5 ms·

My dad went to college with Amit in India - he and his friends always speak incredibly well of him but simultaneously express wonderment as to how it was he who

by ttandon 11y ago

My dad went to college with Amit in India - he and his friends always speak incredibly well of him but simultaneously express wonderment as to how it was he who made the rise, given that many others were more 'brilliant', class-toppers, etc. so to speak. I think it's amazingly interesting how true brilliance manifests itself in different ways than we could expect a conventional system to indicate.

ignoramous 11y ago
There are many factors at play, primary being seizing the opportunity in addition to being at the right place at the right time. Can't teach that.
Chinjut 11y ago
A testament to the perhaps under-appreciated role of luck in our life outcomes; those with the most success are not necessarily destined to it by intrinsic greatness, but just by capricious random events swinging their way as opposed to others'.
- WalterBright 11y ago
  There's a lot to be said for preparing and positioning yourself to be ready to take advantage of providence when its winds blow your way. I.e. it'll never happen for you if you're home watching TV. It's also necessary to be able to recognize opportunities when they come your way. I know I've missed many. My dad would say that most people don't recognize opportunities because they come disguised as hard work.
  - NumberCruncher 11y ago
    > most people don't recognize opportunities because they come disguised as hard work true words
  - foobarge 11y ago
    "Fortune favors the prepared mind." - derived as to still be relevant (I personally think) from Pasteur's "In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind."
- chubot 11y ago
  It's not luck... if you have ever worked at Google, you know there are tons of smart people there, especially in search quality. If you don't know your stuff, and constantly learn more, they're not going to respect you. No luck about it. You can't even "luck" into a manager position, let alone VP of search.
  - Chinjut 11y ago
    > if you have ever worked at Google... As it happens, I have. You are correct that there are tons of smart people there (in my less modest moods, I'd take myself as one such datapoint). What of it? That does not contradict, and therefore did not disabuse me of, the observation I noted above.
    - chubot 11y ago
      I think people generally think luck is more of a factor in success than it is, rather than it being under-appreciated as you claimed. You might think there's some luck in joining Google in 2001, but that ignores a prior decade spent on information retrieval, which was VERY MUCH NOT a hot CS field -- it was arguably the opposite. It's not luck when you spent huge amounts of time on something you care about, but other people don't care about. And when you happen to join some like-minded people well before they were successful. There are also plenty of brilliant people who also joined Google in 2001 who never became VP of search. Based on that, I'm saying there is NO possibility that he doesn't have extreme talent. You don't get to the top at Google accidentally. Extreme success obviously involves both luck and talent, but luck isn't that much of it. Bill Gates got lucky in many ways, but he would have been tremendously successful no matter what. To a lesser degree, I'm sure the same is true of Amit. If he wasn't viewed as a top student, well that means diddly squat and isn't surprising at all. Contrary to the grandparent, I would NOT expect the top students in the class to become the most successful. People who overoptimize for academic success are generally somewhat obedient... Early engineers who become VPs, founders, and other successful people are not obedient (whatever their other flaws). This is a really old argument too, which your comment isn't really doing justice.
      - 11y ago
- cobookman 11y ago
  A very wealthy man once told me the phrase, "There is no such thing as luck. 'Luck' is where preparation meets opportunity." I'm sure he had some random events placed in front of him, giving him an unique opportunity. But he executed phenomenally. And we should not discount that. Many have had the same kinds of opportunities and failed to execute.
  - colmvp 11y ago
    That said, I'm always surprised by how people are so quick to discount luck. Or consider a bad thing if they got lucky. You can be both prepared and have an opportunity and still fail because of factors outside of your control. Likewise, you could be unprepared, flail your way through a solution, and still manage to be very successful at the very end because the stars aligned. Maybe the market was super ripe, your competitors were going through some rough patches, etc. Success stories are often carefully crafted with a narrative fallacy. I can think of several very successful companies today that would've been sold a long time ago had it not been for the potential buyer rejecting the deal. Or entrepreneurs who have one success, and then were never able to create a majorly successful big startup after.
  - cylinder 11y ago
    Luck is embedded into the definition of "opportunity" so the quote is contradictory. I am invited to an interview for the #3 job at Newgle. There's an earthquake the day of my interview and it's postponed. While waiting to be rescheduled, Barry, the co-founder bumps into a great engineer at a cafe and hires him instead. I never interview. Newgle goes onto become the most valuable company in the country. I stay at Oracle as a senior engineer but never do much else. Where exactly did I fail to prepare here?
  - goldbrick 11y ago
    Wealthy people tell themselves all kinds of stories to rationalize their good fortune. Our great mistake is equating wealth with wisdom.
- kamaal 11y ago
  >>by capricious random events swinging their way as opposed to others'. The idea is you better be prepared when they start swinging your way. A lot of time the opportunity is there, but the person is just not ready, like there are job opportunities all the time, but a very few people qualify or are can even do the job. A lot of opportunities open up if you travel some distance with the work on hand. They won't even be visible to you when you start working. They only come to you after you've done some work. Sometimes opportunities are also 'next steps' to anything you do. David Allen talks about in detail in his GTD book. Opportunities multiply as they are seized - Sun Tzu
pgeorgi 11y ago
One part may be that the "brilliant" folks went for the established companies or into research. Amit went for the scrappy startup - that could have exploded just the same.
matt_wulfeck 11y ago
The cream always floats to the top.
bored 11y ago
After watching the video, to me, it just looks like Amit is quick to be the first to react and speak up. Which makes him appear like a leader to others.
eitally 11y ago
One of my teammates went to business school with Sundar... yet my colleague is a program manager and Sundar is CEO. Luck/shit happens, but fortune always favored the well-prepared.

by ttandon 11y ago

ignoramous 11y ago

There are many factors at play, primary being seizing the opportunity in addition to being at the right place at the right time. Can't teach that.

Chinjut 11y ago

A testament to the perhaps under-appreciated role of luck in our life outcomes; those with the most success are not necessarily destined to it by intrinsic greatness, but just by capricious random events swinging their way as opposed to others'.

WalterBright 11y ago
There's a lot to be said for preparing and positioning yourself to be ready to take advantage of providence when its winds blow your way. I.e. it'll never happen for you if you're home watching TV. It's also necessary to be able to recognize opportunities when they come your way. I know I've missed many. My dad would say that most people don't recognize opportunities because they come disguised as hard work.
- NumberCruncher 11y ago
  > most people don't recognize opportunities because they come disguised as hard work true words
- foobarge 11y ago
  "Fortune favors the prepared mind." - derived as to still be relevant (I personally think) from Pasteur's "In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind."
chubot 11y ago
It's not luck... if you have ever worked at Google, you know there are tons of smart people there, especially in search quality. If you don't know your stuff, and constantly learn more, they're not going to respect you. No luck about it. You can't even "luck" into a manager position, let alone VP of search.
- Chinjut 11y ago
  > if you have ever worked at Google... As it happens, I have. You are correct that there are tons of smart people there (in my less modest moods, I'd take myself as one such datapoint). What of it? That does not contradict, and therefore did not disabuse me of, the observation I noted above.
  - chubot 11y ago
    I think people generally think luck is more of a factor in success than it is, rather than it being under-appreciated as you claimed. You might think there's some luck in joining Google in 2001, but that ignores a prior decade spent on information retrieval, which was VERY MUCH NOT a hot CS field -- it was arguably the opposite. It's not luck when you spent huge amounts of time on something you care about, but other people don't care about. And when you happen to join some like-minded people well before they were successful. There are also plenty of brilliant people who also joined Google in 2001 who never became VP of search. Based on that, I'm saying there is NO possibility that he doesn't have extreme talent. You don't get to the top at Google accidentally. Extreme success obviously involves both luck and talent, but luck isn't that much of it. Bill Gates got lucky in many ways, but he would have been tremendously successful no matter what. To a lesser degree, I'm sure the same is true of Amit. If he wasn't viewed as a top student, well that means diddly squat and isn't surprising at all. Contrary to the grandparent, I would NOT expect the top students in the class to become the most successful. People who overoptimize for academic success are generally somewhat obedient... Early engineers who become VPs, founders, and other successful people are not obedient (whatever their other flaws). This is a really old argument too, which your comment isn't really doing justice.
    - 11y ago
cobookman 11y ago
A very wealthy man once told me the phrase, "There is no such thing as luck. 'Luck' is where preparation meets opportunity." I'm sure he had some random events placed in front of him, giving him an unique opportunity. But he executed phenomenally. And we should not discount that. Many have had the same kinds of opportunities and failed to execute.
- colmvp 11y ago
  That said, I'm always surprised by how people are so quick to discount luck. Or consider a bad thing if they got lucky. You can be both prepared and have an opportunity and still fail because of factors outside of your control. Likewise, you could be unprepared, flail your way through a solution, and still manage to be very successful at the very end because the stars aligned. Maybe the market was super ripe, your competitors were going through some rough patches, etc. Success stories are often carefully crafted with a narrative fallacy. I can think of several very successful companies today that would've been sold a long time ago had it not been for the potential buyer rejecting the deal. Or entrepreneurs who have one success, and then were never able to create a majorly successful big startup after.
- cylinder 11y ago
  Luck is embedded into the definition of "opportunity" so the quote is contradictory. I am invited to an interview for the #3 job at Newgle. There's an earthquake the day of my interview and it's postponed. While waiting to be rescheduled, Barry, the co-founder bumps into a great engineer at a cafe and hires him instead. I never interview. Newgle goes onto become the most valuable company in the country. I stay at Oracle as a senior engineer but never do much else. Where exactly did I fail to prepare here?
- goldbrick 11y ago
  Wealthy people tell themselves all kinds of stories to rationalize their good fortune. Our great mistake is equating wealth with wisdom.
kamaal 11y ago
>>by capricious random events swinging their way as opposed to others'. The idea is you better be prepared when they start swinging your way. A lot of time the opportunity is there, but the person is just not ready, like there are job opportunities all the time, but a very few people qualify or are can even do the job. A lot of opportunities open up if you travel some distance with the work on hand. They won't even be visible to you when you start working. They only come to you after you've done some work. Sometimes opportunities are also 'next steps' to anything you do. David Allen talks about in detail in his GTD book. Opportunities multiply as they are seized - Sun Tzu

pgeorgi 11y ago

One part may be that the "brilliant" folks went for the established companies or into research. Amit went for the scrappy startup - that could have exploded just the same.

matt_wulfeck 11y ago

The cream always floats to the top.

bored 11y ago

After watching the video, to me, it just looks like Amit is quick to be the first to react and speak up. Which makes him appear like a leader to others.

eitally 11y ago

One of my teammates went to business school with Sundar... yet my colleague is a program manager and Sundar is CEO. Luck/shit happens, but fortune always favored the well-prepared.