7 ms·

I wish we as a culture/society, acknowledged the luck and timing factor more as a factor in career development. Idolizing people like Musk, Bezos and Gates, br

I wish we as a culture/society, acknowledged the luck and timing factor more as a factor in career development. Idolizing people like Musk, Bezos and Gates, brilliant though they certainly are, only serves to put "just work hard/smart" blinkers on young career professionals, when sometimes, you really just need to introduce some chaos, roll the dice again, or divert effort into opening new pathways for yourself via networking or some such activity, instead of spending those extra hours on polishing technical skills. Case in point, I've had several internships as a student. My first one, I landed in a team that effectively did product management of a backend system, whilst my coursemate landed into a role assisting a high-up VP on innovation projects. Later, as a consultant, my first project was on some dying database system that needed to be kept alive a short while longer. In this case, I'd learned already, that you don't have to always accept your circumstances as they are. I politely complained to management that this is not what I was hired for and did not match my skills, and was transferred to a way more interesting and career rewarding project. I think the cornerstone of luck in career comes down to a few things: 1) Always Ask / Register interest - good things can't come your way if no one knows that you're looking 2) Keep an ear to the ground - so much information spreads via word of mouth. Being in chatrooms/groups or just having friendly relationships with various people in a company or sector, is like having sensors planted all around, alerting you to new opportunities 3) (polite) STUBBORNNESS - I can't emphasize this enough. Rejections, or unanswered job applications don't have to mean anything. After looking objectively at yourself and your attempt, to see if anything could have been improved, it pays you to then be stubborn and just keep trying. I recently got a brilliant job because my application was rejected from the 10th job posting of my favourite company, but a recruiter saw my application and forwarded it to another internal position that was based in another location and offered remotely. Everything clicked from there and I eventually got an offer. This happened because after the 9th rejection and I said "F*k it" and sent out another CV.

vagrantJin 5y ago
> This happened because after the 9th rejection and I said "Fk it" and sent out another CV. This is bold and I approve. Not many of us have this fck it mechanism built in. So we make excuses not to impose ourselves which is first class BS. My last agency gig was with an award winning agency with massive clients, I was interviewed with a director in the room. The meeting was scheduled for 20 minutes. It ended up lasting 2 hours.
halayli 5y ago
right time and right place is always a major factor. However, we are always in the right time and right place for a breakthrough. But it's unfair to not give credit to those that saw the opportunity, believed in it, and made it happen.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  For example, I worked for a startup in the 70's that had every piece of the puzzle to build a stellar PC, much better than the Apple. We had the expertise, the technology, and the talent (even Hal Finney worked there, yes, that Hal Finney, he wrote a BASIC interpreter to fit in a 2k EPROM). Except we didn't. Jobs/Wozniak did. They got rich, we didn't.
josephorjoe 5y ago
> I wish we as a culture/society, acknowledged the luck and timing factor more as a factor in career development. How's this? I'm a self taught programmer who did not start to learn programming til I was in my 40s. It was not super easy to get my first full time job. One day, I went to a tech meet up. Got a t shirt. Six months later, I wore that t shirt to a hiring fair. Someone recognized the t shirt because he was at that meet up too. We started talking. I end up joining the start up he worked for. Two years later I'm looking to leave and start job hunting but completely fail on my first phone technical interview. Decide to study some more "interview questions" before applying to another job. Find out the next month our start up is in acquisition discussions with Big Tech Co. Decide to stop job hunting. The acquisition happens. I now work for Big Tech Co. They never would have hired me if I had applied cold for the job. I'm doing well there. So, the secret to my success: a t shirt and flubbing an interview.
- ssully 5y ago
  Maybe I am missing the sarcasm, but this sounds exactly timing and luck.
  - josephorjoe 5y ago
    no sarcasm intended i know that timing and luck really helped me out and i am grateful for it. so when people say "wow, you taught yourself programming and now you work as a software engineer at Big Tech Co -- that's impressive" i don't think "it is because i'm awesome!". i think "i did work hard to get here but i sure had some lucky breaks along the way and if the timing had been different i could be in a very different spot right now".
  - Noumenon72 5y ago
    "How's this?" meant "How's this for an example of acknowledging timing and luck?"
- Taylor_OD 5y ago
  Great story. I think a lot of people would have a similar story if they cared to analyze their success a little more critically and be willing to give a little more credit to luck rather than their own efforts.
planet-and-halo 5y ago
These are great points, but I think it's crucial to include the second part (which you did) about how to harness luck and randomness. Too often I see people go "these guys were just lucky, it's all chance," and I think that leads to unnecessary defeatism and missed opportunities.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  > missed opportunities My dad told me that most people did not recognize opportunity because it came disguised as hard work.
ekster 5y ago
I really think doing contracting and changing jobs every year for the first ten years of my tech career (receiving a raise and promotion every time) was the biggest single factor to my success. It ensured progression and allowed the dice to be rerolled, which is a great way to think about it.
- ZephyrBlu 5y ago
  How did you get promoted 10 times? There are nowhere near 10 SWE levels.
  - ekster 5y ago
    I started at the very bottom (build engineer) and transitioned on the other end to management. It wasn’t SE0-SE10.
zz865 5y ago
> Later, as a consultant, my first project was on some dying database system that needed to be kept alive a short while longer. In this case, I'd learned already, that you don't have to always accept your circumstances as they are. I politely complained to management that this is not what I was hired for and did not match my skills, and was transferred to a way more interesting and career rewarding project. This is important. I used to think that you're supposed to be doing what you're told, but this is often very bad for your career. You should do what will get you your next job. Introduce new technologies that are hot because you'll get to work on them, it doesn't matter so much if its good for the employer.
- dasil003 5y ago
  I think it's a bit more subtle than this. You won't get promoted for just doing what you're told, but you might get fired if you don't do your job or you do overtly selfish things (like unilaterally introduce new tech that may not a good fit for the team/company). The key is to understand your bosses incentives and motivations and be proactive about making things better from their perspective. Of course there are a lot of reasons not to follow this advice: maybe you don't want to be promoted, or your boss is an idiot, or you fundamentally hate your role, etc. In that case other tactics may apply, but be aware there's a glass ceiling if you only rely on job-hopping for your growth opportunities.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> I wish we as a culture/society, acknowledged the luck and timing factor more as a factor in career development. I've been mentoring young people and college students on and off for years. The influence of luck on their success is a constant topic. Definitely not ignored. If anything, they tend to overestimate the role of luck and external factors in career development. Each year it seems like I talk to more students who have been convinced that success can only be the result of pure chance. I watch a lot of them lose motivation because they think they need luck and nepotism and connections and wealthy parents to be successful. For example: All of them have heard the phrase "It's not what you know, it's who you know." Some of them take it so literally that they lose motivation to learn things, instead assuming that their career success is going to come down to whoever their parents or friends can introduce them to. This leads to a lot of frustration come internship time when they see a couple of their less-knowledgeable friends land great internships at their parents' or friends' parents' companies. I feel like I spend a lot of time convincing some of these students that they do, indeed, have a lot of influence over their career trajectory. Their outlooks tend to change quickly when they arrive at a job and realize that what they know really does matter a lot more than who their parents are when it comes to getting anything done. I also have to emphasize that "who you know" isn't some fixed quantity, and that they will meet a lot of people in their career. The more they deliver good results, the better the impression they leave on the "who you know" and the more valuable their reputation becomes. You're never going to expand your network without putting yourself out there. It's tough to compete with the constant onslaught of cynicism they consume on TikTok, Reddit, and other websites every single day, though.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  I see that cynicism on HackerNews a lot, too. I consistently point out opportunities, and people just argue with that.
  - username90 5y ago
    They don't even view making 200k per year as "making it". Joining a top tech company doesn't require luck or connections, anyone can do it if they got the talent and just practice programming enough. Of course when you confront them they retreat to their motte and say that talent is also luck, and not getting cancer is luck etc, and therefore everything in life is actually luck, so they weren't wrong!
seahawks78 5y ago
> I wish we as a culture/society, acknowledged the luck and timing factor more as a factor in career development. I would argue that this would be too cruel for the "unwashed masses" to digest/fathom. The myth of meritocratic rise in a capitalistic system rests on the fundamental premise that luck plays little to no role in one's success. That is why you often hear bunkum like "the harder I work luckier I become" and others in desperate attempts to trivialize externalities. The very fact you you won/or didn't win the genetic lottery (born to rich/high IQ/hard working parents) could be a big strike in favor/against you. Furthermore, there is also ample anecdotal/research evidence to show that people who think that they are self made or downplay the role of luck in their success also tend to be more selfish and more uncaring for the less fortunate. I don't exactly recall who said this (most likely a leader from some socialist country a while back) that: since majority of life's success (wealth/riches) is mostly due to luck it can't be morally wrong/unjustifiable to take some of that away through high taxation.
- lliamander 5y ago
  It is true that successful people often discount the role of luck in their success, but the fact is that even while we don't get to choose what opportunities come our way, we do have control over how we choose to exploit those opportunities. I find your moral calculus about taxation rather odd. Just because someone didn't earn something doesn't mean other people have a right to take it. For example, just because someone is blessed by genetic lottery with a luxurious head of hair doesn't mean I have a right forcibly take that hair and make a wig to cover my own balding head.
WalterBright 5y ago
Smart people place themselves in a situation where luck can find them. For example, if you drop out of school, do drugs, and commit crimes, what are your odds of a successful life? Zilch. If you stay at home playing video games all day, what are your odds of meeting the partner of your dreams? Zip. If your startup does no marketing, does not attend trade shows, and doesn't write a decent manual, what are the odds of business success? Zero. If you bring a sack lunch to work every day, and eat at your desk instead of stepping out to lunch with the gang, what are your odds of promotion? Pretty meager. And so on.
- lliamander 5y ago
  > If you bring a sack lunch to work every day, and eat at your desk instead of stepping out to lunch with the gang, what are your odds of promotion? Pretty meager. I'm not sure if I have heard that point before, but it's very interesting. At different points in my career I've tried to be consistent about packing my lunch to save money, but I guess that might be an example of being penny-wise and pound-foolish. It also depends upon who you are going out to lunch with. If you're only going out to lunch with other peons, it's probably not going to help you much.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    > If you're only going out to lunch with other peons, it's probably not going to help you much. You'd be surprised. Today's peons are often tomorrow's movers and shakers. But yes, going to lunch with diverse people in your organization helps. This is also a huge problem with WFH. WFH doesn't build valuable social/work connections. It's easy to overlook the contributions of WFH people. It's easy to forget their names. They're often the first to get laid off in a downturn, and last to get promoted. Meeting your customers face-to-face is far more likely to end in a sale, than with zoom.
    - lliamander 5y ago
      > This is also a huge problem with WFH. WFH doesn't build valuable social/work connections. It's easy to overlook the contributions of WFH people. It's easy to forget their names. This is definitely true. I started working from home a year before the pandemic to help take care of a sick family member, and I felt like I was forgotten about. When COVID hit and everyone was forced to WFH, it was actually a boon for me because I was now on an even playing field with my coworkers and they suddenly remembered my existence. My life circumstances have changed somewhat so that I probably could go back into the office, but our company is still fully remote so I'm glad to be at home. I'm really just trying to figure out what I'll do once our offices open back up. I'm thinking going into the office 1-2 days a week is probably enough to help me capture some of those opportunities while still keeping the benefits of WFH.
dahfizz 5y ago
Shuffle a deck of cards and draw a hand of 5 cards. The odds that you drew those exact 5 cards are very low. You were lucky to draw those cards. However, the odds that you end up with 5 cards anyway is 100%. Its the same with your career. The odds that you ended up taking the exact path that you did, with all the serendipity and chance involved, is lucky. But the chance that any halfway decent programmer ends up with a high paying job is damn near 100% right now. There are a lot of forks in the road on the way to success. Looking back, each of those forks looks lucky to you because they landed you in you current success. But you could have taken the opposite road at any of those forks and still been successful.
- kqr 5y ago
  As Feynman put it, > You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight... I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!
- alex504 5y ago
  I agree with this 100%, just want to add that the key is to be proactive and take the forks. If you are a halfway decent programmer and can navigate the job market in a halfway decent way you will end up with a high paying job. Some people are terrible at the latter and it is painful to watch.
maverick-iceman 5y ago
> Idolizing people like Musk, Bezos and Gates The #1 guy on Forbes will always be somebody with the characteristics of Bill Gates. But not everybody who has the characteristics of Bill Gates is the #1 guy on Forbes...or is even in the magazine at all, or is solvent at all.
908B64B197 5y ago
> Later, as a consultant, my first project was on some dying database system that needed to be kept alive a short while longer. In this case, I'd learned already, that you don't have to always accept your circumstances as they are. I politely complained to management that this is not what I was hired for and did not match my skills, and was transferred to a way more interesting and career rewarding project. If it looks like a cost center, it's a waste of your time.

vagrantJin 5y ago

> This happened because after the 9th rejection and I said "Fk it" and sent out another CV. This is bold and I approve. Not many of us have this fck it mechanism built in. So we make excuses not to impose ourselves which is first class BS. My last agency gig was with an award winning agency with massive clients, I was interviewed with a director in the room. The meeting was scheduled for 20 minutes. It ended up lasting 2 hours.

halayli 5y ago

right time and right place is always a major factor. However, we are always in the right time and right place for a breakthrough. But it's unfair to not give credit to those that saw the opportunity, believed in it, and made it happen.

WalterBright 5y ago
For example, I worked for a startup in the 70's that had every piece of the puzzle to build a stellar PC, much better than the Apple. We had the expertise, the technology, and the talent (even Hal Finney worked there, yes, that Hal Finney, he wrote a BASIC interpreter to fit in a 2k EPROM). Except we didn't. Jobs/Wozniak did. They got rich, we didn't.

josephorjoe 5y ago

> I wish we as a culture/society, acknowledged the luck and timing factor more as a factor in career development. How's this? I'm a self taught programmer who did not start to learn programming til I was in my 40s. It was not super easy to get my first full time job. One day, I went to a tech meet up. Got a t shirt. Six months later, I wore that t shirt to a hiring fair. Someone recognized the t shirt because he was at that meet up too. We started talking. I end up joining the start up he worked for. Two years later I'm looking to leave and start job hunting but completely fail on my first phone technical interview. Decide to study some more "interview questions" before applying to another job. Find out the next month our start up is in acquisition discussions with Big Tech Co. Decide to stop job hunting. The acquisition happens. I now work for Big Tech Co. They never would have hired me if I had applied cold for the job. I'm doing well there. So, the secret to my success: a t shirt and flubbing an interview.

ssully 5y ago
Maybe I am missing the sarcasm, but this sounds exactly timing and luck.
- josephorjoe 5y ago
  no sarcasm intended i know that timing and luck really helped me out and i am grateful for it. so when people say "wow, you taught yourself programming and now you work as a software engineer at Big Tech Co -- that's impressive" i don't think "it is because i'm awesome!". i think "i did work hard to get here but i sure had some lucky breaks along the way and if the timing had been different i could be in a very different spot right now".
- Noumenon72 5y ago
  "How's this?" meant "How's this for an example of acknowledging timing and luck?"
Taylor_OD 5y ago
Great story. I think a lot of people would have a similar story if they cared to analyze their success a little more critically and be willing to give a little more credit to luck rather than their own efforts.

planet-and-halo 5y ago

These are great points, but I think it's crucial to include the second part (which you did) about how to harness luck and randomness. Too often I see people go "these guys were just lucky, it's all chance," and I think that leads to unnecessary defeatism and missed opportunities.

WalterBright 5y ago
> missed opportunities My dad told me that most people did not recognize opportunity because it came disguised as hard work.

ekster 5y ago

I really think doing contracting and changing jobs every year for the first ten years of my tech career (receiving a raise and promotion every time) was the biggest single factor to my success. It ensured progression and allowed the dice to be rerolled, which is a great way to think about it.

ZephyrBlu 5y ago
How did you get promoted 10 times? There are nowhere near 10 SWE levels.
- ekster 5y ago
  I started at the very bottom (build engineer) and transitioned on the other end to management. It wasn’t SE0-SE10.

zz865 5y ago

> Later, as a consultant, my first project was on some dying database system that needed to be kept alive a short while longer. In this case, I'd learned already, that you don't have to always accept your circumstances as they are. I politely complained to management that this is not what I was hired for and did not match my skills, and was transferred to a way more interesting and career rewarding project. This is important. I used to think that you're supposed to be doing what you're told, but this is often very bad for your career. You should do what will get you your next job. Introduce new technologies that are hot because you'll get to work on them, it doesn't matter so much if its good for the employer.

dasil003 5y ago
I think it's a bit more subtle than this. You won't get promoted for just doing what you're told, but you might get fired if you don't do your job or you do overtly selfish things (like unilaterally introduce new tech that may not a good fit for the team/company). The key is to understand your bosses incentives and motivations and be proactive about making things better from their perspective. Of course there are a lot of reasons not to follow this advice: maybe you don't want to be promoted, or your boss is an idiot, or you fundamentally hate your role, etc. In that case other tactics may apply, but be aware there's a glass ceiling if you only rely on job-hopping for your growth opportunities.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> I wish we as a culture/society, acknowledged the luck and timing factor more as a factor in career development. I've been mentoring young people and college students on and off for years. The influence of luck on their success is a constant topic. Definitely not ignored. If anything, they tend to overestimate the role of luck and external factors in career development. Each year it seems like I talk to more students who have been convinced that success can only be the result of pure chance. I watch a lot of them lose motivation because they think they need luck and nepotism and connections and wealthy parents to be successful. For example: All of them have heard the phrase "It's not what you know, it's who you know." Some of them take it so literally that they lose motivation to learn things, instead assuming that their career success is going to come down to whoever their parents or friends can introduce them to. This leads to a lot of frustration come internship time when they see a couple of their less-knowledgeable friends land great internships at their parents' or friends' parents' companies. I feel like I spend a lot of time convincing some of these students that they do, indeed, have a lot of influence over their career trajectory. Their outlooks tend to change quickly when they arrive at a job and realize that what they know really does matter a lot more than who their parents are when it comes to getting anything done. I also have to emphasize that "who you know" isn't some fixed quantity, and that they will meet a lot of people in their career. The more they deliver good results, the better the impression they leave on the "who you know" and the more valuable their reputation becomes. You're never going to expand your network without putting yourself out there. It's tough to compete with the constant onslaught of cynicism they consume on TikTok, Reddit, and other websites every single day, though.

WalterBright 5y ago
I see that cynicism on HackerNews a lot, too. I consistently point out opportunities, and people just argue with that.
- username90 5y ago
  They don't even view making 200k per year as "making it". Joining a top tech company doesn't require luck or connections, anyone can do it if they got the talent and just practice programming enough. Of course when you confront them they retreat to their motte and say that talent is also luck, and not getting cancer is luck etc, and therefore everything in life is actually luck, so they weren't wrong!

seahawks78 5y ago

> I wish we as a culture/society, acknowledged the luck and timing factor more as a factor in career development. I would argue that this would be too cruel for the "unwashed masses" to digest/fathom. The myth of meritocratic rise in a capitalistic system rests on the fundamental premise that luck plays little to no role in one's success. That is why you often hear bunkum like "the harder I work luckier I become" and others in desperate attempts to trivialize externalities. The very fact you you won/or didn't win the genetic lottery (born to rich/high IQ/hard working parents) could be a big strike in favor/against you. Furthermore, there is also ample anecdotal/research evidence to show that people who think that they are self made or downplay the role of luck in their success also tend to be more selfish and more uncaring for the less fortunate. I don't exactly recall who said this (most likely a leader from some socialist country a while back) that: since majority of life's success (wealth/riches) is mostly due to luck it can't be morally wrong/unjustifiable to take some of that away through high taxation.

lliamander 5y ago
It is true that successful people often discount the role of luck in their success, but the fact is that even while we don't get to choose what opportunities come our way, we do have control over how we choose to exploit those opportunities. I find your moral calculus about taxation rather odd. Just because someone didn't earn something doesn't mean other people have a right to take it. For example, just because someone is blessed by genetic lottery with a luxurious head of hair doesn't mean I have a right forcibly take that hair and make a wig to cover my own balding head.

WalterBright 5y ago

Smart people place themselves in a situation where luck can find them. For example, if you drop out of school, do drugs, and commit crimes, what are your odds of a successful life? Zilch. If you stay at home playing video games all day, what are your odds of meeting the partner of your dreams? Zip. If your startup does no marketing, does not attend trade shows, and doesn't write a decent manual, what are the odds of business success? Zero. If you bring a sack lunch to work every day, and eat at your desk instead of stepping out to lunch with the gang, what are your odds of promotion? Pretty meager. And so on.

lliamander 5y ago
> If you bring a sack lunch to work every day, and eat at your desk instead of stepping out to lunch with the gang, what are your odds of promotion? Pretty meager. I'm not sure if I have heard that point before, but it's very interesting. At different points in my career I've tried to be consistent about packing my lunch to save money, but I guess that might be an example of being penny-wise and pound-foolish. It also depends upon who you are going out to lunch with. If you're only going out to lunch with other peons, it's probably not going to help you much.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  > If you're only going out to lunch with other peons, it's probably not going to help you much. You'd be surprised. Today's peons are often tomorrow's movers and shakers. But yes, going to lunch with diverse people in your organization helps. This is also a huge problem with WFH. WFH doesn't build valuable social/work connections. It's easy to overlook the contributions of WFH people. It's easy to forget their names. They're often the first to get laid off in a downturn, and last to get promoted. Meeting your customers face-to-face is far more likely to end in a sale, than with zoom.
  - lliamander 5y ago
    > This is also a huge problem with WFH. WFH doesn't build valuable social/work connections. It's easy to overlook the contributions of WFH people. It's easy to forget their names. This is definitely true. I started working from home a year before the pandemic to help take care of a sick family member, and I felt like I was forgotten about. When COVID hit and everyone was forced to WFH, it was actually a boon for me because I was now on an even playing field with my coworkers and they suddenly remembered my existence. My life circumstances have changed somewhat so that I probably could go back into the office, but our company is still fully remote so I'm glad to be at home. I'm really just trying to figure out what I'll do once our offices open back up. I'm thinking going into the office 1-2 days a week is probably enough to help me capture some of those opportunities while still keeping the benefits of WFH.

dahfizz 5y ago

Shuffle a deck of cards and draw a hand of 5 cards. The odds that you drew those exact 5 cards are very low. You were lucky to draw those cards. However, the odds that you end up with 5 cards anyway is 100%. Its the same with your career. The odds that you ended up taking the exact path that you did, with all the serendipity and chance involved, is lucky. But the chance that any halfway decent programmer ends up with a high paying job is damn near 100% right now. There are a lot of forks in the road on the way to success. Looking back, each of those forks looks lucky to you because they landed you in you current success. But you could have taken the opposite road at any of those forks and still been successful.

kqr 5y ago
As Feynman put it, > You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight... I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!
alex504 5y ago
I agree with this 100%, just want to add that the key is to be proactive and take the forks. If you are a halfway decent programmer and can navigate the job market in a halfway decent way you will end up with a high paying job. Some people are terrible at the latter and it is painful to watch.

maverick-iceman 5y ago

> Idolizing people like Musk, Bezos and Gates The #1 guy on Forbes will always be somebody with the characteristics of Bill Gates. But not everybody who has the characteristics of Bill Gates is the #1 guy on Forbes...or is even in the magazine at all, or is solvent at all.

908B64B197 5y ago