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One thing all tech employees can appreciate is that some people are far more efficient than others. In some cases, by orders of magnitude. You can sort of ble

One thing all tech employees can appreciate is that some people are far more efficient than others. In some cases, by orders of magnitude. You can sort of blend that with "opportunity" if you think it's entirely nurture/education based, but I went to school with a lot of people who had an identical home environment and education as me, and are easily 10x better at coding. There's very little research into how brains function, but I personally believe that human brains are all physically different, in terms of capability, and that everyone has a unique blend of innate talents. So I think the equation is... Success (in x field) = Hard Work + Talent (in x field) + Opportunity (in x field) ...which means that a major key to success is selecting the field that you have a talent for.

TomGullen 5y ago
You could probably add in some luck element as well
- koheripbal 5y ago
  Is it materially different from "opportunity"? If it's luck that isn't associated with starting conditions, I feel that it tends to zero over the course of a lifetime. Good luck and bad luck tend to negate each other, on average.
  - sumtechguy 5y ago
    Sort of. I have always defined luck as presentation of opportunity. But opportunity is something you are actually capable of taking advantage of. Opportunity is also spotting of 'luck' or making it yourself through work. I see many friends who have incredible opportunities to make their lives better but they never take them as they are blind to the luck they have as they do not understand it. In sales many times they will just cold call people to 'make luck'. It is akin to spam (the spam/scam guys just turned the model up to 11). Just throw as much against the wall and if something sticks it may or may not be an opportunity. Sometimes an opportunity is home run. Many times it is a dud. With 'bad luck' you are given something you do not want but you with the correct actions mitigate the outcomes. That takes work too. If you do not try at all you are guaranteed an outcome where nothing happens. In fact if you factor in 'bad luck' you are worse off doing nothing as you have not taken action to mitigate negative outcomes.

TomGullen 5y ago

You could probably add in some luck element as well

koheripbal 5y ago
Is it materially different from "opportunity"? If it's luck that isn't associated with starting conditions, I feel that it tends to zero over the course of a lifetime. Good luck and bad luck tend to negate each other, on average.
- sumtechguy 5y ago
  Sort of. I have always defined luck as presentation of opportunity. But opportunity is something you are actually capable of taking advantage of. Opportunity is also spotting of 'luck' or making it yourself through work. I see many friends who have incredible opportunities to make their lives better but they never take them as they are blind to the luck they have as they do not understand it. In sales many times they will just cold call people to 'make luck'. It is akin to spam (the spam/scam guys just turned the model up to 11). Just throw as much against the wall and if something sticks it may or may not be an opportunity. Sometimes an opportunity is home run. Many times it is a dud. With 'bad luck' you are given something you do not want but you with the correct actions mitigate the outcomes. That takes work too. If you do not try at all you are guaranteed an outcome where nothing happens. In fact if you factor in 'bad luck' you are worse off doing nothing as you have not taken action to mitigate negative outcomes.