I've met him once, at a hacker news meetup. I've exchanged 7 emails with him, regarding a phone call he wanted to have with me, about something that is in one of my areas of expertise. We had said phone call that lasted around 1 hour. He asked me questions, I answered them. No money was exchanged (nor expected) and no quid pro quo's expected. Originally, it was meant to be lunch, but that didn't fit in our schedules.
This happened in the last month. Prior to that I had no interactions with him outside of his blog and hacker news. I've been following his blog for a very long time (in fact his blog introduced me to hacker news, not vice versa). I still read his blog via RSS but do not listen to his podcast or subscribe to his newsletter as the topics covered are largely outside of my interests.
I believe Patrick, not because I've met him in the last month, but because his writing is compelling, the things I can verify are truthful, and the things I cannot match my other experiences.
If I had any complaint about his post about money its that he is assuming that his readership understand implicitly concepts such as fully-loaded employee costs, bill rate vs utilization rate and bill rate in comparison to costs of delivery. I think that is largely untrue and he would have been better served with a summary paragraph describing appropriate ways to compare bill rate to employee take home pay.
None of that has anything to do with this particular post, which as I've mentioned, only adds to Patrick's credibility as it is an outside entity stating that the numbers, at least with regard to BCC, are truthful.
Funny how so many people with verifiable backgrounds, who are clearly not related to Patrick except through HN, vouch for him, yet we are apparently "shills".
Not sure what needs to happen for us to not be taken that way.
Dividing the world into "shills" and "skeptics" doesn't seem like a pleasant way to live. At any rate, it's no way to participate in a community, and you should (again) stop doing it.
