8 ms·

Reading some of these books recommended here, perhaps the most shocking thing is that so much is due to randomness: an arbitrary person does something small tha

by jll29 2y ago

Reading some of these books recommended here, perhaps the most shocking thing is that so much is due to randomness: an arbitrary person does something small that turns out to be on the critical path, and without it the big thing would not get completed. I like the kind of books recommended here, but please be aware of survivor's bias (there not many books about failures! Any great recommendations? "How we could NOT get back to the moon again", "Recall: Toyota hits the breaks", "Last fag: how big tobacco lost against a Minneapolis law firm" ;-) and the fact that the winner gets to write the history. For example, next month, Bill Gates new memoir "Source Code" will come out, the first of three planned autobiographical books, and I doubt he will share with us how he strongarmed PC manufacturers into shipping Windows pre-installed in order to get the OS monopoly and other important events.

mmkos 2y ago
That's my problem with a lot of the literature on building successful businesses. They all seem to be offering a white glove path and don't talk about all the tactics ranging from shady to downright illegal that helped many of the biggest companies today to be where they are now.
- gamebak 2y ago
  I share your thoughts. Sometimes you just need to be at the right place, at the right time, solving the exact problem and this is troublesome, especially in this era when so much is already invented. Maybe I just have a wrong view, but I don't know how to decouple from this.
  - withinboredom 2y ago
    The fact that capitalism can be modeled by pure random chance only drives the point home, in my opinion. So much depends on luck... That being said, luck can be engineered, to a degree: - meeting people; networking - having access to resources - recognizing potential opportunities and taking advantage of them That being said, I'm by no means "successful" but I'm also not a "failure" ... I win some, and I lose some.
    - jvanderbot 2y ago
      And just following up: Even though there is a significant amount of random chance, that does not mean you are randomly sorted into success and failure. Even if you move from 0 to success with a very-small positive bias on your random walk, even the lower-bound on most of the results will be increasing with sqrt(n). Don't let randomness dissuade you from effort, even maximal effort, because every thing you can do it increase your "bias towards success" will have an effect over long time scales. Also, start early - stretch the time scale.
      - withinboredom 2y ago
        The way my dad explained it to me: "a heads or tail might matter, in the grand scheme of things, but at the end of the day, you gotta be there to flip the coin in the first place." Granted, he said that in regards to me being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the quote applies aptly here.
    - ghaff 2y ago
      Absolutely. I've been pretty lucky in my career, especially at a couple of critical junctions. But I had also put the foundations in place to be lucky at those junctions.
    - akudha 2y ago
      Not just capitalism, luck applies to even ordinary things like getting jobs etc. This is not to say we shouldn't try or put effort into whatever we are doing, but luck does play a big part. In one place where I worked, this 18 year old kid got an internship. She wasn't terrible, but she wasn't great either. She masterfully did minimum work for maximum benefit. I learned she was the kid of a VP who worked there - I am sure there were plenty of kids who were more qualified/motivated than her, but they don't have a VP parent. There is a reason young people today feel hard work doesn't reward as much as it used to. Everything is stacked against them - from student loans to crappy jobs. SO MUCH depends on luck
    - no_wizard 2y ago
      There are many types of success. Tech has often been associated with novel success. That is success by inventing or perfecting a previously underrated, underestimated or wholly invented technology. This isn’t the only type though. There is success through persistence. In the long run, 95% of businesses fail. Simply running a component operation that outlasts competitors in a proven market can take you very far. It’s harder than it looks. Likewise this gets little traction on most media Then there is success by accident. The one that gets most traction in media is businesses that have some flash in the pan unexpected success. These seem to be a traditional combination of luck and persistence. Along these same lines are businesses that come to fruition during a time in which they can succeed, like TikTok and the pandemic.
  - buzzardbait 2y ago
    Success comes from hard work and perseverence. Success comes from being at the right place at the right time. Both of these statements can be true at the same time.
    - ErigmolCt 2y ago
      I would say that hard work and perseverance create the foundation, but timing and opportunity often determine the outcome.
      - buzzardbait 2y ago
        Yes. Although I suspect many would disagree since there's an entire subreddit dedicated to them! r/antiwork
        ErigmolCt 2y ago
        Hard work alone isn’t always enough
    - eevilspock 2y ago
      Combined with the willingness to exploit those two things to hoard as much as you can, without qualms about taking advantage of cheap goods and cheap labor even from those who work as hard as you but get less because of economic/power/freedom asymmetries, without concern for the Mathews Effect (that wealth breeds wealth, that poverty breeds poverty)...
- ttoinou 2y ago
  Damn you’re right I’m tired of naïve explanations we can find in books. Wouldnt the authors be in legal trouble though ?
  - diggan 2y ago
    Back in the day, when authors were afraid of negative (public perception) pushback, they used to write and publish under pseudonyms. Not sure it'd work today, everyone and their mother seems so focus on building their "personal brand" and attaching their name to everything that it seems impossible for an author to not take credit for something that would surely make big waves.
    - ttoinou 2y ago
      Unraveling a person behind a pseudonym and Doxing is much easier nowadays though. But I guess a self hosted blog would work just fine
      - diggan 2y ago
        > Unraveling a person behind a pseudonym and Doxing is much easier nowadays though For state level actors, sure. But generally? I don't think that's necessarily true, as long as you come up with a pseudonym that is unique, not related to anything in your real life, and you haven't already published a lot of prose under your real name.
        ghaff 2y ago
        It depends how much people care even outside of state level actors, how much of a celebrity you are IRL, and how much care you've put into covering your tracks including just not telling people. These days you can probably do some writing pattern matching if you suspect the true name of an author but you can probably stay pretty pseudonymous unless people really want to determine a true identity. I don't have a lot of doubt I could probably publish a pseudonymous blog if I took some reasonable precautions and didn't write stuff that especially provided a fingerprint pointing to my IRL identity.
- narrator 2y ago
  One of the fun things about reading Young Stalin, which is a biography of Stalin from birth to the Russian revolution, is nobody liked him in Georgia where he grew up, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union, so it was easy for the biographer to get sources to tell all the negative and horrifying details of his earlier life building and running organized crime gangs to fund the Russian revolution. Imagine the most paranoid narcissistic jerks you've ever known who also happen to be exceptionally intelligent decide to take over a country and they manage to pull it off. Fascinating stuff.
- jvanderbot 2y ago
  Unorthodox suggestion - look at the documentaries and lit on mob tactics. The mob is basically a corporation, held together by a charismatic CEO. In its later years, violence was (I think?) less common, so politics and deal-making became the norm. However, given the subject matter, they likely wouldn't whitewash the reality of it.
  - vik0 2y ago
    >Unorthodox suggestion - look at the documentaries and lit on mob tactics. You got any documentaries and books/articles to recommend?
    - rkhassen9 2y ago
      @jvanderbot agreed. I think you are on to something. where can we go to learn more?
- akudha 2y ago
  When I was a kid, I read about Jack Welch and thought he was great. Later I learned of all the shenanigans he pulled, not just unethical, but illegal stuff. And the way he trampled people. Bill Gates is a respected philanthropist today, he too did all kinds of shady, ruthless stuff to get to the top. Everywhere I look, same story - Amazon, Facebook, Google... The only big company I think is okay is Costco - either they really are good or I haven't yet about their practices. There is this podcast called Behind the bastards - in one way, it is eye opening. But it is also depressing, it does a pretty good job of shattering all our beliefs and respect for the rich and the successful. Is it even possible today to become super successful without doing shady/unethical/illegal stuff? Everything from garden variety wage theft all the way upto buying politicians and corporate espionage?
  - theposey 2y ago
    sounds cynical but I'm shifted to believing not. If you don't do it there will always be someone else who will. Not to say you should, that's a personal choice of course, but in a competitive environment there will always be someone or lots of someones who will do anything.
    - dbspin 2y ago
      This is why its vital to make unethical corporate malfeasance costly. Meaningful fines and criminal convictions for individual executives responsible for law breaking, wage theft, and intentional violations of regulation, provide meaningful deterrent. In their absence tax evasion and white collar crime become normative, which changes the game for anyone working in executive level roles.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    For any successful company, you can probably find ex-employees who think that some "fat trimming" was excessive and unnecessarily cruel or that they pushed some line or another in excessive ways. The Jack Welch case (and I'd add Mark Hurd at HP) was an example of financial engineering looking great for a time--until it wasn't.
- ants_everywhere 2y ago
  An interesting question is how authors of these books look for stories to turn into book. Stories traditionally have a standard arc where the hero faces a challenge but wins in the end having learned something. I'd be curious to talk to authors about how much the desire to fit this template influences the selection of what they write about.
- verisimi 2y ago
  That's because the literature has a value in its own right. Like history, the message that is presented, is for the present. Reality/truth be damned. The present day operational advantage is all. This is very cynical - but also freeing - when accepted. Do you think the yatch, billions, beautiful wife is worth your integrity? You decide.
- zie 2y ago
  It's more of a, it generally wasn't illegal at the time they did those things, and of course now they want it to be illegal. It's much like pulling the rope up behind them so nobody else can climb the same ladder they did. There is a reason you have to have licenses to braid hair, cut nails, etc(and charge for it) in many US states for instance. It's not a simple license like a food worker has to do. It's much more involved. I mean if someone is going to mess with my hair, do a manicure or pedicure they should know the basic hygiene things much like a food worker has to do. I'm good with that. Why do they need more than that? It's not because we as a society actually care that much about a person that can't braid hair trying to charge for it. It's because all those beauticians want to limit their competition. OK rant over for the day.
InkCanon 2y ago
I have a contrary opinion: most important things are started by apparently small things, but there is a huge amount of training, effort and persistence behind getting to that small thing. Zuckerberg was a serial entrepreneur who already made a few successful websites/apps before Facebook, Nvidia spent decades becoming the world's best GPU manufacturer (when they started there were ~300 graphics processor companies), etc etc.
- relaxing 2y ago
  I don’t think that’s contrary, rather both are usually true. You have to get lucky but also be in a position to take advantage when you do.
- sjm-lbm 2y ago
  Since we're talking about books, this statement reminds me of one that OP might want to look at: Super Founders. It's been a while since I've read it, but off the top of my head: most successful founders are older than you probably think, have less industry experience than you probably think, start (like nVidia) with more competitors than you think, but (to your other point) are more likely to have more entrepreneurial experience than you think (even very young famous founders like Zuckerberg or the Collisons had another venture before the one that made them very well known). Honestly I found Super Founders kind of dry, but it's one of the only data-driven books about what differences exist between founders of businesses with exception outcomes vs founders with less successful outcomes that I've read.
- cloverich 2y ago
  One thing I've noticed working with successful people, is they consistently have a track record of success. Even when its non work related - for instance being very high level in a competitive video game. Being personally interested in both business and hobby success, I see this across so many disparate activities. Successful people tackle their pursuits with their heart and soul, but are also smart about what they do, who they learn from, who they surround themselves with, etc.
diggan 2y ago
> an arbitrary person does something small that turns out to be on the critical path, and without it the big thing would not get completed. I've been on a somewhat James Burke binge for the last 6 months or so. For the ones who don't know, Burke write books and makes TV shows talking about inventions/technology and how they're all connected, often by chance and randomness. And the amount of discoveries we (humanity) made by pure luck/chance/coincident is incredible. So many things we find vital today can be summed up to be discovered when someone was bored and was randomly messing around with stuff, or they tried to do something that would never have worked, but accidentally did X and noticed something strange. Just a random example I can recall: In 1928, Alexander Fleming was researching influenza when he noticed that some mold had accidentally contaminated his petri dishes. Looking into it further, he noticed that the mold seemed to be killing the bacteria. Because of that, this particular species of mold became world famous ("Penicillium notatum") and Penicillin became the world's first antibiotic :)
- adonovan 2y ago
  Which Burke books do you most recommend?
  - ghaff 2y ago
    The Day the Universe Changed and Connections were his two big series. I think I have the former book somewhere but I'd probably be inclined to find and watch the two series.
- pjmorris 2y ago
  In the same timeframe, someone here mentioned 'The Trigger Effect', the first episode of Burke's first (BBC 1970's) Connections series. We watched the first series (via random videos we could find online) and the most recent version of the series (on CuriousityStream), and I think he digs deeper in the first one. I need to read the books, I'm now a huge fan, and recommend him to my curious friends.
WillAdams 2y ago
Definitely agree on that last point, and recommended folks read Jerry Kaplan's _StartUp_ which tells the story of how MS wiped out Go Corp. and eliminated PenPoint from the marketplace: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1171250.Startup https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1171250.Startup
rmvt 2y ago
enjoyed seeing bill gates mentioned here (in this context). i had no idea msods was essentially bought until very recently (mentioned in a book i've been listening to - "fancy bear goes fishing" for those interested - which shines some light on security practices, or lack thereof, by microsoft)
piokoch 2y ago
And how Bill mom (IBM board member) helped him to win the contract for... IBM, despite better options on the market. Thanks to that we were all rewarded with such gems like Windows 98 ME or Windows Vista.
- epolanski 2y ago
  Why reason in hypotheticals? Microsoft has been crucial into bringing compute in people's homes, the evolution of video gaming, the internet etc. They fluked a lot, they used their advantageous position like most companies try to, but assuming that we would have gotten better alternatives is not a given. Also, in hindsight was IBM wrong to bet on Microsoft? They sure have done multi hundred billions $ together.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    It's not like CP/M was really better. Some of the minicomputer operating systems were but it's not clear they would have been a good fit for the IBM PC and, in any case, companies like DEC and DG wouldn't have been inclined to play in that space--especially for a reasonable price--at the time.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
    Exactly. "Better options on the market"? Better by whose definition? Certainly not IBM's. And it's naive to assume that other companies wouldn't have used the same tactics that Microsoft did.
  - thruway516 2y ago
    Yes. If you look at the Alto, the Unix OS or the original mac (which itself was a kind of inferior ripoff of the Alto), Microsoft's domination was very much a case of bad products driving out the good and setting back personal computing by decades. Not until Linux, the Internet and the Iphone did we start to get a taste of where most people in the 70s and 80s thought personal computing was headed.
- anothertroll123 2y ago
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louwrentius 2y ago
I think the book "The Bill Gates Problem" should be mandatory reading for all of HN.[0] Unfortunately, I'm afraid this requirement would backfire on me as I'm afraid that a ton of HN visitors would use it as a guide to become like Gates instead so they can too become a mini-dictator with unreasonable influence over the world. [0]: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/448140/the-bill-gates-problem-by-schwab-tim/9780241609484 https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/448140/the-bill-gates-proble...
wodenokoto 2y ago
There’s also and “authoring” bias. The “did random thing and it let to big things” is just a good story that we like to tell and hear. I guess my best example is Netflix’s “I forgot to return Apollo 13 to blockbuster and ended up starting one of the most prominent tech and entertainment business”, even though that random event is total bogus. It’s a good story that helped Netflix get stories in the news.
ErigmolCt 2y ago
Every success story is built on a path of failures. I like to believe in this. It motivates me not to give up. (If I understood everything correctly...)
- Mordisquitos 2y ago
  That made me think of my favourite motivational poster, which is titled «Mistakes»: https://despair.com/collections/posters/products/mistakes?variant=2457302467 https://despair.com/collections/posters/products/mistakes?va...
  - ErigmolCt 2y ago
    Even if they’re a bit painful in the moment
dano 2y ago
I'd recommend Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. It covers the trials and tribulations as well as the brilliance and ruthless tactics taken to build Standard Oil.
- WoodenChair 2y ago
  Yeah it's a great book. It definitely gets into the weeds about his family and personal life (as a comprehensive biography should). Personally, I enjoyed that stuff, but if you just want to learn about how he did hard stuff as the OP described, it may be a bit thick at 600+ pages. That said, we summarized it in discussion form on our podcast if anyone is interested: http://businessbooksandco.com/episode/7b5d6ab9/titan-the-life-of-john-d-rockefeller-sr- http://businessbooksandco.com/episode/7b5d6ab9/titan-the-lif...
meigwilym 2y ago
The Big Short is an excellent book about failures. Really shows how, despite huge institutions and government regulation, human hype and bluster still was the main culprit.
JohnMakin 2y ago
If you're interested in a book about massive failure - read the story of Donald Crowhurst (The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst is the book, there is also a documentary out there). It's hard to tell much without spoiling it, but basically, a highly publicized sailing competition was sponsored in the mid 20th century to see who could be the first person in history to solo circumnavigate the globe with a sailboat. Crowhurst had little to no sailing experience, and mostly sold navigation equipment and gadgets for sailing - a weekend warrior - and bet his entire future and business to support his entry into this endeavor. It erm... did not go well, and got increasingly worse, then almost ok.. then absolutely not okay. They don't know what truly happened in the end, but what did survive shows he went mad at sea from the likely pressure he was under.
- Anon84 2y ago
  The 2018 biopic is also absolutely gorgeous: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3319730/plotsummary/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3319730/plotsummary/
standeven 2y ago
There are some chapters in a fantastic book, "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, that explain how luck has a huge amount of influence on the events in the world.
alaithea 2y ago
> there not many books about failures! Any great recommendations? The Logic of Failure is a fantastic book about failures, including some famous examples of failure (e.g. Chernobyl). https://www.amazon.com/Logic-Failure-Recognizing-Avoiding-Situations/dp/0201479486 https://www.amazon.com/Logic-Failure-Recognizing-Avoiding-Si...
mvkel 2y ago
A great book on failure is "Riding the Runaway Horse," about the rise and fall of Wang Computers. A cautionary tale about hubris and nepotism. https://www.amazon.com/Riding-Runaway-Horse-Decline-Laboratories/dp/0316489190 https://www.amazon.com/Riding-Runaway-Horse-Decline-Laborato... It is a real shame that more books aren't written about failures, since that's supposedly where all the learning happens.
jfil 2y ago
A fun read on failures was "In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters" It taught me the lesson of "people will stop buying v1 of your product as soon as you announce v2... so don't announce it until it actually ships!"
crackalamoo 2y ago
> an arbitrary person does something small that turns out to be on the critical path, and without it the big thing would not get completed. A great example is the discovery of the Thermus aquaticus bacteria in hot springs, seemingly pretty insignificant. That lead to PCR which allows DNA reading and analysis.
mariconrobot 2y ago
stfu

by jll29 2y ago

mmkos 2y ago

That's my problem with a lot of the literature on building successful businesses. They all seem to be offering a white glove path and don't talk about all the tactics ranging from shady to downright illegal that helped many of the biggest companies today to be where they are now.

gamebak 2y ago
I share your thoughts. Sometimes you just need to be at the right place, at the right time, solving the exact problem and this is troublesome, especially in this era when so much is already invented. Maybe I just have a wrong view, but I don't know how to decouple from this.
- withinboredom 2y ago
  The fact that capitalism can be modeled by pure random chance only drives the point home, in my opinion. So much depends on luck... That being said, luck can be engineered, to a degree: - meeting people; networking - having access to resources - recognizing potential opportunities and taking advantage of them That being said, I'm by no means "successful" but I'm also not a "failure" ... I win some, and I lose some.
  - jvanderbot 2y ago
    And just following up: Even though there is a significant amount of random chance, that does not mean you are randomly sorted into success and failure. Even if you move from 0 to success with a very-small positive bias on your random walk, even the lower-bound on most of the results will be increasing with sqrt(n). Don't let randomness dissuade you from effort, even maximal effort, because every thing you can do it increase your "bias towards success" will have an effect over long time scales. Also, start early - stretch the time scale.
    - withinboredom 2y ago
      The way my dad explained it to me: "a heads or tail might matter, in the grand scheme of things, but at the end of the day, you gotta be there to flip the coin in the first place." Granted, he said that in regards to me being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the quote applies aptly here.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    Absolutely. I've been pretty lucky in my career, especially at a couple of critical junctions. But I had also put the foundations in place to be lucky at those junctions.
  - akudha 2y ago
    Not just capitalism, luck applies to even ordinary things like getting jobs etc. This is not to say we shouldn't try or put effort into whatever we are doing, but luck does play a big part. In one place where I worked, this 18 year old kid got an internship. She wasn't terrible, but she wasn't great either. She masterfully did minimum work for maximum benefit. I learned she was the kid of a VP who worked there - I am sure there were plenty of kids who were more qualified/motivated than her, but they don't have a VP parent. There is a reason young people today feel hard work doesn't reward as much as it used to. Everything is stacked against them - from student loans to crappy jobs. SO MUCH depends on luck
  - no_wizard 2y ago
    There are many types of success. Tech has often been associated with novel success. That is success by inventing or perfecting a previously underrated, underestimated or wholly invented technology. This isn’t the only type though. There is success through persistence. In the long run, 95% of businesses fail. Simply running a component operation that outlasts competitors in a proven market can take you very far. It’s harder than it looks. Likewise this gets little traction on most media Then there is success by accident. The one that gets most traction in media is businesses that have some flash in the pan unexpected success. These seem to be a traditional combination of luck and persistence. Along these same lines are businesses that come to fruition during a time in which they can succeed, like TikTok and the pandemic.
- buzzardbait 2y ago
  Success comes from hard work and perseverence. Success comes from being at the right place at the right time. Both of these statements can be true at the same time.
  - ErigmolCt 2y ago
    I would say that hard work and perseverance create the foundation, but timing and opportunity often determine the outcome.
    - buzzardbait 2y ago
      Yes. Although I suspect many would disagree since there's an entire subreddit dedicated to them! r/antiwork
      - ErigmolCt 2y ago
        Hard work alone isn’t always enough
  - eevilspock 2y ago
    Combined with the willingness to exploit those two things to hoard as much as you can, without qualms about taking advantage of cheap goods and cheap labor even from those who work as hard as you but get less because of economic/power/freedom asymmetries, without concern for the Mathews Effect (that wealth breeds wealth, that poverty breeds poverty)...
ttoinou 2y ago
Damn you’re right I’m tired of naïve explanations we can find in books. Wouldnt the authors be in legal trouble though ?
- diggan 2y ago
  Back in the day, when authors were afraid of negative (public perception) pushback, they used to write and publish under pseudonyms. Not sure it'd work today, everyone and their mother seems so focus on building their "personal brand" and attaching their name to everything that it seems impossible for an author to not take credit for something that would surely make big waves.
  - ttoinou 2y ago
    Unraveling a person behind a pseudonym and Doxing is much easier nowadays though. But I guess a self hosted blog would work just fine
    - diggan 2y ago
      > Unraveling a person behind a pseudonym and Doxing is much easier nowadays though For state level actors, sure. But generally? I don't think that's necessarily true, as long as you come up with a pseudonym that is unique, not related to anything in your real life, and you haven't already published a lot of prose under your real name.
      - ghaff 2y ago
        It depends how much people care even outside of state level actors, how much of a celebrity you are IRL, and how much care you've put into covering your tracks including just not telling people. These days you can probably do some writing pattern matching if you suspect the true name of an author but you can probably stay pretty pseudonymous unless people really want to determine a true identity. I don't have a lot of doubt I could probably publish a pseudonymous blog if I took some reasonable precautions and didn't write stuff that especially provided a fingerprint pointing to my IRL identity.
narrator 2y ago
One of the fun things about reading Young Stalin, which is a biography of Stalin from birth to the Russian revolution, is nobody liked him in Georgia where he grew up, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union, so it was easy for the biographer to get sources to tell all the negative and horrifying details of his earlier life building and running organized crime gangs to fund the Russian revolution. Imagine the most paranoid narcissistic jerks you've ever known who also happen to be exceptionally intelligent decide to take over a country and they manage to pull it off. Fascinating stuff.
jvanderbot 2y ago
Unorthodox suggestion - look at the documentaries and lit on mob tactics. The mob is basically a corporation, held together by a charismatic CEO. In its later years, violence was (I think?) less common, so politics and deal-making became the norm. However, given the subject matter, they likely wouldn't whitewash the reality of it.
- vik0 2y ago
  >Unorthodox suggestion - look at the documentaries and lit on mob tactics. You got any documentaries and books/articles to recommend?
  - rkhassen9 2y ago
    @jvanderbot agreed. I think you are on to something. where can we go to learn more?
akudha 2y ago
When I was a kid, I read about Jack Welch and thought he was great. Later I learned of all the shenanigans he pulled, not just unethical, but illegal stuff. And the way he trampled people. Bill Gates is a respected philanthropist today, he too did all kinds of shady, ruthless stuff to get to the top. Everywhere I look, same story - Amazon, Facebook, Google... The only big company I think is okay is Costco - either they really are good or I haven't yet about their practices. There is this podcast called Behind the bastards - in one way, it is eye opening. But it is also depressing, it does a pretty good job of shattering all our beliefs and respect for the rich and the successful. Is it even possible today to become super successful without doing shady/unethical/illegal stuff? Everything from garden variety wage theft all the way upto buying politicians and corporate espionage?
- theposey 2y ago
  sounds cynical but I'm shifted to believing not. If you don't do it there will always be someone else who will. Not to say you should, that's a personal choice of course, but in a competitive environment there will always be someone or lots of someones who will do anything.
  - dbspin 2y ago
    This is why its vital to make unethical corporate malfeasance costly. Meaningful fines and criminal convictions for individual executives responsible for law breaking, wage theft, and intentional violations of regulation, provide meaningful deterrent. In their absence tax evasion and white collar crime become normative, which changes the game for anyone working in executive level roles.
- ghaff 2y ago
  For any successful company, you can probably find ex-employees who think that some "fat trimming" was excessive and unnecessarily cruel or that they pushed some line or another in excessive ways. The Jack Welch case (and I'd add Mark Hurd at HP) was an example of financial engineering looking great for a time--until it wasn't.
ants_everywhere 2y ago
An interesting question is how authors of these books look for stories to turn into book. Stories traditionally have a standard arc where the hero faces a challenge but wins in the end having learned something. I'd be curious to talk to authors about how much the desire to fit this template influences the selection of what they write about.
verisimi 2y ago
That's because the literature has a value in its own right. Like history, the message that is presented, is for the present. Reality/truth be damned. The present day operational advantage is all. This is very cynical - but also freeing - when accepted. Do you think the yatch, billions, beautiful wife is worth your integrity? You decide.
zie 2y ago
It's more of a, it generally wasn't illegal at the time they did those things, and of course now they want it to be illegal. It's much like pulling the rope up behind them so nobody else can climb the same ladder they did. There is a reason you have to have licenses to braid hair, cut nails, etc(and charge for it) in many US states for instance. It's not a simple license like a food worker has to do. It's much more involved. I mean if someone is going to mess with my hair, do a manicure or pedicure they should know the basic hygiene things much like a food worker has to do. I'm good with that. Why do they need more than that? It's not because we as a society actually care that much about a person that can't braid hair trying to charge for it. It's because all those beauticians want to limit their competition. OK rant over for the day.

InkCanon 2y ago

I have a contrary opinion: most important things are started by apparently small things, but there is a huge amount of training, effort and persistence behind getting to that small thing. Zuckerberg was a serial entrepreneur who already made a few successful websites/apps before Facebook, Nvidia spent decades becoming the world's best GPU manufacturer (when they started there were ~300 graphics processor companies), etc etc.

relaxing 2y ago
I don’t think that’s contrary, rather both are usually true. You have to get lucky but also be in a position to take advantage when you do.
sjm-lbm 2y ago
Since we're talking about books, this statement reminds me of one that OP might want to look at: Super Founders. It's been a while since I've read it, but off the top of my head: most successful founders are older than you probably think, have less industry experience than you probably think, start (like nVidia) with more competitors than you think, but (to your other point) are more likely to have more entrepreneurial experience than you think (even very young famous founders like Zuckerberg or the Collisons had another venture before the one that made them very well known). Honestly I found Super Founders kind of dry, but it's one of the only data-driven books about what differences exist between founders of businesses with exception outcomes vs founders with less successful outcomes that I've read.
cloverich 2y ago
One thing I've noticed working with successful people, is they consistently have a track record of success. Even when its non work related - for instance being very high level in a competitive video game. Being personally interested in both business and hobby success, I see this across so many disparate activities. Successful people tackle their pursuits with their heart and soul, but are also smart about what they do, who they learn from, who they surround themselves with, etc.

diggan 2y ago

> an arbitrary person does something small that turns out to be on the critical path, and without it the big thing would not get completed. I've been on a somewhat James Burke binge for the last 6 months or so. For the ones who don't know, Burke write books and makes TV shows talking about inventions/technology and how they're all connected, often by chance and randomness. And the amount of discoveries we (humanity) made by pure luck/chance/coincident is incredible. So many things we find vital today can be summed up to be discovered when someone was bored and was randomly messing around with stuff, or they tried to do something that would never have worked, but accidentally did X and noticed something strange. Just a random example I can recall: In 1928, Alexander Fleming was researching influenza when he noticed that some mold had accidentally contaminated his petri dishes. Looking into it further, he noticed that the mold seemed to be killing the bacteria. Because of that, this particular species of mold became world famous ("Penicillium notatum") and Penicillin became the world's first antibiotic :)

adonovan 2y ago
Which Burke books do you most recommend?
- ghaff 2y ago
  The Day the Universe Changed and Connections were his two big series. I think I have the former book somewhere but I'd probably be inclined to find and watch the two series.
pjmorris 2y ago
In the same timeframe, someone here mentioned 'The Trigger Effect', the first episode of Burke's first (BBC 1970's) Connections series. We watched the first series (via random videos we could find online) and the most recent version of the series (on CuriousityStream), and I think he digs deeper in the first one. I need to read the books, I'm now a huge fan, and recommend him to my curious friends.

WillAdams 2y ago

Definitely agree on that last point, and recommended folks read Jerry Kaplan's _StartUp_ which tells the story of how MS wiped out Go Corp. and eliminated PenPoint from the marketplace: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1171250.Startup https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1171250.Startup

rmvt 2y ago

enjoyed seeing bill gates mentioned here (in this context). i had no idea msods was essentially bought until very recently (mentioned in a book i've been listening to - "fancy bear goes fishing" for those interested - which shines some light on security practices, or lack thereof, by microsoft)

piokoch 2y ago

And how Bill mom (IBM board member) helped him to win the contract for... IBM, despite better options on the market. Thanks to that we were all rewarded with such gems like Windows 98 ME or Windows Vista.

epolanski 2y ago
Why reason in hypotheticals? Microsoft has been crucial into bringing compute in people's homes, the evolution of video gaming, the internet etc. They fluked a lot, they used their advantageous position like most companies try to, but assuming that we would have gotten better alternatives is not a given. Also, in hindsight was IBM wrong to bet on Microsoft? They sure have done multi hundred billions $ together.
- ghaff 2y ago
  It's not like CP/M was really better. Some of the minicomputer operating systems were but it's not clear they would have been a good fit for the IBM PC and, in any case, companies like DEC and DG wouldn't have been inclined to play in that space--especially for a reasonable price--at the time.
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
  Exactly. "Better options on the market"? Better by whose definition? Certainly not IBM's. And it's naive to assume that other companies wouldn't have used the same tactics that Microsoft did.
- thruway516 2y ago
  Yes. If you look at the Alto, the Unix OS or the original mac (which itself was a kind of inferior ripoff of the Alto), Microsoft's domination was very much a case of bad products driving out the good and setting back personal computing by decades. Not until Linux, the Internet and the Iphone did we start to get a taste of where most people in the 70s and 80s thought personal computing was headed.
anothertroll123 2y ago
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louwrentius 2y ago

I think the book "The Bill Gates Problem" should be mandatory reading for all of HN.[0] Unfortunately, I'm afraid this requirement would backfire on me as I'm afraid that a ton of HN visitors would use it as a guide to become like Gates instead so they can too become a mini-dictator with unreasonable influence over the world. [0]: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/448140/the-bill-gates-problem-by-schwab-tim/9780241609484 https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/448140/the-bill-gates-proble...

wodenokoto 2y ago

There’s also and “authoring” bias. The “did random thing and it let to big things” is just a good story that we like to tell and hear. I guess my best example is Netflix’s “I forgot to return Apollo 13 to blockbuster and ended up starting one of the most prominent tech and entertainment business”, even though that random event is total bogus. It’s a good story that helped Netflix get stories in the news.

ErigmolCt 2y ago

Every success story is built on a path of failures. I like to believe in this. It motivates me not to give up. (If I understood everything correctly...)

Mordisquitos 2y ago
That made me think of my favourite motivational poster, which is titled «Mistakes»: https://despair.com/collections/posters/products/mistakes?variant=2457302467 https://despair.com/collections/posters/products/mistakes?va...
- ErigmolCt 2y ago
  Even if they’re a bit painful in the moment

dano 2y ago

I'd recommend Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. It covers the trials and tribulations as well as the brilliance and ruthless tactics taken to build Standard Oil.

WoodenChair 2y ago
Yeah it's a great book. It definitely gets into the weeds about his family and personal life (as a comprehensive biography should). Personally, I enjoyed that stuff, but if you just want to learn about how he did hard stuff as the OP described, it may be a bit thick at 600+ pages. That said, we summarized it in discussion form on our podcast if anyone is interested: http://businessbooksandco.com/episode/7b5d6ab9/titan-the-life-of-john-d-rockefeller-sr- http://businessbooksandco.com/episode/7b5d6ab9/titan-the-lif...

meigwilym 2y ago

The Big Short is an excellent book about failures. Really shows how, despite huge institutions and government regulation, human hype and bluster still was the main culprit.

JohnMakin 2y ago

If you're interested in a book about massive failure - read the story of Donald Crowhurst (The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst is the book, there is also a documentary out there). It's hard to tell much without spoiling it, but basically, a highly publicized sailing competition was sponsored in the mid 20th century to see who could be the first person in history to solo circumnavigate the globe with a sailboat. Crowhurst had little to no sailing experience, and mostly sold navigation equipment and gadgets for sailing - a weekend warrior - and bet his entire future and business to support his entry into this endeavor. It erm... did not go well, and got increasingly worse, then almost ok.. then absolutely not okay. They don't know what truly happened in the end, but what did survive shows he went mad at sea from the likely pressure he was under.

Anon84 2y ago
The 2018 biopic is also absolutely gorgeous: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3319730/plotsummary/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3319730/plotsummary/

standeven 2y ago

There are some chapters in a fantastic book, "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, that explain how luck has a huge amount of influence on the events in the world.

alaithea 2y ago

> there not many books about failures! Any great recommendations? The Logic of Failure is a fantastic book about failures, including some famous examples of failure (e.g. Chernobyl). https://www.amazon.com/Logic-Failure-Recognizing-Avoiding-Situations/dp/0201479486 https://www.amazon.com/Logic-Failure-Recognizing-Avoiding-Si...

mvkel 2y ago

A great book on failure is "Riding the Runaway Horse," about the rise and fall of Wang Computers. A cautionary tale about hubris and nepotism. https://www.amazon.com/Riding-Runaway-Horse-Decline-Laboratories/dp/0316489190 https://www.amazon.com/Riding-Runaway-Horse-Decline-Laborato... It is a real shame that more books aren't written about failures, since that's supposedly where all the learning happens.

jfil 2y ago

A fun read on failures was "In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters" It taught me the lesson of "people will stop buying v1 of your product as soon as you announce v2... so don't announce it until it actually ships!"

crackalamoo 2y ago

> an arbitrary person does something small that turns out to be on the critical path, and without it the big thing would not get completed. A great example is the discovery of the Thermus aquaticus bacteria in hot springs, seemingly pretty insignificant. That lead to PCR which allows DNA reading and analysis.

mariconrobot 2y ago

stfu