It's interesting, when Hacker News first started (and was called "Startup News"), I used to make ra-ra comments like this all the time. Like the author, I had little practical experience in actually succeeding at entrepreneurship. And yet they'd be voted up really high. Once in a while, some old salt like, say, the guy who founded Digg or the guy who founded Symbolics would reply and say "You're naive and ignorant. You won't think so poorly of jobs once you've run your own company for a while" (in nicer terms, of course). But by and large, Startup News loved wild-eyed optimism.
Now, the vast majority of comments hold that same sort of "Well, it's more complicated than that, and I'm quite happy with my 9-5" view. Sometimes even my own.
I wonder if that's representative of the economy changing, or if it's representative of the site's audience changing. If it's the former, maybe it means that now is a good time to found a startup.
It's just a reflection of the changing demographics here.
People tend to justify whatever it is they're doing at the moment. So you and me will talk up the entrepreneurial side of things and snoot down our noses at the "wage slaves". It's not that we actually know any better, but if we do this enough it'll seem like we're not so far out on a limb.
Back in the day, that was the only crowd here, so this sort of article (or comment) would get nothing but love. Now, HN is more or less evenly split between entrepreneurs and people who actually read those articles about programming languages. Those are guys with jobs. Good jobs, thank you very much, that pull in more each and every day than our little "startups" gross in a month. They have their own world view to justify, so now we get to listen to their story.
Now, the vast majority of comments hold that same sort of "Well, it's more complicated than that, and I'm quite happy with my 9-5" view. Sometimes even my own.
I wonder if that's representative of the economy changing, or if it's representative of the site's audience changing. If it's the former, maybe it means that now is a good time to found a startup.