[kls]

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.