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Timing: Why this crisis is our biggest break

timr 18y ago
The point of Gladwell's book totally whooshed over the writer's head. We know the robber-baron industrialists were born in a particular decade, but is that the cause of their success? Obviously not. Gladwell isn't making an argument about the particular reasons that they were lucky -- just observing that they were. They had good timing, and that translated into economic success in their time. Everything else is speculation. Nobody knows what's going to be "lucky" tomorrow. Maybe this time around, nobody will get rich. Maybe this time, we're creating a new economic paradigm where wealth will be more equitably distributed. Maybe this time, 30-somethings will get rich, because they've had a decade head-start on the 20-somethings to save cash. Maybe this time, everyone will go bust. Maybe this time, risk-takers will get squashed by the market, and savers will be rewarded for their conservative moves. We don't know, and we can't know. Trying to extrapolate useful information from Gladwell's observation is antithetical to his thesis -- once you've controlled for practice and skill, a lot of the "secret" of success boils down to dumb luck. You can't reproduce luck. The best you can do is work hard, practice a lot, and hope that someday, lightning will strike you too.
- sharkfish 18y ago
  I dunno. I re-read the article after I read your comment, and I came to a different conclusion: It is very possible we are in one of those gaps in time where if you have put in your 10,000 hours, you can leverage them. You can be one of those lucky ones. His point is, then, how do you know you aren't coming of age during a lucky time, when the old goes out the window? It is quite possible this is that "garage electronics" time when nobody has any money and some of us figure out unique ways to save and as a result, make millions. You can bet, SOMEONE will. We are going to hear, in about 4-5 years, of someone down and out who "did it" during 2009 after they got laid off and were living in their parents' basement. Instead of shooting their employer, they proved everyone wrong and succeeded. I am one of the jaded and cynical, however. This is just a "glass is half full" perspective.
  - jumper 18y ago
    Yes indeed, we can be sure PR will guarantee that we hear about such a thing.... heck! We can even hope it actually happened!
  - vitaminj 18y ago
    I think timr's point is that you'll only know AFTER the fact that you're lucky. To try and extrapolate a single (and dubious) data point in history to the present time, and then conclude that this is the right time for 20 year olds to be lucky, is IMHO wildly misplaced optimism. You can't "time" luck... maybe it'll be the elderly who come out of this lucky...
    - tonystubblebine 18y ago
      I found the article useful in two ways, neither of which rely on the accuracy of the prediction. One, if you've already made the decision to start a company, then it doesn't matter whether this is a good time or not. However, it could be motivating to think of this as a great time. When I think that way, that there are enormous opportunities for me to solve, I behave more confidently and spend more time doing rather than fretting. I think I'm not the only person who recognizes the role that emotion plays in their own success. Two, I thought it was an interesting thought experiment to think about whether the rules have changed, what the changed rules are, what forces are driving them, and what are some of the repercussions? She doesn't get into them, but that doesn't mean we couldn't. Off the top of my head: 1) Tighter credit. People who are bad situations will eventually work themselves out, but we could be in a situation where people and companies keep a more sustainable level of debt. What would the effect be? 2) Baby boomers get old. Supposedly they're going to retire, but their savings just went kaput. Are they going to keep working? Are they going to make the younger generation pay for their retirement and healthcare? 3) Energy covering climate and demand. Environmentalists are pushing for conservation but Vinod Khosla thinks we're going to solve it in a way that makes today's energy look expensive. What does a world of extremely expensive energy look like? What does a world of extremely cheap energy look like? 4) Internet related, dropping costs. This isn't as big as the first three but effects me personally. Where are the big plays? What about small plays that add up (37signals)?
- jeggers 18y ago
  I thought it was time I commented, since I'm the author against whom implications of being too short to understand are being drawn. I agree luck is a component, particularly with respect to timing. My point -- apparently nimbly dodging about your knees -- was different. Assuming a natural progression of your work ethic and intelligence, how would you act differently if you believed this was a time of creating a new economic paradigm? A time when that luck of timing was with you? What would you do differently? It is a no lose proposition to me. What is it going to hurt if luck isn't on my side? So if, as Tony suggested, there are some fundamentals changing, we can react because we are studying them. Rockefeller and his contemporaries looked for opportunities, and acted upon them. My post was a suggestion to look -- or maybe to better fit into your paradigm -- run outside to to increase your chances of being hit by lightening. You can think it is too dangerous or a waste of your time. Many intelligent, hard working people in Rockefeller's time didn't look either. They also did not amass his wealth.
mlLK 18y ago
Here is a question that's been beating at my brain lately and this post help catalyze my thoughts into text: how do we know what we're working on is worth it? In other words, how do we measure what we're doing? This question begs another set of questions, which is: What do you value? Do you value what you do? More often than not, I find money as a poor system indicator for determining the value of what people are doing.
- jacobscott 18y ago
  This is a deep question; I think the answer is a mix of economics and philosophy. Depending on how interested you are, consider maybe "History of Western Philosophy" by Bertrand Russell.
  - crabapple 18y ago
    except this book does nothing to address that point because it is as the title says, a history of western philosophy. it is about OTHER philsophers. on the internet you have to be careful about talking up books, someone may actually have read it and call you out
    - jacobscott 18y ago
      Sorry, I'm meaning to order this from Amazon -- it got a lot of props in an ask.mefi thread. Didn't mean to imply that I had read it. Do you have a better suggestion?
- alex_c 18y ago
  Off the top of my head, there are four criteria I can think of that determine the value - to myself - of something I'm doing professionally: how much money it'll bring me, how much I'm learning, how much I'm enjoying it, and how beneficial it is to society as a whole. If I'm not getting at least 2 out of 4, then it's probably not worth doing. Learning might be the only exception.
- crabapple 18y ago
  how do we know what we're working on is worth it? In other words, how do we measure what we're doing? you charge someone (an advertiser or customer) for attaching their name to or using your product/service and they agree???? we even have units to measure this, we call them dollars!!
crabapple 18y ago
well all of the so-called robber-barons came out of an old economy (to them), but offered something NEW. if you think you are going to bust out of this recession with the startlingly novel idea of starting a website, you're actually trying to apply the rules of the old (as in ten years ago) economy to the new. the web is past the innovation stage and is moving into the economies-of-scale stage. if you don't think so, compare google's earnings to yours. in any case its too early. lots of the carnage has yet to be unleashed...the reductions in consumer spending will likely only become obvious in the shopping season for 2009 as the job cuts of 2008 accelerate and are felt. the blogger's thinking isn't new....the 30s was littered with traders who tried to play contrarian too early and got gutted. let it play out kids, this will take time. preserve capital.
mitko 18y ago
Well, the examples of Rockfeller, JP Morgan etc. only show the "tip of the iceberg". What, in my opinion, is underlying is a probability distribution of people wealth. In times of big changes there is more uncertainty, which increases the variance of the distribution. It is true that these times bring out people that make enormous wealth, but also many people remained poor. And those who orient better in the situation(or get lucky) end up being better off at the end.
fbbwsa 18y ago
Sort of a terrible example by the author (Gladwell, I guess), I think with regards to the wealth creation window being limited to those born between 1831 to 1840. don’t see why its surprising at all that 14/75 of the richest people in the country came from a given 9 year time period. Since we don’t know what the distribution looks like, lets grind through this. If we had no a priori reason to suspect that that particular 9 year period is different from any other, we might think that 75/14*9 ~48 years encompasses all 75 of the richest people 75 people in the country. If we expected that 9 year birth period to show more wealth creation then we should see MORE than 19% representation. In a time where most people didn’t accumulate their wealth quite as early, lets imagine that people could even imagine to START getting rich at 25 (remember this is a time where instant wealth creation via the internet didn’t exist). Add 48 years to that, and we’re at an age of 73. Current life expectancy is 78 in the United States and it was lower back then. So… the claim that 14/75 of the richest people were born within a 9 year period is not inconsistent with the null hypothesis that being born in that 9 year time bracket shows absolutely no proclivity towards wealth creation than any other equivalent 9 year time period.
- jeggers 18y ago
  Two issues with your calculation: (1) You are considering contiguous 9-year periods across which the 14-person sets can be applied with the 48 years + 25. Because the span of time is recorded history, and with a brief look at the Forbes list, at least 1000 years are covered... or 966 sets of 9-year periods (1000-9-25), rather than 5. (2) Life expectancy globally across this period of time gives a much wider range. Overall, your calcs are too narrow to disprove Gladwell's assertion. We'd have to dig more deep into the actual numbers to get the real stats to show how likely/unlikely this is.
  - fbbwsa 18y ago
    you are correct, I skimmed/misread the post. I thought it 75 richest LIVING people (and could not for the life of me figure out why they were using such an old Forbes list...), not in history. Thats why I was assuming we could assume dead people and those under 25 wouldn't be as relevant and fit all potential candidates to a 50-ish year birth-year block. Taking any arbitrary 9 year period in a 50 year period and finding that it captured ~20% didn't seem odd to me, which is why I screwed up with my bad argument. Good catch.

timr 18y ago

The point of Gladwell's book totally whooshed over the writer's head. We know the robber-baron industrialists were born in a particular decade, but is that the cause of their success? Obviously not. Gladwell isn't making an argument about the particular reasons that they were lucky -- just observing that they were. They had good timing, and that translated into economic success in their time. Everything else is speculation. Nobody knows what's going to be "lucky" tomorrow. Maybe this time around, nobody will get rich. Maybe this time, we're creating a new economic paradigm where wealth will be more equitably distributed. Maybe this time, 30-somethings will get rich, because they've had a decade head-start on the 20-somethings to save cash. Maybe this time, everyone will go bust. Maybe this time, risk-takers will get squashed by the market, and savers will be rewarded for their conservative moves. We don't know, and we can't know. Trying to extrapolate useful information from Gladwell's observation is antithetical to his thesis -- once you've controlled for practice and skill, a lot of the "secret" of success boils down to dumb luck. You can't reproduce luck. The best you can do is work hard, practice a lot, and hope that someday, lightning will strike you too.

sharkfish 18y ago
I dunno. I re-read the article after I read your comment, and I came to a different conclusion: It is very possible we are in one of those gaps in time where if you have put in your 10,000 hours, you can leverage them. You can be one of those lucky ones. His point is, then, how do you know you aren't coming of age during a lucky time, when the old goes out the window? It is quite possible this is that "garage electronics" time when nobody has any money and some of us figure out unique ways to save and as a result, make millions. You can bet, SOMEONE will. We are going to hear, in about 4-5 years, of someone down and out who "did it" during 2009 after they got laid off and were living in their parents' basement. Instead of shooting their employer, they proved everyone wrong and succeeded. I am one of the jaded and cynical, however. This is just a "glass is half full" perspective.
- jumper 18y ago
  Yes indeed, we can be sure PR will guarantee that we hear about such a thing.... heck! We can even hope it actually happened!
- vitaminj 18y ago
  I think timr's point is that you'll only know AFTER the fact that you're lucky. To try and extrapolate a single (and dubious) data point in history to the present time, and then conclude that this is the right time for 20 year olds to be lucky, is IMHO wildly misplaced optimism. You can't "time" luck... maybe it'll be the elderly who come out of this lucky...
  - tonystubblebine 18y ago
    I found the article useful in two ways, neither of which rely on the accuracy of the prediction. One, if you've already made the decision to start a company, then it doesn't matter whether this is a good time or not. However, it could be motivating to think of this as a great time. When I think that way, that there are enormous opportunities for me to solve, I behave more confidently and spend more time doing rather than fretting. I think I'm not the only person who recognizes the role that emotion plays in their own success. Two, I thought it was an interesting thought experiment to think about whether the rules have changed, what the changed rules are, what forces are driving them, and what are some of the repercussions? She doesn't get into them, but that doesn't mean we couldn't. Off the top of my head: 1) Tighter credit. People who are bad situations will eventually work themselves out, but we could be in a situation where people and companies keep a more sustainable level of debt. What would the effect be? 2) Baby boomers get old. Supposedly they're going to retire, but their savings just went kaput. Are they going to keep working? Are they going to make the younger generation pay for their retirement and healthcare? 3) Energy covering climate and demand. Environmentalists are pushing for conservation but Vinod Khosla thinks we're going to solve it in a way that makes today's energy look expensive. What does a world of extremely expensive energy look like? What does a world of extremely cheap energy look like? 4) Internet related, dropping costs. This isn't as big as the first three but effects me personally. Where are the big plays? What about small plays that add up (37signals)?
jeggers 18y ago
I thought it was time I commented, since I'm the author against whom implications of being too short to understand are being drawn. I agree luck is a component, particularly with respect to timing. My point -- apparently nimbly dodging about your knees -- was different. Assuming a natural progression of your work ethic and intelligence, how would you act differently if you believed this was a time of creating a new economic paradigm? A time when that luck of timing was with you? What would you do differently? It is a no lose proposition to me. What is it going to hurt if luck isn't on my side? So if, as Tony suggested, there are some fundamentals changing, we can react because we are studying them. Rockefeller and his contemporaries looked for opportunities, and acted upon them. My post was a suggestion to look -- or maybe to better fit into your paradigm -- run outside to to increase your chances of being hit by lightening. You can think it is too dangerous or a waste of your time. Many intelligent, hard working people in Rockefeller's time didn't look either. They also did not amass his wealth.

mlLK 18y ago

Here is a question that's been beating at my brain lately and this post help catalyze my thoughts into text: how do we know what we're working on is worth it? In other words, how do we measure what we're doing? This question begs another set of questions, which is: What do you value? Do you value what you do? More often than not, I find money as a poor system indicator for determining the value of what people are doing.

jacobscott 18y ago
This is a deep question; I think the answer is a mix of economics and philosophy. Depending on how interested you are, consider maybe "History of Western Philosophy" by Bertrand Russell.
- crabapple 18y ago
  except this book does nothing to address that point because it is as the title says, a history of western philosophy. it is about OTHER philsophers. on the internet you have to be careful about talking up books, someone may actually have read it and call you out
  - jacobscott 18y ago
    Sorry, I'm meaning to order this from Amazon -- it got a lot of props in an ask.mefi thread. Didn't mean to imply that I had read it. Do you have a better suggestion?
alex_c 18y ago
Off the top of my head, there are four criteria I can think of that determine the value - to myself - of something I'm doing professionally: how much money it'll bring me, how much I'm learning, how much I'm enjoying it, and how beneficial it is to society as a whole. If I'm not getting at least 2 out of 4, then it's probably not worth doing. Learning might be the only exception.
crabapple 18y ago
how do we know what we're working on is worth it? In other words, how do we measure what we're doing? you charge someone (an advertiser or customer) for attaching their name to or using your product/service and they agree???? we even have units to measure this, we call them dollars!!

crabapple 18y ago

well all of the so-called robber-barons came out of an old economy (to them), but offered something NEW. if you think you are going to bust out of this recession with the startlingly novel idea of starting a website, you're actually trying to apply the rules of the old (as in ten years ago) economy to the new. the web is past the innovation stage and is moving into the economies-of-scale stage. if you don't think so, compare google's earnings to yours. in any case its too early. lots of the carnage has yet to be unleashed...the reductions in consumer spending will likely only become obvious in the shopping season for 2009 as the job cuts of 2008 accelerate and are felt. the blogger's thinking isn't new....the 30s was littered with traders who tried to play contrarian too early and got gutted. let it play out kids, this will take time. preserve capital.

mitko 18y ago

Well, the examples of Rockfeller, JP Morgan etc. only show the "tip of the iceberg". What, in my opinion, is underlying is a probability distribution of people wealth. In times of big changes there is more uncertainty, which increases the variance of the distribution. It is true that these times bring out people that make enormous wealth, but also many people remained poor. And those who orient better in the situation(or get lucky) end up being better off at the end.

fbbwsa 18y ago

Sort of a terrible example by the author (Gladwell, I guess), I think with regards to the wealth creation window being limited to those born between 1831 to 1840. don’t see why its surprising at all that 14/75 of the richest people in the country came from a given 9 year time period. Since we don’t know what the distribution looks like, lets grind through this. If we had no a priori reason to suspect that that particular 9 year period is different from any other, we might think that 75/14*9 ~48 years encompasses all 75 of the richest people 75 people in the country. If we expected that 9 year birth period to show more wealth creation then we should see MORE than 19% representation. In a time where most people didn’t accumulate their wealth quite as early, lets imagine that people could even imagine to START getting rich at 25 (remember this is a time where instant wealth creation via the internet didn’t exist). Add 48 years to that, and we’re at an age of 73. Current life expectancy is 78 in the United States and it was lower back then. So… the claim that 14/75 of the richest people were born within a 9 year period is not inconsistent with the null hypothesis that being born in that 9 year time bracket shows absolutely no proclivity towards wealth creation than any other equivalent 9 year time period.

jeggers 18y ago
Two issues with your calculation: (1) You are considering contiguous 9-year periods across which the 14-person sets can be applied with the 48 years + 25. Because the span of time is recorded history, and with a brief look at the Forbes list, at least 1000 years are covered... or 966 sets of 9-year periods (1000-9-25), rather than 5. (2) Life expectancy globally across this period of time gives a much wider range. Overall, your calcs are too narrow to disprove Gladwell's assertion. We'd have to dig more deep into the actual numbers to get the real stats to show how likely/unlikely this is.
- fbbwsa 18y ago
  you are correct, I skimmed/misread the post. I thought it 75 richest LIVING people (and could not for the life of me figure out why they were using such an old Forbes list...), not in history. Thats why I was assuming we could assume dead people and those under 25 wouldn't be as relevant and fit all potential candidates to a 50-ish year birth-year block. Taking any arbitrary 9 year period in a 50 year period and finding that it captured ~20% didn't seem odd to me, which is why I screwed up with my bad argument. Good catch.