Why is this down voted? It is quite insightful. Is HN that much of an echo chamber for the self-made-person myth? A shame that our collective intelligence would harbour this blind spot.
Edit: while I'm sure I'm smart (who isn't sure the are?), luck has a lot to do with any success I've had.
Does anyone expect that by sitting around doing nothing they'll get lucky and become successful? Do one's choices mean nothing?
I know (and admire) many many less successful people who work a lot harder than me, who display most of the traits that are meant to make people successful, but the halo effect, being white and male, getting easily bored, and being brought up in an environment where suggesting I could be the Prime Minister one day was met not with derision but with book suggestions were surely the keys to my success, and also the basis for all my choices.
The key belief - in my experience - between the Left and the Right is that the Right doesn't believe in luck, good or bad.
Getting easily bored was helpful?
Working hard on non-productive things is not going to get one anywhere. Everybody has choices on what to work on. Working hard waiting tables is not going to help create a hit album - working hard on guitar skills might.
To be successful, you have to have a plan that makes sense, then work that plan, not something else.
Talk about a non sequitur. Grandparent said, essentially, that luck is necessary for success. You seem to be arguing against a strawman who you imagine claims that luck is sufficient for success.
You have accomplished much, Walter, and you deserve to feel proud. You also should feel lucky, however.
I know a number of successes and failures. The successes tend to be people who take responsibility for their lot in life, the bad as well as the good. The failures tend to be people who blame others or bad luck for their lot.
The empowering thing about taking responsibility is then you can do something about it.
Also not being a billionaire!= not being successful.
I.e. if you're not out there swinging, you are never ever going to hit the ball.
No one denies that Facebook was built through hard work and perseverance, but how many people have doctor parents, a software engineer for a private tutor in middle school, admittance to the richest private boarding school in the country, a (former) best friend whose father is a wealthy industrialist, and a number of other untold privileges?
Using Zuckerberg as an example of a self-made person really hurts your argument.
Where are all the multibillion unicorn startups created by people from working class backgrounds?
Meanwhile:
Elon Musk - engineer father, privately educated
Jeff Bezos - landowning grandfather who was also regional director of the Atomic Energy Commission, engineer father
Bill Gates - father lawyer, mother on the board of IBM, privately educated
Steve Jobs - working class adoptive parents (but a complicated and interesting genetic background), father not an engineer but encouraged tinkering
Larry Page - father had PhD in CS and encouraged tinkering on hardware around the house
Sergey Brin - father maths professor, mother NASA researcher
I'm not sure if this has been researched, but it looks as if success in tech correlates with high IQ parents and plenty of opportunities for experimentation and hands-on tinkering.
I'm sure there are people doing okay in tech who had no parental input at all, but I'd guess they're much rarer than those who had opportunities and encouragement.
I'm looking at my FB friends list, counts well over 600 people, the bulk are from well to-do families all privately educated, top unis, top careers. I don't think any, would have their parents allow them to drop out of Uni irrespective of whether it was the next FB they were building and write them a $100k cheque to get going.
This is an example of luck that many ignore in the narrative. However major kudos to Zuck his ad product has basically guaranteed me a career for the rest of my life. For that alone I'm grateful for FB being invented.
Yes, that of their employees, who proceeded to get bread-crumbs compared to the "owners" (ie: mostly outside investors) who did a tiny fraction of the work.