I am not offended that he's upset.

I paraphrased. You are disquieted at the level of privilege displayed.

Whatever that means.

I think you know what "I'm not saying that startup people are so lucky that they're not allowed to be unhappy when their companies fail" means.

Indeed. But maybe it's too late, or maybe I've had one scotch too many... I'm not sure what you're getting at with "I am saying something else that is more subtle than that" though.

I salute you for posting while intoxicated. It works well for me too. It's not that the author of this post is unhappy that his startup failed. It's that he's lost perspective; that you could plausibly write a post thanking the universe for having been in a position to take a shot on the kind of company that makes vanity stickers for itself (note: founder of company w/ vanity stickers, posters, and refrigerator magnets), and for being able to do that with the kinds of employees who can surely leave their posts at that company for an even higher-paid job.

It's hard for me to unpack my comment more than that. I wrote what I thought after I read the post. I make no claim to that comment being unassailable; in fact, I made the opposite claim in the comment!

Maybe it's the question that's most important to me. Take a swipe at it? What's so bad about a tech startup failing in 2012?

Of course, when you post intoxicated, you can sometimes sound . . . hostile.

Fair enough. And I guess I don't actually disagree with you, not really... there is nothing tragic about a failed startup. But I'm sure it does suck plenty to have your hopes dashed like that.

It sucked when my startup failed in 2001, but in retrospect it isn't close to the worst suckages in my life. Girlfriend breakups were worse.

Thanks for listening to me, though. I obviously managed to lose you completely with my original comment. I'll think about how I managed to do that. I probably won't actually learn from it, but I'll take a shot. :)

Entirely my fault. Or scotch's.

"You are disquieted at the level of privilege displayed."

Spoken like a true data security professional.

You very much seem to be, while talking about how privileged he is and how much worse everyone else has it. Sometimes people who are offended genuinely don't realize it, and need to be told by dozens or hundreds of people saying "dude, you're lashing out, cool it."

If you're Thomas Ptacek the security person, I wonder if you realize that people are jealous of you, too. (Yes, even though you earned what you have.)

This will be a very difficult Thanksgiving for me, while I try to keep my startup alive.

I sympathize with the guy who just lost more money than I'm likely ever to have. Even though I have it worse than he does. I don't actually want someone telling him to keep it quiet on my behalf.

Maybe the next time you're on a down streak, you'll remember sympathy.

It's easy to forget that even with privilege, failure hurts and is scary.