3 ms·

Do you think there's any good decision making and hard work involved too, or just pure dumb luck?

tecoholic 24d ago
I think they are smart enough to take advantage of things. Hard work or not doesn’t matter. For example, assessing that their home in California is worth way more than they make out of it and seeking out a cheaper place to convert that “luck” into profit is definitely their smarts and not privilege.
AdamN 24d ago
both. And it's important to remember that. Luck being a main force (which is really true for almost any outcome good or bad). The other forces being talent and labor.
bluGill 24d ago
Both. Everybody gets good and bad luck, nothing you can do about that. However hard work will make a major difference in the outcome. His good luck was in large part only possible because of working for the right company at least hard enough to not get fired. (a different post says he is a principal engineer which implies a lot of hard work to get - edit: also good luck that someone else wasn't also working that hard and got selected, but second to principal engineer is probably still a good income)
idiotsecant 24d ago
The world is absolutely packed with incredibly hard working people who make excellent decisions and die like a dog of a preventable disease in a slum somewhere. Yes, luck. Hard work is table stakes. It is necessary but wholely insufficient. We shouldn't make the mistake of over-attributing our successes to hard work and ignore the massive social and economic advantages that let us capitalize on the work we do. Everyone else works hard too, they just don't get to reap the benefits of that labor.
- rpdillon 24d ago
  I agree with your core point that luck is necessary, but thinking that everybody works hard is simply fiction.
  - idiotsecant 23d ago
    I hear a lot about these mythical slobs and slackers that we're all so much better than. I very rarely meet them. I mostly run into people doing their best with the resources they've got available to them.
    - rpdillon 22d ago
      The failure mode is not people that are supposed to work eight hours a day and then only work seven or six. And I don't really think of them as slobs or slackers. What they do is they come into the job and they turn the crank. They don't really think deeply about the impact they're trying to have. They do sort of what they're told, even if it leads to a dead end. And then maybe at some point they'll report that they hit a wall and you can loop back with them and adjust the plan. Iteration loops with these sorts of folks tend to be quite long. Decisions take more time than they should, and simple tasks turn into complex negotiations. I manage engineering teams by day, so I've seen my fair share of folks that have these traits. They're not bad people, but they don't care about the quality of their work, and they're not thinking very hard about what they're producing.
- sgarland 24d ago
  I agree. I grew up poor, was accepted to every college I applied to, but couldn’t afford any of them so I joined the Navy instead. 10 years later, after a brief stint as an Electrical Distribution Engineer, Samsung hired me because one of their Directors at their Austin plant was specifically seeking out Navy Nuclear-trained Electronics Technician senior leaders — pure luck. While I was there, working nights on a 4/3 - 3/4 schedule, I got into UT Austin’s SWE MS program. That was hard work, and those 2 years are largely a blur. My wife also pulled more than her fair share of work taking care of our extremely young kids, lest I claim I was the I only one working hard. After that, I convinced a hiring manager that I could do SRE work despite having zero industry experience, because I explained how I had done most of their job description at home. That was a mix of hard work and luck, I guess? Then it’s like any other industry: if you have experience, you can get interviews. Meanwhile, I have family on both sides who have worked much harder than I have, and have far less to show for it. Tech pays absurdly well in many sectors, and I think people often forget that on here.

I think they are smart enough to take advantage of things. Hard work or not doesn’t matter. For example, assessing that their home in California is worth way more than they make out of it and seeking out a cheaper place to convert that “luck” into profit is definitely their smarts and not privilege.

AdamN 24d ago

both. And it's important to remember that. Luck being a main force (which is really true for almost any outcome good or bad). The other forces being talent and labor.

bluGill 24d ago

Both. Everybody gets good and bad luck, nothing you can do about that. However hard work will make a major difference in the outcome. His good luck was in large part only possible because of working for the right company at least hard enough to not get fired. (a different post says he is a principal engineer which implies a lot of hard work to get - edit: also good luck that someone else wasn't also working that hard and got selected, but second to principal engineer is probably still a good income)

idiotsecant 24d ago

The world is absolutely packed with incredibly hard working people who make excellent decisions and die like a dog of a preventable disease in a slum somewhere. Yes, luck. Hard work is table stakes. It is necessary but wholely insufficient. We shouldn't make the mistake of over-attributing our successes to hard work and ignore the massive social and economic advantages that let us capitalize on the work we do. Everyone else works hard too, they just don't get to reap the benefits of that labor.

rpdillon 24d ago
I agree with your core point that luck is necessary, but thinking that everybody works hard is simply fiction.
- idiotsecant 23d ago
  I hear a lot about these mythical slobs and slackers that we're all so much better than. I very rarely meet them. I mostly run into people doing their best with the resources they've got available to them.
  - rpdillon 22d ago
    The failure mode is not people that are supposed to work eight hours a day and then only work seven or six. And I don't really think of them as slobs or slackers. What they do is they come into the job and they turn the crank. They don't really think deeply about the impact they're trying to have. They do sort of what they're told, even if it leads to a dead end. And then maybe at some point they'll report that they hit a wall and you can loop back with them and adjust the plan. Iteration loops with these sorts of folks tend to be quite long. Decisions take more time than they should, and simple tasks turn into complex negotiations. I manage engineering teams by day, so I've seen my fair share of folks that have these traits. They're not bad people, but they don't care about the quality of their work, and they're not thinking very hard about what they're producing.
sgarland 24d ago
I agree. I grew up poor, was accepted to every college I applied to, but couldn’t afford any of them so I joined the Navy instead. 10 years later, after a brief stint as an Electrical Distribution Engineer, Samsung hired me because one of their Directors at their Austin plant was specifically seeking out Navy Nuclear-trained Electronics Technician senior leaders — pure luck. While I was there, working nights on a 4/3 - 3/4 schedule, I got into UT Austin’s SWE MS program. That was hard work, and those 2 years are largely a blur. My wife also pulled more than her fair share of work taking care of our extremely young kids, lest I claim I was the I only one working hard. After that, I convinced a hiring manager that I could do SRE work despite having zero industry experience, because I explained how I had done most of their job description at home. That was a mix of hard work and luck, I guess? Then it’s like any other industry: if you have experience, you can get interviews. Meanwhile, I have family on both sides who have worked much harder than I have, and have far less to show for it. Tech pays absurdly well in many sectors, and I think people often forget that on here.