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No. Luck and network is. It's the only defining factor that can't be trained. Lucky beats smart. And if you take most of the really big successes like Facebook

No. Luck and network is. It's the only defining factor that can't be trained. Lucky beats smart. And if you take most of the really big successes like Facebook, Google etc. they where successful were a bunch of other people with equal grit and talent werent. Many many people have grit and perseverence. Many people have talent, business understanding, good timing, excellent understanding of product and so on. And of course the more you play the game the better chance of success (statistically) But when all is said and done unless we are talking about crony capitalism where you use political control to ensure success. Luck and network are the single most defining factors of why some are successful and others are not IMO.

MarkMc 11y ago
You say "luck and network", I say "grit". I'm curious to know if there is some experiment we could perform that we both agree could settle the matter? For example, imagine we assign 'grit' ratings to students who finish high school. Later we find that students with high grit scores tend to complete a university degree much more often than those with low grit scores. Would that change your mind about the importance of grit?
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  If you read the biographies of famous British people, you soon get used to reading that X or Y did okay/miserably at Oxford or Cambridge, but one day as they happened to bump into A or B who knew them from Oxford or Cambridge who said "I'm looking for someone to do something. Do you want to have a go?" In the US, we already know from numerous surveys that after the first graduate intake, most software hires are made by personal recommendation - which is obviously going to exclude anyone who isn't part of a network. So those are two examples of the value of networks. As for "grit" - what does the word even mean? If someone gambles everything in startups and loses everything three times in a row before giving up, do they have grit or not?
- ThomPete 11y ago
  Many people have grit, not all of them are successful. Some people don't have grit yet are still successful. So obviously grit isn't the unifying thing that leads to success. High Schools and Universities are by no metrics a measurement for success. And if you want to make them that you can start with the luck of whether you are born with rich parents or poor parents. Of course grit is good to have, but it's not what define success.
rjdevereux 11y ago
Great quote about this... I’m a Great Believer in Luck. The Harder I Work, the More Luck I Have
SEJeff 11y ago
Disagree. No matter how lucky you are. No matter who you or your family knows. If you give up quickly because you lack patience and/or grit, you are very unlikely to still be successful. How many startups succeed or become "unicorns" without at least a single pivot? Precious few. IMO grit is not the only factor of a successful person, but it sure as heck is one of the most common things you'll see in a successful person. A few examples. Elon Musk, first generation immigrant, didn't come from money, is now a billionaire. An article was released this week interviewing Mr Musk where he plainly states he put his desk at the end of the assembly line in th Hawthorne Tesla factory. He then went on to mention how he has a sleeping bag and often sleeps there. One of my favorites is to look at how many awful failures Abraham Lincoln went through. It would have broken most people, yet he soldiered on and ended up being one of the most important Presidents in US history: www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/education/failures.htm Virtually everyone on HN knows how much of an obscene work-a-holic Steve Jobs was. He was also a first generation Syrian immigrant. Luck? He was fired as CEO from Apple before founding Pixar and NeXt. He still refused to give up. Grit doesn't mean being a work-a-holic though, it simply is extreme perseverance. This inability to fail but sheer willpower is called grit. You're underestimating the power of raw unadulterated willpower if you take things outside of your comfort zone and to the extreme. Those people did, and your great grand children will likely hear their names. Yet another take on Mark Cuban, Richard Branson, and Larry Ellison. The common thread in every one of these stories is grit, the inability to accept failure at face value and continue on until you succeed. www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/how-mark-cuban-richard-branson-and-larry-ellison-failed-spectacularly-before-bec.html
- ThomPete 11y ago
  I am not underestimating anything. You are simply missing the bigger point here because your understanding of luck is too simplistic. Many people have grit not all of them become successful. Steve Jobs was lucky he met Wozniak.
  - ra1n85 11y ago
    >Steve Jobs was lucky he met Wozniak Luck here seems to be the lazy way of explaining events. Rather, Steve Jobs likely felt the need to pair with a very smart engineer in order to do what he wanted, and came upon Wozniak.
notduncansmith 11y ago
Luck just means you don't know the cause behind an effect. Attributing success to "luck" is therefore simply putting the conditions for success outside your locus of control. Attributing it to "grit" or some other personal quality puts the conditions for success within your locus of control. For many people (myself included), the latter philosophy is more helpful as it makes success seem more deliberately achievable. Combined with a strong sense of agency, this philosophy can imbue its proponents with more confidence than those waiting for "luck" to happen (or who have given up on it happening).
- ThomPete 11y ago
  That doesn't really change that of all those with grit those who are the luckiest win over those with grit who aren't. You are trying to apply a method to being successful. Have grit and you will be succesful. But having grit is only going to take you so far. Many people have grit. Luck will take you the rest. The problem with you way of looking at things is that you are basically saying that those that don't have success don't have grit and therefore imply that it's their fault they don't. Which then create weird myths like the poor people are just lazy and don't have enough grit etc. This is a lie with enough evidence to contradict. The fact that much of success is due to circumstances has been proven again and again. That does not mean that those that were successful din't also have grit. They did, they were also just the lucky ones with grit.
  - notduncansmith 11y ago
    > you are basically saying that those that don't have success don't have grit I don't remember saying that - please point out where I did. Thinking about your success in terms of factors you can control can improve your chances of success if you draw confidence from that philosophy, and lots of people do. The appearance of confidence (and the correlation between confidence and appearing confident) has been shown to improve chances of success in various situations.
    - ThomPete 11y ago
      You are saying that by trying to force it into being a thing you can control. And again many people have confidence that doesn't mean they all have success. Keep in mind this article was trying to find the most encompassing reason for success. There is none as encompassing as luck. All the others are a subset.
mindcrime 11y ago
Meh. "Luck" isn't something you can count on, sustainably, over a period of time. You can be "lucky" (whatever that means) at a point in time, but that only gets you so far. Was billg lucky that IBM hired MS to provide an OS for the PC, and that he was able to acquire QDOS from SCP for dirt cheap? Sure... but can you attribute everything since then to a continued, non-stop string of lucky events? Now, you might ask, "well, what if the DOS thing didn't happen?" And the thing is, we'll never know, because it did happen. But if you believe that gates, ballmer, allen, etc. were smart, hard-working and talented, it seems likely they would still have ultimately been "successful" in some fashion, even if the story unfolded quite differently. Luck and network are the single most defining factors of why some are successful I don't know if we'll ever be able to actually quantify and measure that, but my suspicion is that grit/perserverance/will are at least as important as luck and/or network. But keep in mind, there are many levels of "success". Life isn't as binary as "wound up homeless and sleeping in a gutter" vs. "wound up a billionaire CEO".
- ThomPete 11y ago
  You make the same mistake as many other in this thread do. You confuse two different things. The question being asked is whether grit is the one trait to rule them all. My answer to that is no it's not because most people who are successful have grit (but far from all) and many people who have grit are not successful. And so I introduce another element, luck. Luck is as you say not something you can count on which is the very point here and actually proves both my point but introduces another important one. You can't copy someone for success. It's not just a matter of having grit it's a matter of being lucky and having grit. I don't know of any rule or law that implies that something can only be true if you can count on it. A lottery winner who might keep playing again and again and one day win the lottery have grit but it's still luck if they win.
  - mindcrime 11y ago
    The question being asked is whether grit is the one trait to rule them all. That's not the question I was addressing. I was addressing the extent to which one can attribute someone's success to "luck", and I argue that both grit AND luck can matter to one's outcomes. A lottery winner who might keep playing again and again and one day win the lottery have grit but it's still luck if they win. That's not even remotely relevant, as a lottery is very specifically a game of chance. Life involves an element of things you can't control, but it also involves a lot of things you can.

MarkMc 11y ago

You say "luck and network", I say "grit". I'm curious to know if there is some experiment we could perform that we both agree could settle the matter? For example, imagine we assign 'grit' ratings to students who finish high school. Later we find that students with high grit scores tend to complete a university degree much more often than those with low grit scores. Would that change your mind about the importance of grit?

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
If you read the biographies of famous British people, you soon get used to reading that X or Y did okay/miserably at Oxford or Cambridge, but one day as they happened to bump into A or B who knew them from Oxford or Cambridge who said "I'm looking for someone to do something. Do you want to have a go?" In the US, we already know from numerous surveys that after the first graduate intake, most software hires are made by personal recommendation - which is obviously going to exclude anyone who isn't part of a network. So those are two examples of the value of networks. As for "grit" - what does the word even mean? If someone gambles everything in startups and loses everything three times in a row before giving up, do they have grit or not?
ThomPete 11y ago
Many people have grit, not all of them are successful. Some people don't have grit yet are still successful. So obviously grit isn't the unifying thing that leads to success. High Schools and Universities are by no metrics a measurement for success. And if you want to make them that you can start with the luck of whether you are born with rich parents or poor parents. Of course grit is good to have, but it's not what define success.

rjdevereux 11y ago

Great quote about this... I’m a Great Believer in Luck. The Harder I Work, the More Luck I Have

SEJeff 11y ago

Disagree. No matter how lucky you are. No matter who you or your family knows. If you give up quickly because you lack patience and/or grit, you are very unlikely to still be successful. How many startups succeed or become "unicorns" without at least a single pivot? Precious few. IMO grit is not the only factor of a successful person, but it sure as heck is one of the most common things you'll see in a successful person. A few examples. Elon Musk, first generation immigrant, didn't come from money, is now a billionaire. An article was released this week interviewing Mr Musk where he plainly states he put his desk at the end of the assembly line in th Hawthorne Tesla factory. He then went on to mention how he has a sleeping bag and often sleeps there. One of my favorites is to look at how many awful failures Abraham Lincoln went through. It would have broken most people, yet he soldiered on and ended up being one of the most important Presidents in US history: www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/education/failures.htm Virtually everyone on HN knows how much of an obscene work-a-holic Steve Jobs was. He was also a first generation Syrian immigrant. Luck? He was fired as CEO from Apple before founding Pixar and NeXt. He still refused to give up. Grit doesn't mean being a work-a-holic though, it simply is extreme perseverance. This inability to fail but sheer willpower is called grit. You're underestimating the power of raw unadulterated willpower if you take things outside of your comfort zone and to the extreme. Those people did, and your great grand children will likely hear their names. Yet another take on Mark Cuban, Richard Branson, and Larry Ellison. The common thread in every one of these stories is grit, the inability to accept failure at face value and continue on until you succeed. www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/how-mark-cuban-richard-branson-and-larry-ellison-failed-spectacularly-before-bec.html

ThomPete 11y ago
I am not underestimating anything. You are simply missing the bigger point here because your understanding of luck is too simplistic. Many people have grit not all of them become successful. Steve Jobs was lucky he met Wozniak.
- ra1n85 11y ago
  >Steve Jobs was lucky he met Wozniak Luck here seems to be the lazy way of explaining events. Rather, Steve Jobs likely felt the need to pair with a very smart engineer in order to do what he wanted, and came upon Wozniak.

notduncansmith 11y ago

Luck just means you don't know the cause behind an effect. Attributing success to "luck" is therefore simply putting the conditions for success outside your locus of control. Attributing it to "grit" or some other personal quality puts the conditions for success within your locus of control. For many people (myself included), the latter philosophy is more helpful as it makes success seem more deliberately achievable. Combined with a strong sense of agency, this philosophy can imbue its proponents with more confidence than those waiting for "luck" to happen (or who have given up on it happening).

ThomPete 11y ago
That doesn't really change that of all those with grit those who are the luckiest win over those with grit who aren't. You are trying to apply a method to being successful. Have grit and you will be succesful. But having grit is only going to take you so far. Many people have grit. Luck will take you the rest. The problem with you way of looking at things is that you are basically saying that those that don't have success don't have grit and therefore imply that it's their fault they don't. Which then create weird myths like the poor people are just lazy and don't have enough grit etc. This is a lie with enough evidence to contradict. The fact that much of success is due to circumstances has been proven again and again. That does not mean that those that were successful din't also have grit. They did, they were also just the lucky ones with grit.
- notduncansmith 11y ago
  > you are basically saying that those that don't have success don't have grit I don't remember saying that - please point out where I did. Thinking about your success in terms of factors you can control can improve your chances of success if you draw confidence from that philosophy, and lots of people do. The appearance of confidence (and the correlation between confidence and appearing confident) has been shown to improve chances of success in various situations.
  - ThomPete 11y ago
    You are saying that by trying to force it into being a thing you can control. And again many people have confidence that doesn't mean they all have success. Keep in mind this article was trying to find the most encompassing reason for success. There is none as encompassing as luck. All the others are a subset.

mindcrime 11y ago

Meh. "Luck" isn't something you can count on, sustainably, over a period of time. You can be "lucky" (whatever that means) at a point in time, but that only gets you so far. Was billg lucky that IBM hired MS to provide an OS for the PC, and that he was able to acquire QDOS from SCP for dirt cheap? Sure... but can you attribute everything since then to a continued, non-stop string of lucky events? Now, you might ask, "well, what if the DOS thing didn't happen?" And the thing is, we'll never know, because it did happen. But if you believe that gates, ballmer, allen, etc. were smart, hard-working and talented, it seems likely they would still have ultimately been "successful" in some fashion, even if the story unfolded quite differently. Luck and network are the single most defining factors of why some are successful I don't know if we'll ever be able to actually quantify and measure that, but my suspicion is that grit/perserverance/will are at least as important as luck and/or network. But keep in mind, there are many levels of "success". Life isn't as binary as "wound up homeless and sleeping in a gutter" vs. "wound up a billionaire CEO".

ThomPete 11y ago
You make the same mistake as many other in this thread do. You confuse two different things. The question being asked is whether grit is the one trait to rule them all. My answer to that is no it's not because most people who are successful have grit (but far from all) and many people who have grit are not successful. And so I introduce another element, luck. Luck is as you say not something you can count on which is the very point here and actually proves both my point but introduces another important one. You can't copy someone for success. It's not just a matter of having grit it's a matter of being lucky and having grit. I don't know of any rule or law that implies that something can only be true if you can count on it. A lottery winner who might keep playing again and again and one day win the lottery have grit but it's still luck if they win.
- mindcrime 11y ago
  The question being asked is whether grit is the one trait to rule them all. That's not the question I was addressing. I was addressing the extent to which one can attribute someone's success to "luck", and I argue that both grit AND luck can matter to one's outcomes. A lottery winner who might keep playing again and again and one day win the lottery have grit but it's still luck if they win. That's not even remotely relevant, as a lottery is very specifically a game of chance. Life involves an element of things you can't control, but it also involves a lot of things you can.