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> Achieving immense success requires hard work, dedication, perseverance, and — perhaps most importantly — lots of luck. But oftentimes, luck doesn't get as muc

> Achieving immense success requires hard work, dedication, perseverance, and — perhaps most importantly — lots of luck. But oftentimes, luck doesn't get as much credit as it deserves. I think at this point luck gets far more of a focus than it deserves. It's become a thought-terminating cliche around the entire idea of why people succeed or fail. Almost no one disputes that luck is a component of people making their fortunes, its caked into the word. (Fortuna, the goddess of luck, gives the word its first definition, the second definition as a large amount of money came later). There's no 'most importantly' about immense success. No one is an Olympic medalist by accident. No one found their way to the moon by accident. And while luck was involved, no one became an oil tycoon by or started an ISP or laid underseas cables by tripping into it.

void_mint 5y ago
Luck (and/or nepotism) ultimately decides the success or failure of two equally hard working individuals or groups. In your Olympic medalist example, do you believe that the person that placed 4th and thus did not medal didn't work as hard as the Gold/Silver/Bronze? Or did they just not have the "luck" of having the genetics/life scenarios that are most conducive to winning their respective competition? Ultimately I think "work hard" is generally good advice to be "good enough" or "above average", but actual success in the scale that you're describing definitely comes down to luck, because everyone in contention is working extremely hard.
- _hyn3 5y ago
  This is a classic conflation; comparing real life success (where you would hopefully not choose to place yourself into a highly competitive business environment, unless you had a unique ability to win) versus a contrived scenario like the Olympics, where success is literally pitting two highly talented people in a competition where both cannot win. In business, you can open a restaurant and be just as successful (or as unsuccessful) as your counterpart on a different street, or even right next door. There is no first and second place medalist in that scenario. Life is not a competition unless you choose to make it one. There can be only one President at a time; only one gold medalist at a time in any event, but there can be many Elon Musks or Kanye Wests. Ultra-performing people work hard to get to the top, and then the same habits that put them there expand their "lead", but Elon Musk isn't in direct competition with anyone else at being the best Elon Musk he can be.
  - k__ 5y ago
    I'm not so sure about this. Wanting to work at FAANG is basically the olympics of IT, and people still try to do it all the time.
    - alboy 5y ago
      This seems way off. The number of engineers working at FAANG is in the hundreds of thousands, an athlete that is 100000th best in the world is basically a hobbyist rando.
      - void_mint 5y ago
        It's all relative. There are more professional software engineers than professional weight lifters. The top 1% work at FAANG, the top 1% go to the olympics.
        alboy 5y ago
        The whole Olympic roster for the US is ~500 people. There's half a million people who are current NCAA athletes, that's an order of magnitude off right there, even after excluding football and before counting in the actual pros.
        void_mint 5y ago
        This example kind of falls apart with respect to the Olympics for an array of reasons. If you're looking at NCAA athletes, lots of those sports are not represented in the Olympics. Also, because spots in the Olympics are limited, the "best" person isn't always chosen to represent a given country for a given sport.
        alboy 5y ago
        >If you're looking at NCAA athletes, lots of those sports are not represented in the Olympics. Not really, just football and lacrosse. On the other hand, there're many Olympic events that are not a part of the NCAA. >Also, because spots in the Olympics are limited, the "best" person isn't always chosen to represent a given country for a given sport. I don't think this is particularly important on average. I'm just giving a quick and dirty lower bound here to put things into perspective.
- Sebb767 5y ago
  > Or did they just not have the "luck" of having the genetics/life scenarios that are most conducive to winning their respective competition? Most likely they did minimal errors or had slightly unfortunate conditions; when it comes down to fractions of a second, minimal performance differences most likely don't matter to much. But all of these people still were at the Olympics. And you bet everyone making it there worked their ass off to get there. Going back to the Fortunes, this might be the equivalent of the "unlucky" exit at a few hundred million, instead of making it to the billions. Which is actually a nice parallel: You might need a bit of luck, but you also need the work.
  - void_mint 5y ago
    > Most likely they did minimal errors or had slightly unfortunate conditions; Not all of "luck" is in the moment, is my point. Some of the luck is where you're born, who your family is, what seemingly inconsequential decisions you make.
- simonsarris 5y ago
  The article isn't comparing different people at the top, it's comparing the top and not-top. In my Olympics example what is salient is the median person who made it to the Olympics vs the median person. Reframing it is veering from the point of the article and my comment.
  - void_mint 5y ago
    Not sure what your point is? > no one became an oil tycoon by or started an ISP or laid underseas cables by tripping into it. Lots of people worked extremely hard and were competing with said-Tycoon, but didn't become an Oil Tycoon. This is luck.
- sershe 5y ago
  If genetics is luck, then what is left for "self"? Willpower/grit/etc. is also environment or genetics, there's no self outside of that.
  - void_mint 5y ago
    Genetics are unchangable (kind of, mostly) Environment is not What specifically is your question?
    - sershe 5y ago
      The GP calls genetics "luck" in the context of dichotomy between being self made and luck... if genetics is luck, then what is left for "self"? Ability to work hard is also the product of genetics, upbringing and circumstances, so at that point the distinction becomes meaningless.

void_mint 5y ago

Luck (and/or nepotism) ultimately decides the success or failure of two equally hard working individuals or groups. In your Olympic medalist example, do you believe that the person that placed 4th and thus did not medal didn't work as hard as the Gold/Silver/Bronze? Or did they just not have the "luck" of having the genetics/life scenarios that are most conducive to winning their respective competition? Ultimately I think "work hard" is generally good advice to be "good enough" or "above average", but actual success in the scale that you're describing definitely comes down to luck, because everyone in contention is working extremely hard.

_hyn3 5y ago
This is a classic conflation; comparing real life success (where you would hopefully not choose to place yourself into a highly competitive business environment, unless you had a unique ability to win) versus a contrived scenario like the Olympics, where success is literally pitting two highly talented people in a competition where both cannot win. In business, you can open a restaurant and be just as successful (or as unsuccessful) as your counterpart on a different street, or even right next door. There is no first and second place medalist in that scenario. Life is not a competition unless you choose to make it one. There can be only one President at a time; only one gold medalist at a time in any event, but there can be many Elon Musks or Kanye Wests. Ultra-performing people work hard to get to the top, and then the same habits that put them there expand their "lead", but Elon Musk isn't in direct competition with anyone else at being the best Elon Musk he can be.
- k__ 5y ago
  I'm not so sure about this. Wanting to work at FAANG is basically the olympics of IT, and people still try to do it all the time.
  - alboy 5y ago
    This seems way off. The number of engineers working at FAANG is in the hundreds of thousands, an athlete that is 100000th best in the world is basically a hobbyist rando.
    - void_mint 5y ago
      It's all relative. There are more professional software engineers than professional weight lifters. The top 1% work at FAANG, the top 1% go to the olympics.
      - alboy 5y ago
        The whole Olympic roster for the US is ~500 people. There's half a million people who are current NCAA athletes, that's an order of magnitude off right there, even after excluding football and before counting in the actual pros.
        void_mint 5y ago
        This example kind of falls apart with respect to the Olympics for an array of reasons. If you're looking at NCAA athletes, lots of those sports are not represented in the Olympics. Also, because spots in the Olympics are limited, the "best" person isn't always chosen to represent a given country for a given sport.
        alboy 5y ago
        >If you're looking at NCAA athletes, lots of those sports are not represented in the Olympics. Not really, just football and lacrosse. On the other hand, there're many Olympic events that are not a part of the NCAA. >Also, because spots in the Olympics are limited, the "best" person isn't always chosen to represent a given country for a given sport. I don't think this is particularly important on average. I'm just giving a quick and dirty lower bound here to put things into perspective.
Sebb767 5y ago
> Or did they just not have the "luck" of having the genetics/life scenarios that are most conducive to winning their respective competition? Most likely they did minimal errors or had slightly unfortunate conditions; when it comes down to fractions of a second, minimal performance differences most likely don't matter to much. But all of these people still were at the Olympics. And you bet everyone making it there worked their ass off to get there. Going back to the Fortunes, this might be the equivalent of the "unlucky" exit at a few hundred million, instead of making it to the billions. Which is actually a nice parallel: You might need a bit of luck, but you also need the work.
- void_mint 5y ago
  > Most likely they did minimal errors or had slightly unfortunate conditions; Not all of "luck" is in the moment, is my point. Some of the luck is where you're born, who your family is, what seemingly inconsequential decisions you make.
simonsarris 5y ago
The article isn't comparing different people at the top, it's comparing the top and not-top. In my Olympics example what is salient is the median person who made it to the Olympics vs the median person. Reframing it is veering from the point of the article and my comment.
- void_mint 5y ago
  Not sure what your point is? > no one became an oil tycoon by or started an ISP or laid underseas cables by tripping into it. Lots of people worked extremely hard and were competing with said-Tycoon, but didn't become an Oil Tycoon. This is luck.
sershe 5y ago
If genetics is luck, then what is left for "self"? Willpower/grit/etc. is also environment or genetics, there's no self outside of that.
- void_mint 5y ago
  Genetics are unchangable (kind of, mostly) Environment is not What specifically is your question?
  - sershe 5y ago
    The GP calls genetics "luck" in the context of dichotomy between being self made and luck... if genetics is luck, then what is left for "self"? Ability to work hard is also the product of genetics, upbringing and circumstances, so at that point the distinction becomes meaningless.