4 ms·

"Were Larry and Sergey just lucky to be born with an ability to reason and work hard?" Almost anyone is born with the ability to reason and work hard. Larry an

"Were Larry and Sergey just lucky to be born with an ability to reason and work hard?" Almost anyone is born with the ability to reason and work hard. Larry and Sergey were obviously born with this ability. In addition they were both born into families where both parents were professionals in the mathematical sciences. Larry's parents were CS professors. Sergey's dad is a math professor and his mom works for NASA. In addition, Larry's older brother Carl sold his company to Yahoo for $400M+. Thus not only did math and programming run in the family, so did software entrepreneurship. Not belittling their achievements, but parts of the backstory make it seem like Google was predestined. Where do you draw the line between luck and work, indeed...

idoh 17y ago
Do you have a source for Carl's role in eGroups? It is hard to tell whether he was just an employee at the company or something more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EGroups http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EGroups
- starkfist 17y ago
  I'm not really sure but his old ZVUE page said he was a founder. Most of the articles I've seen imply that he was the 2nd person to join the company.
gxs 17y ago
I acknowledged that sometimes you can attribute success to luck. Studies have shown, however, that luck makes a difference between success and UBER success - not between success and failure. And while yes, like Warren Buffet we can acknowledge that we are lucky to begin with to be born in the US, he was making that argument in terms of helping people in the third world- not in terms of excusing failure within the US. I'm glad you brought up the example that you did - because quite frankly - Larry and Sergey situation was not unique. I had many friends whose parents were wealty, and even more whose parents were professors. I can assure you that does not equate to automatic success. Now, I'm not gonna sit here and presume to know what these two figures were thinking, but it takes a driven person to put themselves in position to take advantage of opportunity when it arises. That is, it takes a driven individual to make it to Stanford grad school to begin with. This is the same argument that is used to explain why people from shitty situations/backgrounds aren't absolved when they commit a heinous crime - because what then does it say of the people from the same background who avoid those mistakes? And yes, I am such a person from the hood. And no, I'm not a staunch republican that believes no one is at a disadvantage - I realize that some people really are playing catch up from the minute they exit the womb.

idoh 17y ago

Do you have a source for Carl's role in eGroups? It is hard to tell whether he was just an employee at the company or something more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EGroups http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EGroups

starkfist 17y ago
I'm not really sure but his old ZVUE page said he was a founder. Most of the articles I've seen imply that he was the 2nd person to join the company.

gxs 17y ago

I acknowledged that sometimes you can attribute success to luck. Studies have shown, however, that luck makes a difference between success and UBER success - not between success and failure. And while yes, like Warren Buffet we can acknowledge that we are lucky to begin with to be born in the US, he was making that argument in terms of helping people in the third world- not in terms of excusing failure within the US. I'm glad you brought up the example that you did - because quite frankly - Larry and Sergey situation was not unique. I had many friends whose parents were wealty, and even more whose parents were professors. I can assure you that does not equate to automatic success. Now, I'm not gonna sit here and presume to know what these two figures were thinking, but it takes a driven person to put themselves in position to take advantage of opportunity when it arises. That is, it takes a driven individual to make it to Stanford grad school to begin with. This is the same argument that is used to explain why people from shitty situations/backgrounds aren't absolved when they commit a heinous crime - because what then does it say of the people from the same background who avoid those mistakes? And yes, I am such a person from the hood. And no, I'm not a staunch republican that believes no one is at a disadvantage - I realize that some people really are playing catch up from the minute they exit the womb.