partied, went to medical school (or became a rocket scientist) and ended up making lots of money (and actually married a beautiful nurse). He worked hard he deserved his success. (Or the athlete who made it into the pros or pick your own example). I think it's human nature for people to see someone who appears to be naive/lucky and things just worked out.
A relative of mind recently commented that his college roommate "who had a lower GPA than I did" made it big on wall street and was living the life with a beach house and all the trimmings (while the relative was working for a bank doing just "ok"). It was clear he was jealous and that he felt he was smarter and had worked harder than this individual.
This is the same mentality that suggests that 37signals is supercar-successful because they lucked out and got a popular blog. As if blogs were harvested from comet shrapnel instead of simply being the result of posting regularly about your work.
There is nothing Patrick is doing that most people on HN couldn't do. That is, in fact, his whole damn story; it is literally his thesis. "I spent 5 hours a week building 'hello world' and hooking it up to a random number generator and then refining ways to sell it to teachers; here's what happened". LUCKY DUCKY! cries HN.
"There is nothing Patrick is doing that most people on HN couldn't do"
Sure if they applied themselves and put the effort in. Big "if" there though.
In any case I don't think Patrick falls into the "aw shucks" category at all. The post he did was long and detailed and I don't remember much (just rescanned quickly maybe I missed) about how he did it all and managed to still travel and have fun (he might have but I didn't see that). The sheer amount of detail in that post is great. I don't even have time to read it fully I can only imagine the effort that went into writing and editing.
There is also this sentence at the end:
"I think that, aspirationally, career/job/business/etc was never supposed to be my #1 priority, but be that as it may it sucked up a disproportionate amount of my twenties."
So Patrick did what he had to do to make it happen, this is no "boating accident" (it's a shark) and his success is the result of hard work. Not everyone has what it takes to do that. (I'm reminded of the Karate tournament that I was in when I was younger where I was absolutely blown away by opponent who clearly had put way more effort into preparing than I did.)
I'm not sure all, or even that most, HN'ers could achieve that because while they may be smart and they may read and learn everything they can they might not actually be good at applying that information, taking chances, having other things in their life suffer etc. or just plugging away.
Give me a break. The backlash is from people who are so intensely jealous that they find the idea of making any money outside a job unseemly and would get back to bitching about how evil Valley VC is.