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Stating this is ego-protection at its finest. One of the finest comments I've ever read regarding this was written here, years ago (https://news.ycombinator.com

by jonpaul 13y ago

Stating this is ego-protection at its finest. One of the finest comments I've ever read regarding this was written here, years ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1791800 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1791800): "This attitude bugs me a lot. There is probably a path for every single person in this country to make a million dollars in the next year if they were just "savvy enough" to take advantage of it. It seems everyone wants to diminish Zuck's success by ascribing luck to it, but let me tell you something. Zuck executed the shit out of Facebook. Did the community and mindshare just come out of thin air? There's no good reason to believe that Zuckerberg is lucky at all. Saying he was in the right place at the right time has this tacit assumption that if he were somewhere else at the wrong time he would have tried the same thing and fell flat on his face. It seems because Facebook is an outlier, people feel safe talking about the luck factor, but that's meaningless because we all exist with individual circumstances, and by that measure everything every one of us does is based on luck. Instead, I prefer to ascribe luck to things that the individual actually had no control over, such as winning the lottery."

ChuckMcM 13y ago
There is a funny joke about Bill and Hillary Clinton riding in the President's Limonsine when they pass by a gas station where Hillary's high school sweetheart is working. Bill says, "Look at that if you had stayed with that guy you'd be the wife of a gas station attendant." and she replies, "No, I'd still be the first lady." There is luck involved with being successful, but there is also an ability to push it through. The recent comments by Bill Gates about how Microsoft did tablets way before Apple did, but they didn't have the design vision for them he did is a great example of that. I don't think the iPad would have been successful without its design, and that design wasn't "luck" it was deliberate. But the other parts of the equation were lucky (things like the PC market fading)
- jonpaul 13y ago
  While I enjoyed your joke, I'm not sure how the PC market fading can be ascribed to luck? The rise of consumer demand of smart phones coupled with most PC's hitting a point of being "good enough" for the average consumer could be the cause. I'm not sure how that's luck. But I think most people in technology could have predicted that. I mean, it's pretty clear to me that this will happen for the next 10-20 years. Computers as we know them today won't exist in the same form in 20 years, they'll primarily be powered by smart phones. But don't come back in 20 years and call this event and whatever successful company to profit on this "lucky"... it's just, who is going to execute upon this vision to make it happen? That's exactly what Apple did with tablets. They saw the future as it should be and executed upon that vision.
  - ChuckMcM 13y ago
    It's "luck" in the sense that the market randomly dumped phones, it's "luck" in the sense that the timing with general slowdown of netbooks and rise of smartphones was opening people up to the idea of a tablet, whereas in the early part of the century the mantra "why would I use it if I can't type on it" was dominating the discussion. I think you give Apple a bit too much credit, they did well with the iPad, they did poorly with the Lisa 2 and the Newton and X-Serve. Product development from concept to product takes years. Someone can predict what they think will happen, and they can plan for it (which they do) but whether or not what they think will happen is what actually happens is controlled by forces they cannot control.

by jonpaul 13y ago

ChuckMcM 13y ago

There is a funny joke about Bill and Hillary Clinton riding in the President's Limonsine when they pass by a gas station where Hillary's high school sweetheart is working. Bill says, "Look at that if you had stayed with that guy you'd be the wife of a gas station attendant." and she replies, "No, I'd still be the first lady." There is luck involved with being successful, but there is also an ability to push it through. The recent comments by Bill Gates about how Microsoft did tablets way before Apple did, but they didn't have the design vision for them he did is a great example of that. I don't think the iPad would have been successful without its design, and that design wasn't "luck" it was deliberate. But the other parts of the equation were lucky (things like the PC market fading)

jonpaul 13y ago
While I enjoyed your joke, I'm not sure how the PC market fading can be ascribed to luck? The rise of consumer demand of smart phones coupled with most PC's hitting a point of being "good enough" for the average consumer could be the cause. I'm not sure how that's luck. But I think most people in technology could have predicted that. I mean, it's pretty clear to me that this will happen for the next 10-20 years. Computers as we know them today won't exist in the same form in 20 years, they'll primarily be powered by smart phones. But don't come back in 20 years and call this event and whatever successful company to profit on this "lucky"... it's just, who is going to execute upon this vision to make it happen? That's exactly what Apple did with tablets. They saw the future as it should be and executed upon that vision.
- ChuckMcM 13y ago
  It's "luck" in the sense that the market randomly dumped phones, it's "luck" in the sense that the timing with general slowdown of netbooks and rise of smartphones was opening people up to the idea of a tablet, whereas in the early part of the century the mantra "why would I use it if I can't type on it" was dominating the discussion. I think you give Apple a bit too much credit, they did well with the iPad, they did poorly with the Lisa 2 and the Newton and X-Serve. Product development from concept to product takes years. Someone can predict what they think will happen, and they can plan for it (which they do) but whether or not what they think will happen is what actually happens is controlled by forces they cannot control.