At the risk of over-reading a situation I know nothing about, perhaps you could use a break from the SV. I had a friend who grew up blue collar in Europe and with whom I worked with in NYC. He spent a couple years in SF for his career and just about ended up strangling people. I visited him in SF for a weekend and nearly ended up in the same place. Ultimately, he ended up back in NYC and back to his usual happy go lucky self.

For all the criticisms I could make about rich kids in the Bay Area, it is simply that they are _lame_. I'm nothing but a middle class public school educated child of immigrants myself, but I always keep in mind my mother's somewhat cynical advice -- "always remember you will work twice as hard for half as much in this country" followed by "and it will still give you a better life than where we immigrated from."

If I can give you a piece of advice (maybe advice is too strong a word, as this is really just a coping mechanism for me personally), it is to remember that the karmic gears of time tick slowly but inexorably. To be a paper-failure 10 years from now that didn't make anything anyone wanted and to still be "rich as fuck" is a certain kind of Dantean hell in and of itself. Your entire life is the real life version of the Chinese "heaven's ban" where you are surrounded by sycophants who always lie to you to get access to your resources, and anyone else worth knowing would never want to associate with you because they deem you a clown and a fraud. You never learned the skills during your formative years to stand on your own two feet, and now you are too old to do the work that brings at least its own intellectually stimulating and market validated reward, as well as the respect of people in the world who are most worth associating with -- never mind the respect of salt of the earth people!

Perhaps this is my NYC elitism creeping in, but I wouldn't switch lives with such a paper failure SV talking head if you paid me. They'll never have taste, or be able to truly enjoy the finer things in life, or stand on their own two feet, or live in a truly cosmopolitan manner; they'll never have the edge to be as good of an operator as me or the operators I respect. And they will always know that deep down inside they are inferior no matter how hard they posture -- in a sense, I am more free than they will ever be, and if the pinnacle of life is to "live free or die" then they are effectively the walking dead, while I am breathing my own air free and clear.

Where was I going with this rant? Ah yes. Perhaps you need a break from SV because it's only there where these sorts of folks receive any kind of societal acceptance. I'd recommend either the east coast (I love NYC and it's never been more fun), or southern Europe (Spain and especially Portugal have always been nice to me). If you stay long enough in the SV echo chamber, it will warp your thinking and make life seem a lot less sunny than it could be.

In my opinion (and this is having no idea about your personal situation), I view it as just a bubble where you happen to work to make your living, and you can always exit as you please when you need a break or you've had enough. Hope I haven't been too presumptuous with this post and that I've at least been a little helpful.

I'd like to really thank you for taking the time to thoughtfully comment on a kind of pissy remark I made. Just about everything you said ties out with my own intuition and experience.

For context, I spent ~10 years in SV, then another ~3 in NYC (but for an SV company most of it), and now I'm back in San Diego where I'm from. I think you're right on the money that I'm a more than a little over-rotated on the SV worldview. I'm generally a bit more balanced and...diplomatic about it, but when a rough week brings out some weapons-grade snarkiness? I'm clearly at least somewhat wrapped around the axle about it.

It's not so much that other people worked less hard for way more money that grinds my gears: I've lived comfortably on each of 3-ish orders of magnitude in terms of income, net worth, etc, and if I pulled out all the stops I could probably grind a bunch more cash out of my career than the perfectly reasonable amount that obtains. I work way less hard for way more money than a lot of folks around the world and feel a bit guilty about it in fact. Maybe humbled is a better word than guilty.

I think that I spent way too much time around people who attributed success to intelligence, insight and hard work, when it was actually due to intelligence, insight, hard work, and a lot of luck. I know some absurdly rich people who acknowledge that there were at least a few dice rolls along the way, and those folks don't get under my skin. Coincidentally or not, those folks seem to not have a bunch of opinions about how other people should live and work and a megaphone.

Andreessen is not far off with the "software eating the world" stuff, in some sense caring about the culture of the tech scene is a bigger and bigger part of caring about society in general every year. And I think that ultimately what bums me out is that YC/HN was one of my key/formative inspirations when I was getting serious about math and technology. Things like the T-shirt that says "I made something people want" that you got by selling a startup to people who enjoyed the experience really spoke to me.

For all I know sama and seibel are really smart, really solid people, and I regret calling them out on hearsay. I know at least one person who I trust and respect who knows sama personally and thinks the world of him.

But optics matter, and I'm probably not the only person who stopped believing in Santa Clause right around the time that pg handed the reins to the guy who needed a bailout on Loopt, and got kinda morose around the time that the Loopt-bailout guy handed the reins to the Socialcam-bailout guy.

I think ultimately I'm obviously very touchy/sensitive/negative on the topic because YC/HN was a childhood hero that ended up being the same damned nepotism that it was supposed to replace. At least MIT is available to anyone with a YouTube account and some time. YC is the new MIT and much, much more exclusive on the basis of who you know.

That's enough of the pissy part: I've got it insanely good for a guy whose grandparents worked in coal mines and gratitude around that is probably the right thing to focus on. It was a rough week.

Thank you again for such a compassionate and thoughtful reply, you've given me plenty to think about. Cheers.