Pfft. Don't be embarrassed. It was a great post. Fwiw, every other place I've lived was also full of people who want to talk instead of doing; I don't think it's Bangalore in specific.
I don't think that is location based, I think that there is just a natural subset of people who are dreamers but do not have motivation to follow through. The valley may skew the distribution a little, the dreamer who are also doers set out for it and the mere action of setting out for it puts you in the do'er camp. So one may find a larger portion of do'ers in that specific geographical location. For the rest of us, I would imaging that you would find a similar distribution than any other point on the map.
On the note of mentoring, I resolved in my mind that if a request came from a HN member I would say yes no matter what. When joining HN, I was extremely impressed with the don't be a jerk mantra that was an overarching theme. Many of the other sites that I had been contributing to had devolved into a typical technical arrogance contents. Upon see a community of technical people that treated each other with respect (a rarity), I decided that not only would I like to be associated with the group, but that I would resolve to help any member in any way possible. Mentoring is part of that. I have to say, I have helped 3 people who where looking for mentorship on this site and all of them have been pleasant experiences. Some of them I did not see the value in what they where working on (that means nothing we all don't get why something went big at some point) but I did see the passion and even though I did not see the usefulness of there vision when applied to my life, it does not mean that I could not offer advice in other areas that I had run into similar pain point in my start-ups. For the individuals that I helped mentor on a pure "learning programming" basis from this site they where all pleasant, greatfull and considerate of my time. I am glad that I did each and every one of them, as I believe not only did it help them progress but it help me as well. Transitioning from a gatherer of wisdom to a giver takes practice and each of them gave me the opportunity to practice. For that I am greatfull.
Is there any truth to Silicon Valley (or Boston, or Waterloo, or any of the other small cities surrounding top tech schools) being an exception to this? I've heard both that Silicon Valley is full of Doers, and that it's full of Talkers. I'm sure it's not a binary choice.
On the note of mentoring, I resolved in my mind that if a request came from a HN member I would say yes no matter what. When joining HN, I was extremely impressed with the don't be a jerk mantra that was an overarching theme. Many of the other sites that I had been contributing to had devolved into a typical technical arrogance contents. Upon see a community of technical people that treated each other with respect (a rarity), I decided that not only would I like to be associated with the group, but that I would resolve to help any member in any way possible. Mentoring is part of that. I have to say, I have helped 3 people who where looking for mentorship on this site and all of them have been pleasant experiences. Some of them I did not see the value in what they where working on (that means nothing we all don't get why something went big at some point) but I did see the passion and even though I did not see the usefulness of there vision when applied to my life, it does not mean that I could not offer advice in other areas that I had run into similar pain point in my start-ups. For the individuals that I helped mentor on a pure "learning programming" basis from this site they where all pleasant, greatfull and considerate of my time. I am glad that I did each and every one of them, as I believe not only did it help them progress but it help me as well. Transitioning from a gatherer of wisdom to a giver takes practice and each of them gave me the opportunity to practice. For that I am greatfull.