On HN I see the sentiment that you expressed a lot of times. I live in a country which will be categorized by western countries as a developing country. There

On HN I see the sentiment that you expressed a lot of times. I live in a country which will be categorized by western countries as a developing country. There is no social support system in my country, you are pretty much on your own. Nobody is coming to help you. And I have made serious mistakes when I was in school which resulted in not being able to go to a good college which makes things in my country ten times more harder. Even today if I were to apply to a good company (There are Google, Amazon Dev centers in my country), my resume would not get through the first pass, because I do not have a good college name on my resume. I make 5 times what my school mates and my college mates make, which makes me a lot more successful, atleast financially. When I meet anyone from my school or college they tell me the same things that you are writing here. They attribute my success to - Having no family obligations - Which is BS, My parents are middle class, I have been taking care of them since I got a job. Having good parents, support network - I have zero support from my parents, they were downright abusive. Since, I have been a teenager, there has not been one week where my father has not told me that I will be failure in life. My mother tried to pressure me to commit suicide on numerous occastions. Getting Lucky - I had the same education that my peers had, same economic level. Same razor thin opportunites that they had. The only differentiator is that whatever tiny opportunity I got however small, I fought tooth and nail to capitalize on it. Worked for 15 hours every day, only 5 hour sleep. Ate one meal a day to save money and time. I hate it when people like you, my school friends, my college friends try to attibute it to some external factor. You will attibute my success to anything in the world, except my relentless hardwork. I have taken huge risks whose downside was total ruin. There is no social security checks, some benevolent relative waiting for me to fail. If I fail, I die, my family will perish. That's how high the stakes are. Everything I had, I earned it with blood, sweat and tears. I have spent 12 hours coding in high fever just to make the release. I will close off this rant with one last statement. It all comes to down to how much you want and how much are will sacrifice and work hard for it. Rest are just excuses. This sounds like a motivational cliche but it is true.