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Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

I am financially independent and it is almost entirely due to luck. I was in a stable career as an AI researcher when, in 2000, pretty much on a whim, I decided to apply to work at an obscure little startup company called Google. It was the only startup I had ever applied to at that point (until then my ambition had been to become a university professor). Since 2005 I have participated as a principal in half a dozen other startups. They all failed. Being in the right place at the right time makes a much bigger difference than effort or ability. Working hard and being skilled can help tilt the odds in your favor, but they are neither necessary nor sufficient for success.

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Around 2001, a cohort of recent grads was working on an obscure experimental thing at Microsoft that never went anywhere. Half of the group went to Mountain View, and half stayed in Redmond. The first half are all millionaires now, and the second half are just well-off.

You can look at this from many directions. Did the natural hustlers hustle their way to Google, while the naturally complacent stayed put? Did the Googlers just go there because that's where their friends went, or because they thought it was cool? Did the Mountain View people catch the fever after the fact, and become hustlers, while the Redmond people absorbed the relatively relaxed culture there? Did everyone just go where they thought was best and then it turned out one of those places was saturated in money?

Sounds like the Monty Hall problem :) keep your door or switch. I'd say the ones who left were wiser ex-ante

I would be shocked if more than 10% of those recent grads who were working at Microsoft in 2001 and stayed in the industry anywhere are not now millionaires. (It's not that high nor noteworthy of a hurdle for our industry.)

What you've described is essentially just a high risk strategy. Work at a bunch of different start ups, and hope that eventually you end up working for one that doesn't fail, and yields some returns.

The greatest predictors for success in life are industriousness and intelligence. Over time (and that's important, over time), the intelligent and industrious are expected to beat the odds, and achieve success. Ultimately there are so many outside forces in life that are beyond your control, that achieving success is always predicated on some level of luck. But eventually, smart and industrious people will rise higher than others. Life typically lasts for many years, you can blame luck if you want for any particular individual outcome (even though that's not entirely productive), but not for having a major influence on lifetime success.

Citation needed?

You were an AI researcher in 2000 and decided to take a risk and join a startup, this is a very poor definition of luck.

Luck does always belong in the conversation - "All great events hang by a hair, I believe in luck, and the wise man neglects nothing which contributes to his destiny"

The lucky part was that I joined the one startup that turned into the runaway success out of the many hundreds that were available to choose from at the time that failed. This was during the height of the first dotcom boom. Next Big Things were a dime a dozen.

You most likely earned the luck you received.

I am quite certain that is not the case.

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