That's one of the aspects of the HN community that I most dislike. It's like Puritan divine providence, but applied non-religiously to business. X succeeded so he/she must be great. HN sees these people as masters of business: smart, ambitious, persistent, etc. What if they were lucky? Unscrupulous? Manipulating? I'm not saying it has to be all one way or all the other, but I often think only one point of view gets seen here.
"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people."
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
Completely agree, the name dropping around here can get tiresome quick. There was a great article on Mint vs. Wesabe posted here recently - in my opinion we need more articles like that and less Jobs is a design master/Zuckerberg is a genius/etc.
Eleanor Roosevelt didn't say that. From Wikiquote, which is slowly approaching authoritativeness on quotes online:
This has been quoted without citation as a statement of Eleanor Roosevelt. It is usually attributed to Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, but though Rickover quoted this, he did not claim to be the author of it; in "The World of the Uneducated" in The Saturday Evening Post (28 November 1959), he prefaces it with "As the unknown sage puts it..."
Not sure what you think of Malcolm Gladwell, but I am finally reading Outliers and he casts new light on the many factors of success -- new in the sense that, contrary to mythos, success is not attributable primarily to personal greatness/willpower, but rather having the right-place-right-time + family upbringing + opportunities, etc. (things that are not in the person's direct control).
