
The Genius and Tragedy of Patrick McKenzie (patio11) - lionhearted
http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/?p=251
======
patio11
Well, I'm happy that people like me and are invested in my success. I'm also a
little discomfited by the psychoanalysis. I'm pretty happy with where I am in
life, have a pretty decent career trajectory at the moment, and life is
improving in non-career ways which matter more to me anyhow.

That's about all I think I need to say.

~~~
grellas
I don't know anything whatever about the person behind patio11 but, from
everything I know about patio11, I sure would _want_ to know that person.
Thanks for your always-perceptive and intelligent contributions to this site.

------
mquander
This is unbelievable. If the author absolutely can't resist giving patio11 a
bunch of advice about how to live his life, then write an email. If the author
wants to tell _us_ how super important it is to self-promote and make a lot of
money, then don't make an example out of a dude whose mind and motivations are
clearly _completely_ fucking opaque to you.

~~~
lionhearted
> This is unbelievable. If the author absolutely can't resist giving patio11 a
> bunch of advice about how to live his life, then write an email.

There was two other things I wanted to do - increase Patrick's profile in a
positive way, and also make the point at the very bottom especially to young
people in technology who are underpaid because they don't value/price their
skills enough.

> If the author wants to tell us how super important it is to self-promote and
> make a lot of money, then don't make an example out of a dude whose mind and
> motivations are clearly completely fucking opaque to you.

He was saying he was upset when a public school teacher wanted wanted a
discount because the teacher only made $60k - and he said he'd never made
$60k.

Anyways, it looks like this has been popular with a lot of people and
hopefully helpful, but also drawn some really strong negative reactions. I
guess that's okay - ideally some good things comes out of this, I think it's
quite possible. We'll see.

~~~
mquander
For what it's worth, I didn't interpret that as him being upset that he wasn't
making more money; I thought he was upset because the teachers are treating
him like some amorphous business-entity instead of a normal, hard-working guy
who deserves what they're paying him.

Beyond the fact that I consider it extremely rude to write something like this
about a private person without permission, I am strongly negative about this
piece because it reinforces the bizarre idea that making money is somehow a
really good and important value to have. If you have a particular passion that
requires a lot of money, like running a huge business, or helping a ton of
people through charity, then great -- make some money and do it! But most
things that humans like don't require a lot of money!

Imagine I wrote this post:

 _The Genius and Tragedy of Sebastian_

 _Sebastian is a multi-faceted genius. He’s amazingly talented, I can’t even
explain how talented he is. But all is not rosy... His story thus far is a
story of tragedy and wasted potential. I assumed he was a successful
chessplayer. He's very smart, and has a good memory. Then I read this comment
Sebastian wrote earlier today:

"I like chess, but I wish my dad would stop bragging when he beats me (I'm not
even a C-class player.)"

WTF? Sebastian, dude, with your focus and brains, you could be an
international master. Even if you don't fully appreciate the beauty of chess,
your tournament games would entertain hundreds of players online, and help
educate and inspire young players. Anyone who says "I don't care about
competitive chess" clearly hasn't thought about it very much.

[insert ten pages of chess advice]_

I find that to be totally identical to your post about why he should try to
make a lot of money.

~~~
lionhearted
> Imagine I wrote this post: ... Even if you don't fully appreciate the beauty
> of chess, your tournament games would entertain hundreds of players online,
> and help educate and inspire young players. Anyone who says "I don't care
> about competitive chess" clearly hasn't thought about it very much.

It's a little different than that - there's some smart and accomplished people
who read my site, and I was hoping to introduce them and connect them with
Patrick, maybe creating some opportunities. If you posted on a Chess blog and
told all your readers to go look the person up if they wanted an exceptional
Chess student, and I was looking to be apprenticed, then I'd appreciate that.

I don't know how it'll go over, we'll see what Patrick says. If he's
displeased or this brings ill on him, I can edit or delete the post as suits
him. I wrote it with good intentions, we'll see how it goes.

~~~
jacquesm
> It's a little different than that - there's some smart and accomplished
> people who read my site, and I was hoping to introduce them and connect them
> with Patrick, maybe creating some opportunities.

I'm sure that if that was your true goal that there would have been better
ways of going about it.

------
danilocampos
If Patrick is genuinely having fun, he may be tragic like a fox.

As soon as people are giving you money in exchange for your time and services,
you're obliged to do a bunch of things you may not care about. Your time has
been bought.

I don't know Patrick, but if you can go from working for the man 70 hours a
week to doing your own thing entirely, that strikes me as quite an upgrade.
Assuming cost of living is taken care of, that's a huge win. Your time is your
own.

I admire Patrick's humble approach and I can't presume to know how his income
tradeoffs affect his happiness.

Still, in my hypothetical I'd take paying the bills on my own to living large
while in the service of clients that are less than fun. The case for Patrick's
talent is well stated, though – I should think his skill would let him be
selective with his clients if he chose.

Talking about someone I don't know but whose comments I like is so weird.
Especially the income thing. Okay. I'm done now.

~~~
jacquesm
> I should think his skill would let him be selective with his clients if he
> chose.

I would assume he gets multiple job offers every month and he may even honor
one or two, so he is already selective, otherwise he'd be employed at a large
figure instead of pushing forward on his own agenda.

His major asset at this point in time is his reputation, which he has been
very careful to build up, if he wanted to take the 'easy money' route out I'm
sure he'd be clever enough to do so.

The fact that he doesn't and that he's a smart fellow to me says that there
will be lots more to come, but on Patricks time-table and nobody else's.

Incidentally, I did a poll earlier today about the possible downsides of
openness I never saw a post like this one coming, all this is possible because
Patrick chose to be frank with the world instead of miserly with the
information about his business. No good deed goes unpunished.

~~~
joelhaus
_His major asset at this point in time is his reputation_

Agree completely. Reading the article, I couldn't help but imagine how Patrick
would be perceived if he followed the OP's well-intentioned advice.

IMO, his humble persona, generosity/openness and consistent work ethic have
made him the popular and approachable figure that he is today. It wouldn't be
surprising if much of Patrick's inspiration came from Balsamiq's Peldi.

~~~
balsamiq
Hi Joel, thanks so much for the flattering words, but it's the other way
around. Patrick has been a huge inspiration for me for a long time now! :)

------
plinkplonk
Does anyone else find this kind of "analysis" of a fellow HN member creepy?

I don't know if this is a cultural thing, (not a US citizen, the majority of
HN's readership seems to be) but I found the whole blog post weird and highly
distasteful. The author comes across as a borderline stalker/psychopath. From
the blog comments.

"> You are making a number of strong assumptions about him from a few comments
on HN. If you really wanted to help this would have worked better as a
personal e-mail.

I went back and forth on that. In the end, I think doing it this way is going
to produce the best outcomes – a couple of my popular posts have brought me a
great amount of attention from cool people lately. "

This is just sick. He does a drive by creepy "analysis" of someone else so he
could get "attention from cool people".

Shudder.

~~~
jacquesm
> Does anyone else find this kind of "analysis" of a fellow HN member creepy?

Yep. If it were me I'd feel highly uncomfortable.

It seems to come with the territory though, the more visible you are the more
stuff like this you can expect.

> I don't know if this is a cultural thing, (not a US citizen, the majority of
> HN's readership seems to be) but I found the whole blog post weird and
> highly distasteful. The author comes across as a borderline stalker. Slimy.

I think the post is actually with the best of intentions but completely fails
in two important aspects:

    
    
      (1) I don't get the impression Patrick was asked if this was ok with him
    
      (2) It is a huge post based on a single line in a comment
          which talks about Patricks achievements to date, and
          talks about him as though that's going to be his lot
          in life.

~~~
xelipe
Completely agree. I don't imagine anyone here would like to be analysed by a
blogger to such degree, especially based on one of hand comment. The article
reads like a hit piece and the sort of outing that caused _why to remove all
of his projects and writings from the net. The fallacy the author committed
was trying to compare apples and oranges to dollars and cents, comparing a
salary amount to a life choice, comparing success to revenue.

------
swombat
Let's hope DHH, Jason Fried, Jason Calacanis, Michael Arrington and Tim Ferris
don't all read this article and think "Damn, he's right, I need to be more
self-aggrandising!"

~~~
rokhayakebe
Or, let's hope they do not write about Patrick without asking him. I am not
sure how he would feel about it.

------
jacquesm
I think Patricks biggest contribution is that he's _not_ a greedy person and
willing to share his adventures to the betterment of all.

He has one thing he's very adamant about, he wants to have 100% of the thing
he built. That's pretty limiting in terms of how far you can push it, my own
idea is that I'd rather have a smaller part of something much larger, but
we're not all built the same.

(see: [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/09/02/new-trends-in-startup-
in...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/09/02/new-trends-in-startup-investing-
explained-for-laymen/) , the last paragraph).

I think this is all about having your comfort zone and learning to walk before
learning how to run.

~~~
prawn
What I like most about Patrick's stuff is that he is such a vocal and visible
contributor even though his personal start-up is such a realistic and
achievable story. He doesn't make veiled references or never disclose his
project(s) - he puts it all out there to the dollar. There's no outside
investment, IPO, MSM press, etc. It's just one guy and his success in moving
into self-employment. It's a happy life in Hobbiton (and I don't mean that in
a condescending way at all).

Having read/skimmed Sebastian's article, it felt as though something ignorant
and grand-standing had just trampled that.

------
il
I know the HN community looks up to Patrick as something of a "guru", and I
have a tremendous amount of respect for him, the information he shares, and
his contributions to the community. But... You know, there are lots of people
out there who are good at business, the details of AdWords/marketing, can
write well, can recruit people, etc(I'm not one of them, but I know many who
are).

The only reason you're aware of Patrick and not any other one of the thousands
of entrepreneurs is because he engages with the community and promotes
himself. patio11 has become a brand on this site- people say things like "oh,
that's a patio11 comment" or "I wonder what patio11 would say about this".

I'm not trying to take anything away from what Patrick has accomplished- I'm
just saying that maybe, just maybe, he's not as worthy of your adoring blog
posts as you think.

~~~
danilocampos
>The only reason you're aware of Patrick and not any other one of the
thousands of entrepreneurs is _because he engages with the community and
promotes himself_.

Hmm. I don't have a dog in this hunt, but it sounds kind of like saying...

The only reason you think the space shuttle is cool is _because it's a plane
that flies in space_.

The only reason you think a swimming pool is fun is _because it's a huge
bathtub where a bunch of people can swim._

The only reason you think airplanes are cool is _because they let people fly
through the air and cross distances in a short amount of time._

I mean, all of that doesn't lack unique value and power, you know?

~~~
il
I agree, but then you have to make a distinction: Do you think Patrick is cool
because of his exceptional SEO/business knowledge, or do you think Patrick is
cool because he is active in the community? Two very different things.

------
singer
Watch your back Patrick. I think you have a new stalker. Seriously though..
this is one of the scariest blog posts I've ever read.

~~~
dfranke
This. I would find this post mildly creepy even if it were written about
someone's who's an actual public figure. Writing it about someone whose claim
to fame is writing a Bingo card generator and being #4-ranked in karma on a
niche internet forum is just sick.

~~~
ellyagg
It may be inappropriate on some level, but calling it sick and scary is a
little bit creepy itself. He's only saying out loud what many of us have been
thinking.

If the suggestion is that you can't freely admire someone (and the praise was
clearly served up as an extra helping to offset the criticism) based only on
the quality and volume of writing that Patrick has produced, well, that's just
extra creepy.

~~~
jacquesm
> and the praise was clearly served up as an extra helping to offset the
> criticism

Hitting with one hand while praising at the same time never fooled anybody.

------
naner
Linkbait, pandering, superficial, too long, empty, dumb. How in the holy hell
does this have 162 points?

God lets hope the patio11 guy doesn't take any of this advice. I mean jesus
christ: _...rose to international celebrity..._

This is so stupid. Look at this guy's own about page. It is a billion words
about how he tries to be disciplined and travels. Oh, and he's interested in
"strategy". That's it. Is this a guy you want to emulate? Or is this a guy who
avoids work, has accomplished nothing, and expects to be commended for it?

------
rick888
You call him a genius, yet he spent 6 years promoting a product (which I might
add only took him a few days to create) that is only now just breaking the
$1000 or $2000/month mark. Most smart people would have cut their losses a few
years ago. Especially since that market isn't very big (elementary school
teachers are poor and most schools won't invest in such a product).

He is looked up to on the Joel on Software board and this forum as a
marketing/business genius, yet he barely makes enough money to break the
poverty level for one person (I can't imagine how he affords to live in
Japan).

He has talent and perseverance, but he's not a model we should be following
for business.

~~~
skmurphy
By what finish line are you judging him? He is well respected by his peers, he
writes insightfully on difficult topics. he is independent and is spending his
time as he chooses. And he is not done yet.

~~~
jacquesm
> And he is not done yet.

That's exactly where it's at. We can not look inside another persons head and
this kind of 'reading the tea leaves' is bound to get it fantastically wrong
in the longer term.

------
pedoh
While I agree with the praises directed towards Patrick, I don't think it's
wise to make assumptions about his (or anyone else's) motivations. If Patrick
wanted to, he could walk any of the paths mentioned in the OP.

We just don't know that Patrick isn't exactly where he wants to be in the long
run. Maybe he doesn't want the things that come along with $100k, $200k, $1MM
per year.

If it _is_ his aspiration to make that kind of money, I wouldn't bet against
him having a plan. Patrick's transparency about his work might give the
illusion that we know what he wants in life. We don't.

~~~
jacquesm
Exactly. People are complicated, not two dimensional card-board cut-outs of
wannabe rich guys. Whatever motivates Patrick is up to him and him alone.

This to me seems like helping a person to the other side of the street with
the best intentions by frog marching them there only to find out they didn't
want to be there in the first place.

------
jdietrich
I kind of concur. I am egotistical enough to maintain a list of people who I
know to be unquestionably smarter than me. Patrick is one of the few names on
that list.

I think Patrick is a Woz and he needs to find his Jobs. Patrick can optimise
and refine to an almost incomprehensible degree. I think largely as a
consequence of the precision and detail of this mindset, he lacks the
grandiosity to attack a really big, difficult problem. Without Jobs, Woz would
probably still be designing calculators for HP - beautiful, legendary
calculators, with circuits that get used as engineering case studies, but
calculators all the same.

If you're reading this Patrick, I hope you don't take this as an insult, I
intend it as the opposite - I consider you to be a world-class thinker and
hope you end up working on problems befitting that.

~~~
jacquesm
Think of everything that went before as a training exercise.

> I think Patrick is a Woz and he needs to find his Jobs.

I would rather see it the opposite way, Patricks business skills and insights
_far_ outpace his technical capacity to implement at this point in time, I
would not dream of presuming who he should work with but if that person had
him do a/b testing or coding that would be an utter waste of talent.

~~~
mattmanser
Seriously, what business skills?

In 5 years he's managed to build a $30k business.

That is it.

$30k. That's less than a self-employed plumber. That's far less than a doctor
or a pharmacist (5 years training).

While we can all read Patrick's writings and think 'hey that's pretty good',
all it means is that he's a good writer.

He's a good writer, but a terrible businessman, he has the business sense of a
dead ferret.

Clear evidence of dead ferret like business skills:

1\. He builds BCC in 1 week then spends 5 years gradually improving it instead
of just building more products.

2\. It took him 5 years to make another product.

3\. He entered an extremely small niche and then instead of building another
product he spent 5 years attacking that niche.

4\. He'll gleefully take a 10% increase in sales in 6 months for a product he
built in 1 week, not realizing that perhaps, just perhaps, he should spend
another week BUILDING ANOTHER PRODUCT.

Yeah, they're all the damn same point. The point is that the internet's
exploded in the last 4/5 years (whenever he started). It's exploded and 50% of
his growth can be put down to just that. The internet growing. The rest of it
was largely wasted time if you look at it from a business perspective. He was
an SEO expert and totally failed to capitalize on it when it would have been
worth millions. He spotted and knows how great small web apps do years ago and
yet only just gave up his day job. He missed so many massive first mover
advantages reading his blog is like watching a slow motion car crash.

That's why, when reading his stuff I get so angry. I can see it, plain as day
on my face. He's done it, he can do it so much better, so much bigger, and yet
there he is, tweaking his blog posts, A/B testing BCC, his crutch.

This guy's no business genius, he's totally clueless at business. 10 seconds
looking at his tiny market vs. his potential reward for entering ANY other
market would make him realize he should make another gad-damn product. He's
got the experience, he's done it before! What's he afraid of? He missed every
single web opportunity that's been going.

Worse he even knows, knows, that if he switched his product to a subscription
based thing he'd probably be rolling in it. And he hasn't even tried. He's
even letting people still use the desktop client. Why? WHY?

Because he's NOT got the business skills.

I'm not saying I'm better, in many, many ways I'm a lot worse. I can't get my
first product out the door yet and I've not got some crazy salary. But to call
Patrick's first skill business is to do a great disservice to all those people
who were in the same position he was 5 years ago and are now millionaires or
multimillionaires while he's small time apart from some kudos on hacker news
and Spolsky's forums.

I am so glad he's finally making another product. I really wish him well. But
he let so many pitches sail by it makes me angry just thinking about it.

~~~
jacquesm
Patrick picked a niche product to hone his skills in, he had to pick something
that was complex enough that he would see the whole story, yet simple enough -
and not critical enough - that if his day job demanded it that he could ignore
it for a bit.

That rules out B2B, which is where the money is when you're a one man show.

So, now he's got his hands free, he's got his knives sharpened and he's going
to do his next project, presumably at a higher level of turnover.

Some people are cautious other people are much more of a risk taking nature. I
can fully sympathize with the way Patrick went about this and I would
_definitely_ not assume that this was all one big accident, it seems to me as
though it was by design. He simply tried to find a way to turn his idle time
in to passive income enough to get his hands free.

Running a business is about being in control, about not letting your business
run you in to corners that you can not back out of, and Patrick has - as far
as I can detect - succeeded admirably in his goals so far.

I have absolutely no doubt that he will do it again, I really hope that this
time he'll hit one out of the park.

> I'm not saying I'm better, in many, many ways I'm a lot worse. I can't get
> my first product out the door yet and I've not got some crazy salary. But to
> call Patrick's first skill business is to do a great disservice to all those
> people who were in the same position he was 5 years ago and are now
> millionaires or multimillionaires while he's small time apart from some
> kudos on hacker news and Spolsky's forums.

Let's look at that 5 years from now, ok? Some people are slow but steady, some
people are fast but go down as fast as they go up. Patrick has tried very hard
to take the lottery element out of how he runs his business and that alone
should tell you something.

~~~
mattmanser
Good points, but I think design is a strong word. I think it's a natural
consequence of his character rather than a planned strategy.

I think Patrick loves writing, he loves writing about his business and he
loves helping other people, making informed and reasonable comments. I
imagine, and hope, he has had a lot of fun the last few years doing what he
did and in the end it made him money too.

It's just that he could have made so much more, vast amounts more, if he'd
taken a bit of risk. And every time I see him talk about business or strategy
or anything that idea is screaming at the back of my mind and I judge him
harsher than I should.

~~~
jacquesm
> It's just that he could have made so much more, vast amounts more, if he'd
> taken a bit of risk.

Someone down the street where I used to live won the lottery, it was just a
bit of risk. I'll never win the lottery because I'm not that kind of person.

Instead I very slowly year by year move forward. Invariably when I do take
risks I either lose big time or I move forward a bit, on the whole that seems
to work out to a slight net positive but it hasn't been a real game changer
for me.

Patrick seems to prefer 'monotonic upwards' instead of 'rollercoaster', and
that's his privilege.

He might have made so much more, or he could have lost it all, who is there to
know for sure.

------
joshuacc
Some of the author's points are interesting, but if Patrick took the advice,
he'd basically turn into a clone of every other arrogant blowhard tech
entrepreneur in the world. He might make more money, but he wouldn't be the
patio11 that I've come to admire.

------
jgrahamc
Many people have assumed that because they think I'm smart that I am also a
millionaire. If only that were true.

Seriously, I don't understand the expectation that there's a correlation
between genius and riches.

~~~
adamtj
It's the converse that tends to be true, but many people have trouble
distinguishing between converse and contrapositive. Rich people tend to be
smart.

There are lots of bright ideas. The few that turn into successful companies
are the ones that, at a few critical points, didn't fail. A good way to fail
is to make mistakes and do nothing. So, to avoid failure, one must learn from
mistakes, which tends to make people smart and is something smart people tend
to do.

The extra axiom necessary for showing smart->rich is risk taking. Smart people
who don't take a chance and do something drastic are no more likely than
anybody else to get rich. There are people who pay others to be smart, but
they generally don't pay much more than a normal salary.

------
wglb
Have you ever heard of Travis McGee? John D. MacDonald wrote about him. Quite
a bit. Travis worked in "marine salvage", recovering lost or stolen property
for a commission. His life plan was to take his retirement in small batches,
as his life went along. Rather than waiting till later to take it all at once.
Kind of an odd set of ideas about what is important in life.

Prior to going full time (such as it is) for BCC, Patrick worked at a big
freaking enterprise working sixty hours each week. Often more. He built BCC on
five hours per week.

So now his life has improved in measurable ways, and looks to keep on
improving.

The thing that might be easy to miss about Patrick is that he is very
intentional. You might call it goal-directed. Disciplined. I think it might be
fair to say that he knows what direction to take his life in, what will make
him happy.

And one thing that he is unlikely to do is to confuse what works for him and
what others think should work for him.

It took me quite a few years (more than Patrick has so far) that being smart
is not all it cracked up to be. Being smart works when it brings you wealth.

There is a common confusion that money and wealth are essentially the same
thing. To my way of thinking, wealth includes to work on what you enjoy or
love, to have choices how you spend your time, not having to agonize about
having a roof over your head, to have family and friends to cherish and that
cherish you, to have the respect of peers. It would appear to me that Patrick
is on the road to wealth.

The fact that Patrick's version of success doesn't seem to include feverish
addictions to money and fame has apparently made the author of this blog post
"violently ill".

Were I to look to choose an example of how to live, I would be more likely to
recommend Patrick, and I would recommend that the author of the blog post take
a second look at his take on this topic.

------
Kliment
Oh seriously, this is bullshit. A deep analysis based on a single post, taken
far out of context, and completely misguided. I'm not surprised patio11 is not
responding to this. Seriously, what the hell?

~~~
davidw
> I'm not surprised patio11 is not responding to this.

Well - it's also the middle of the night in Japan. 04:28 according to the site
I glanced at.

------
bryanh
I get the impression that patio11 is doing exactly what he wants to do.

~~~
RK
Yes, and didn't he already say he had a post-BingoCardCreator project that he
was working on?

~~~
DTrejo
Reading this article would be worth your time.

~~~
RK
Yeah I missed that he mentioned it.

I pretty much started skimming when the gist of the article seemed to be that
the author was karma-whoring by writing about patio11 in detail, _instead_ of
writing a general article about maximizing your potential for your own goals.

------
lhorie
The greater tragedy, perhaps, is this game we play where we tell the world how
patio11, or Zuckerberg, or Jobs or whoever should do their stuff instead of
improving what we do ourselves.

~~~
BrandonM
That's why I voted the submission up. Reading that post made me think of my
own skills that need developed and promoted. I am a smart guy with some unique
abilities; I'm confident that with some focused effort, I could be capable of
providing great value and getting appropriately compensated for it.

I'm sure that the blog post was intended not only to encourage and promote
patio11, but to give all of us a wakeup call that we, too, are capable of
providing that same level of value with a little bit of work and dedication.

------
Poiesis
Wow. I don't even know where to start.

I think the best answer to "time to cash in on all those skills" is to note
that he now does consulting, which is the very definition of what you are
describing when you talk about who he could be helping.

About AppointmentReminder: you are presuming that somehow he is overlooking
this huge potential goldmine that you so helpfully point out. The man in
question is likely top diplomatic to say so directly, but I don't have any
problem saying that this is a rather arrogant point of view.

Note that there are in fact more than three possible explanations for what he
earns. And, why is it your business, anyway? Do you do this with other people,
too? I think this kind of analysis is best done solely with yourself; the
splinter in his eye vs.the plank in yours.

You are trying to help, but you aren't. And you just look bad on the process.

------
maxklein
Patrick is doing business in theory, but what he actually seems to enjoy is
education. He likes teaching people with his comments and teaching with his
blog posts. He focuses a lot on that, and less on the actual business and the
money.

~~~
tomjen3
Great teachers are really, really valuable.

Tim Robins makes more than 600k/year.

~~~
jonpaul
The actor? Or do you mean Tony Robins?

------
faramarz
I find it absurd that the author has written an entire life and career
analysis for Patrick based on this single sentence:

    
    
      “I have not enjoyed getting teachers who make $60k
     explain to me why I need to subsidize them (haven’t hit
     $60k in my entire life).”
    

That's unfair to Partick, and frankly, kind of a rude thing to do so publicly.
Good job though, you got a comment out of me!

------
thaumaturgy
Yeah, different people have different personalities. They have different
motivations, different strengths and weaknesses. Money and fame are not
universal drivers, it's that simple.

I'm not going to try to analyze Patrick. I enjoy reading most of his comments,
and agree that he's valuable here, but I don't know him anywhere near well
enough to think I have any insight into what makes him tick. I doubt very many
other people do, either.

But I can talk about me! I have "money issues". I don't understand it the way
that a proper businessperson should. All I understand are problems and
solutions; poor people not having equal opportunities is a problem, in my
mind, so I don't charge nearly enough. That means my business is constantly
hamstrung and resource-short, and I work for less than minimum wage.

But, I couldn't respect myself if I doubled (or tripled) my fees and only
focused on the people that could pay. It would make me far unhappier doing
that, instead of struggling every month.

So, yeah: business isn't always a matter of rationality. If he's happy, then
leave it alone. If he isn't, but doesn't ask for advice, then still leave it
alone. If he ever asks for advice, think hard about whether you know him well
enough to offer any.

------
davidw
That was a little bit weird. No, a lot weird. Calling someone the 'best
contributor' on a site like this is odd too. There are plenty of people who
make valuable contributions. YC and this site are all a big PG experiment, for
starters. Gmail paul did some pretty impressive stuff hither and thither. When
legal matters are discussed, grellas often has insightful stuff to say. And so
on and so forth...

------
barrkel
How dare you judge someone else's value system on nothing more than your own
value system, in particular over such a trivial metric as salary?

The market determines the score (price, profit, salary, whatever you want to
call it); that which is both scarce and in demand is rewarded most. But a
man's highest motivations, his identity, is not determined by the market, and
should never be, for any hope of sanity and healthy self-image. It is thus
offensive to me that someone should judge someone else on the basis that their
motivations, their identity, are insufficiently market-oriented.

I think I detect a hint of a repulsive assumption underlying this article:
that you value the worth of a person, at least in part, on the basis of how
much money they make. I hope that's not true.

------
Mc_Big_G
Making $200k at a soul-sucking corporate contracting gig, probably somewhere
other than Japan, is probably not what Patrick is looking for.

I have a feeling it's just a matter of a few more swings before he hits a home
run. Meanwhile, he's building an impressive following which equips him with an
instant audience the moment he decides to launch said home run.

------
charliepark
For what it's worth, on just about every well-written, thoughtful comment on
HN, I look up to the byline to see if it's from Patrick.

------
firebones
This whole thread disappeared quickly from the front page (meta-moderation?).

I, too, found the original post a little uncomfortable, but I think
Sebastian's intentions, as unconsciously self-serving as they were (link-bait
title plus unsolicited advice) likely fell into the blind spot commonly found
in well-intentioned do-gooders.

Unsolicited advice, particularly of a personal nature (speculating about his
Catholicism? Really?), is often not well-received, regardless of the proximity
of the originator and target.

What I find especially interesting is that Sebastian himself was on the road
to becoming an HN darling with his "How Do I Write So Much?" post receiving
rave reviews earlier in the month. At the risk of offering my own unsolicited
advice, adopting a more generically helpful and modest tone more like patio11
might have served Sebastian well in this case.

------
ww520
Patrick builds what Patrick knows.

It's often forgot that it takes in-depth domain knowledge to build a good
product. Many highly paid products require arcane knowledge about a niche.

Many software people are good generalists but lack domain knowledge. The good
news is that it's not hard to learn domain knowledge. Comparing to dealing
with complex abstract CS concepts, domain knowledge learning is often a
cakewalk. I would encourage people to look into different non-CS areas from
time to time, just to learn about their nuts and bolts.

Edit: I have great admiration for Patrick. I've followed him since the BOS
days.

------
some1else
Is it possible that when Patrick says he doesn't earn more than $60k/year,
he's talking about his paycheck, not the business?

~~~
mistermann
You're the first to mention this, it's the first thing I though. I emailed
Patrick with a few SEO questions a few months back, he logged into my
analytics for a looks see, and sent me two quite detailed email replies (for
free) with really good ideas, but said he wouldn't be able to help me any
further as he had a consulting job he was working on. I think he quoted me an
hourly rate for consulting, which was not high by any means, but would provide
a very nice lifestyle if he was doing it full time.

So from what I know, I think this interpretation of him living a life of
hardship is likely off the mark. As for this blog post, ya, its a little
weird, but I think the author wrote it with his heart in the right place, I
think perhaps he just isn't fully aware of patio11's real situation and it
seemed unjust to him. Yes, it is probably inappropriate it many ways, but in
my estimation far from the "creepiest blog post I've ever read" (as some have
said).

By the way, I also met Patrick at a HN meetup in Tokyo, super nice down to
earth guy. I doubt this post will cause him nearly the anguish it seems to be
causing others here.

------
antidaily
Embarrassed for whoever took the time to write this.

------
qw12qw
I had to go and check out the author's "about" page and skimmed over a few
"just-got-a-bath-and-haircut" posts. Idle nonsense. The "about" page is that
of a bored, spoiled psychopath.

------
illumin8
He makes some good points. A guy like Patrick could easily be pulling in
$200-300K a year contracting with large companies. Since he is smart and knows
how to hire people, he could start his own firm and break into the 7 figures
annual salary leagues.

Money isn't everything, but with those type of business skills, spending a lot
of time commenting on HN is most likely a waste of your considerable
expertise.

------
kolektiv
Or possibly, he enjoys what he does, enjoys being his own boss, likes the
challenges that the types of software he works on present, and values those
things higher than going and shaving seconds off for some airline. If he is,
his genius is more about finding a way of being happy than software,
marketing, or anything else.

I know HN tends to be all about the money at times, but seriously, it's not
everything.

------
InfinityX0
This reminds me of PG's essay "Mind the Gap" - why can't we just settle with
the fact that some people know how to make money and others don't? It's a real
skill, beyond coding, A/B testing, and all that - & it seems that it's one
patio11 definitely lacks.

<http://paulgraham.com/gap.html>

~~~
benatkin
Some people know how to _make_ wealth but aren't the best at _getting_ money.

<http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html>

Fortunately, once you have a vision, you can often get others on board who
better understand how to make sales and get paid.

------
d0m
Can't wait to see patio11's answer to that.

~~~
fondue
I'm certain I'm not the only one who paged down looking for his comment.

------
frossie
Zeus's beard. Saw the headline and thought it was an obituary.

(At least until my brain kicked and thought "he can't be dead, he's posting".
But sheesh.)

~~~
jacquesm
It's definitely written as though he's not going to achieve anything further
in life.

------
benatkin
This guy doesn't understand Patrick and he doesn't understand Paul Graham
either.

~~~
jcl
Heh... I, too, found it funny that he used pg as an example of what Patrick
should be doing. There was probably a time when someone could have written
similar article about how much more money pg could be making as a consultant
rather than mucking about with online catalogs.

~~~
benatkin
That's just one example. There have been plenty of years where pg sacrificed
making big bucks in the short term in order to work on a bigger plan. In fact,
I think 2010 has been one of them. Maybe it's been every year, except the year
Yahoo! bought Viaweb. Perhaps that could thought of as sacrificing short-term
money for time and attention, too. If they waited a year to sell Viaweb, maybe
they could have sold it for even more.

Also, the mere mention of Grad School would make this article explode.

------
necrecious
Self promotion is a tricky thing. In an ideal world, value should be
recognized through the process of your work. Unfortunately, the transparency
of your work is a multiplier in how people perceive your value.

That's why great coders aren't valued at 10x or 100x that studies say they
should be from a productivity standpoint.

Self promotion is a further multiplier on your perceived value. Some people do
it enough to counter act the transparency problem and some use it to mask
their lack of intrinsic value.

TL,DR: Perceived value = Intrinsic value * transparency of process * self
promotion

So self promotion isn't bad in and of itself.

------
keeptrying
Partick you magnificent ba$tard - you have guys willing to write and analyze
your work.

You've made it bro. Congrats!

------
euroclydon
Hey, at least the author held his punches. If he really wanted to bash
Patrick, he could have mentioned how he doesn't unit test.

------
jacquesm
I can't seem to get the sentence 'with friends like this who needs enemies'
out of my head. I accept this is all with the best of intentions but I
honestly wished that this article _and_ the corresponding post would just go
away because they serve no purpose.

------
throwaway1000
I think you could turn "The Genius and Tragedy of..." into a recurring series
of articles. I believe there are several people here on Hacker News who are
getting drastically underpaid (relative to their talent). Anyone brazen enough
to nominate others?

~~~
throwaway800
Hey! Copycat.

------
w1ntermute
Here are mirrors/copies/backups (trying to hit all the keywords people might
browser search the page for later) for if/when Sebastian pulls the post:

[http://ompldr.org/vNW1pMw/the_genius_and_tragedy_of_patrick_...](http://ompldr.org/vNW1pMw/the_genius_and_tragedy_of_patrick_mckenzie.png)

[https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1506151/img/screenshots/the_genius_...](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1506151/img/screenshots/the_genius_and_tragedy_of_patrick_mckenzie.png)

And of the HTML:
[https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1506151/html/the_genius_and_tragedy...](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1506151/html/the_genius_and_tragedy_of_patrick_mckenzie.html)

~~~
slackenerny
I downvoted you without second thought, as I believe people change and holding
them accountable for everything they've ever done forever is cruel.

However, now that I recall this lionhearted guy better, I think he should be
held to his own standards.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1366721>

------
alexyim
Who knows, maybe Patrick's contributions on here are making untold millions
for HN.

------
wittgenstein
I am fairly new to HN, and I was not aware of patio's 11 fame. I read quite a
few posts of Sebastian Marshall's blog when I first came across it.

I think the most important lesson from Marshall's blog and the point he
attempts to make in this particular post is the following: You cannot judge a
person's abilities by their writing, no matter how good it is (or seems to
be). This lesson may apply particularly well to Marshall himself.

------
invalidOrTaken
I'm newer to the HN community, and I haven't seen enough of patio's posts to
instantly equate the username with the BCC creator. So it's not at all
personal to me, and the sense of moral outrage or whatever came a bit slower.

Which gave me time to appreciate the actual post. Patrick, whoever you are (I
know better now), I'm sorry you've been made a weird
pariah/celebrity/whatever, but I learned from the article about you.

------
rewind
You know you've made it when people you don't know start publicly criticizing
you. Props, Patrick ;-)

------
jan_g
I understand the genius part. I don't understand the tradegy. Where's the
tradegy in that story ?

------
krschultz
Noticable lack of patio11 in there, what time is it in Japan right now, 2AM?

~~~
Psyonic
My guess is he either won't respond, or he'll take a hell of a long time
figuring out the right way to word a response to this.

~~~
davidw
> the right way to word a response to this.

A restraining order?;-)

~~~
Psyonic
probably, but as always Patrick handled it with class:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1721309>

------
eli
Who asked you?

------
Mz
_But! Realize I have good motives._

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I don't need to read any
further.

------
awa
I would love to make $60K while living in an country/place of my choice

------
newobj
The Genius and Tragedy of HN Linkbait.

------
camperman
Amazingly talented and erudite programmer with multiple aptitudes, a generous
spirit and strong signs of being well-adjusted is probably not that interested
in money? Sounds incredibly normal to me.

Hustler baffled by this attitude to the point of almost tearing his hair out?
Also normal. Sad but normal.

------
jw84
We should start a collection for him. Poor guy.

------
gigafemtonano
Sebastian, you seem like a nice enough guy, but have you ever considered
turning this microscope on yourself? There's a really high chance that if I
see a huge nuanced argument on HN it's coming from you. Why not put that time
and energy into something more valuable than karma?

------
zackattack
Sebastian Marshall is one of the great geniuses of our time. I feel privileged
to have the opportunity to visit the same forum that he frequents. Thank you,
Sebastian. It means a lot to all of us.

