This line of discussion is one of those "Goddamnit HN" types of things, not dissimilar from the infamous Dropbox / rsync post of old. When one comes along and

This line of discussion is one of those "Goddamnit HN" types of things, not dissimilar from the infamous Dropbox / rsync post of old. When one comes along and says "Oh, just do X and you'll succeed because that is what I did." - THAT is survivor bias. When one comes along and discusses what happened to them, how it affected them, motivated them, pressed them to change their behavior and outlook which lead to their hockey-stick sales graph... that isn't unto itself survivorship bias. Catastrophic events absolutely have a way of causing many folks to "buckle down" and "get to brass tacks" instead of fucking around with CSS and starting on that Angular to React to Vue rewrite. Personally, I'm sort-of in that boat in that I'm solo-founding a document signing software (pursuing a GitLab model, the only real market differentiator to this point). Well, I am doing this as a side-venture. There's no need to make it work, I don't have to hustle, I can say "Ya know what, lemme shave that yak and add in some nice test coverage charts." In doing that, I do what I'm good at and what makes me comfortable - software. I'm an engineer. It also leads to me not doing important things like marketing... actually getting my work out in front of my audience, whatever it is. Of course, I can "justify" this all to myself because as much as I would love this to take off and grant me my "freedom" (which with my remote, uber flexible, well paying job isn't really all that free anyway) I'm not in dire straits. I have to catch myself and force myself to stay on track. If someone reads this post and is able to use that to reflect on their own position, that's not only NOT survivorship bias but a really good thing.