I've clawed my way from poverty to lower middle class, helped out as many people along the way as I could, done some amazing things, written a lot of brilliant code that's running the guts of a couple businesses and maybe even an East Bay school district still.

But, I've never written about any of it, I don't talk about it much, and honestly, I'd rather do just about anything other than write or talk much about it.

I have some really fantastic clients that are the same way, too.

There are a lot of incredible people in the world whose name you don't know. Just because they don't do PR for themselves the way that, presumably, you do, doesn't mean they should be dismissed out-of-hand.

I suspect this because of the fact that you are using a sentence containing the phrase "Just because they don't do PR for themselves ..." in a discussion of Sebastian Marshall, of all people.

I'm a huge fan of the quiet achiever, but you are barking up the wrong tree, here.

The problem is that this guy does a lot of PR for himself. His site is basically about how awesome he is. Yet there is no outside evidence of anything he's done.

Even without revealing your identity or violating your privacy, this is more substantive information about your career accomplishments than I can find about Sebastian. Maybe it's there and I'm just too stupid to figure it out. In which case there is a simple solution: You (or anyone else) can simply point out the obvious and make me look like a fool. I'm pretty comfortable playing the fool. He's your chance to get your licks in on me and fight the good fight and all that.

I just wanted to point out that dismissing someone because you don't know about their accomplishments (or lack of) is probably going to mean that you're going to miss out on some pretty great people.

(For clarity: generic "you" in this case, not specifically you; and I'm not lumping myself in with "great" people.)

The problem with keeping everything quiet about your accomplishments is that HR departments and company owners won't know anything about you and you may get passed up on jobs as a result.

As a result, the people that lie or don't actually have good accomplishments get better jobs because they have better self PR.

You can fight it all you want, but if someone doesn't know anything about you, they most likely won't want to hire you either. Being connected on linkedin and through old co-workers and people that know all about my accomplishments has helped me find many great jobs.

And so has this Sebastian, in fact, if anything, volume is certainly not the problem when it comes to his writing.

I'm similar to you. As in I don't write blogs or do much formal "PR" or online networking with my real name. I don't have a linkedin account, I don't use google+ and I don't have a website with my real name. I however write comments on reddit, hn and a ton of other lists and forums.

By the way, whenever somebody describes their own work as "brilliant", my alarm bells go off.

I've clawed my way from poverty to lower middle class, helped out as many people along the way as I could

I'm doing the same, not online. The people I'm helping know my achievements and listen. Doing it online won't help much, since there are lot of more credible and talented people than me.

Coincidentally, a LOT of people who have accomplished pretty much nothing do brag and write and blog a LOT about it... often to great success. So, it is just fair to ask what references, credits and medals this big-mouthed blogger has to show for all his very big words of "making a way" and being better than 99% of the population.

If you found out that he had been behind some kind of huge success, would you agree with him more? Or, if you found out that he was born into money, would that make him more wrong? If he could fill a paper with things that he's done for people you've never heard of, would that make him more credible?

I could understand calling for someone's credentials if they were trying to argue from experience: "I'm a manager and I can tell you that scheduling isn't a difficult problem." "Oh? What do you manage?" "...uhm, a yard cleanup business with my friend." That would be a fair and useful criticism then.

But I didn't get that kind of a vibe from this rant. I just went back and re-read it. (Thanks for that...) Nowhere in this rant can I find anything that even smells like, "Follow me because I have been successful." The closest I can get to that is, "Follow me because I want to be successful", as in things like, "I'm trying. I seem to be getting there. I want you guys to get there." etc. etc.

Maybe it's somewhere else on his site? "Command Flows to the Worthy" sounds like a good candidate, but no, that one's just a short opinion piece and, again, doesn't make the claim that, "I'm right because I'm successful."

You specifically mention being "better than" 99% of the population. OK. Maybe you're referring to, "99% of people you interact with in life are fucking jokers." Well, I don't agree with that -- because I don't want to -- but is it objectively wrong? Given all the posts on HN about how hard it is to find good candidates and how many developers can't pass FizzBuzz and on and on and on, that air of superiority is certainly ubiquitous here. And, if HN represents the cream of the crop of developers and startups and stuff, like it collectively seems to think it does, then is that 99% statement actually wrong? And, even if it is, does it really make any sense to take it literally? Does taking it literally and then brow-beating the literal interpretation of it really change his overall point? I don't think so.

Or, maybe you're talking about the part where he says, "You're all highly skilled, top 1% at your craft." All the same questions apply there, too. Or, "You're all highly intelligent, top 1% of the population." That, actually, I wouldn't be surprised by. Top 1% in terms of intelligence -- assuming IQ as a reasonable measure -- isn't really all that difficult.

So, I just don't get why, in this particular case, it really makes a difference whether or not he's done anything yet. Even if this is worth anyone's time arguing about, which it isn't.

There's a truly awesome amount of meanness in this thread. I don't know why I clicked on the comments here in the first place; might've just been because there were a lot of them. But I've been really surprised at the viciousness here. There's often a mean comment or two in a thread, and half of the time, I'm the one making it. But, in this case, the sheer density and froth of the criticisms and psychoanalysis and everything else is just really breathtaking. And out of all of that, the "Well, what's he done that makes him Mr. Big Shot?" criticism just seems ... silliest, for lack of a better word.

Honestly, yes. Because we have a thirtyish guy talking about "success" in the abstract, and promising that he knows how to achieve it, and yet he doesn't seem to have much in the way of concrete achievements to back it up.

"If you're so smart, how come you ain't rich" is usually a dickish sort of question, but when you're posing it to someone who is sitting there actively claiming "I'm gonna make us all rich by my awesome smarts" then it's a fair one. At one point he claims that the project will become profitable just because he wills it to, and therefore it will; if his force of will is truly that powerful then one wonders why he didn't will himself out of being not-rich way back in 2004.

It's only because he insists on talking about how awesome he is that we ask him to back that up with actual achievements.

Of course even if he were rich and successful, his attitude would still be dickish (you'll note that the truly rich and successful people who post here generally don't go on egotistical rants about their own awesomeness) but I'd have a little more tolerance of it under those circumstances.

In my own experience the people you can actually learn something valuable from are the more quiet ones, especially the ones who have actually achieved something. They can share something much more valuable than mere thoughts and ideas on strategy - they can share experience because they have done it. There is a saying that all strategies and battle plans hold up well until first enemy contact. I can relate to this - so in this understanding, if he had done and achieved something worthy of that "1%" mantra with his ideas and theories then it would be extremely interesting and valuable to read about it.

All I see now on his blog are personal thoughts, meandering, theoretical ideas and a TON of self-applauding and getting psyched on success which is all fine for a personal blog and probably has great therapeutic value for him but in a lot of those posts he does take the position of teaching, educating or even preaching. And he does not just present it as "hey I have an idea" and then follows up with "and that's how it worked in the end". He just presents ideas and how awesome they are and how right he is. And then it takes but 2 minutes to find an incredible amount of contradictions - he is contradicting himself and his own ideas, guidelines and mantras from one post to the next.

These two facts plus the personal impression and gut feeling together are more than enough for me to seriously question his legitimacy. He doesn't feel very authentic, honest and driven by "positive energy"... he feels very driven, fragmented and unfocused, however.

And the question for references or actual success is not only for me, as you pointed out it doesn't make that much sense. It is actually a question directed at him and I honestly think he should apply some critical thought, take a step back and look at what he is doing and saying. Asking him to compare his words, writings and theories to actual outcome and hard facts should provide one way of taking a shot at that. And regarding this specific post, it is very clear to me he deserve all the flak because he seriously needs to reflect on his attitude and how he deals with projects and sharing responsibilities.

But I doubt he will take that step back and honestly reflect and instead go all nuts about how the 99% of lazy people are just trying to hold him back.

Maybe it is just me, I generally don't feel too crazy about the whole "blogosphere" so drenched and drowning in exactly this sensationalist lower-than-mediocrity and low-value noise-floor postings, so maybe I am biased.

To give you the other extreme: I cannot help but shake my head at (a lot of) things that PG has written and while I might disagree with the ideas, I can see and understand that they have obviously provided him with at least the right state of mind (paired with lots of luck) to accomplish something. And he can and does share experiences and lessons learned, not just personal theories and road maps like 1. Collect underpants. 2. ... 3. success!