What I Worked On
This is a well-written essay even if it's a bit long and somewhat navel-gazing (it is, after all, written for pg himself).  However, I was continuously struck by just how ridiculously privileged and serendipitous pg's early life was to the point where I just can't even relate to it.He basically meandered his way from an expensive (today) college to an even more expensive (today) grad school, then to art school because he felt like it, and only stumbled into an actual job because he was basically broke.  Then he magically found an incredibly affordable NYC apartment and finally was in the right place at the right time to take advantage of the dot com boom and again lucked his way into leaving at the right time, mostly because he was burned out.Don't get me wrong, pg obviously worked hard on both Viaweb and Ycom, and self-taught a lot of the startup lessons that are now common knowledge.  But if I wrote this story as fiction with pg as the main character, people would laugh at the absurdity of it.  For people who don't think luck is one of the biggest factors of success, just read this essay.