>Preamble: I'm extremely lucky. ... So what you're going to read is 99% luck and 1% planets alignment.
I mean, that's pretty much it and he states it up front. If that's the crux, then why write about this other than to brag?
I mean, that's pretty much it and he states it up front. If that's the crux, then why write about this other than to brag?
That's just a way to humble brag. If you read the paragraph, it doesn't actually say much:
> I was born in a developed country in the 80s (Italy), with access to fresh water, very good carbohydrates and a decent education system.
Yea, I was born in a "developing" aka "backward" middle eastern country in the 80s, but I still had access to fresh water and good food and decent education. Some of my cousins lived through civil wars and still managed to learn computer progrmaming while living in the civil-warn torn country.
Maybe some amount of good luck could do the trick...
(Disclaimer: there may be confounding variables the study didn't account for)
"Is Success Luck or Hard Work?"
On the flip side, ascribing success entirely to luck is not at all healthy. I see lots of people who complain about their lot in life but then do nothing to change the trajectory.
Sure, if his parents divorced and had he joined a street gang, it would have been harder for him to get where he is.
Everything is luck.
Haven't you noticed how pervasive the "no, I'm self made and being lucky has nothing to do with it" myth is around these parts?
Despite how trivial it is to observe the opposite. Spending a week or two living in a favela or any third world country slum easily disabuses people from harbouring such notions... Or we could just culturally recognize how much it's all about luck.
If you grew up in a developed country, you're extremely lucky too.
lots of young programmers dont think that proactively and thus miss out on a lot of money.
We are all extremely lucky. We are just too cowards to move to Nigeria or South Africa or Ethiopia or El Salvador to cash out on this super luck that we had.
Reasons are health infrastructure, being far from parents and family, fear of violence, fear of diseases.
They are all valid. But by the same token there is an element of cowardness about looking at prices of stuff in foreign countries on Numbeo.com, calculate the churn rate and never actually act upon such thought.
Arrange your affairs to be a big fish in a small pond, if we don't make the mental leap we will never do it, because no matter how much you have there's always gonna be a bigger pond or a largest challenge.
It's a form of mental rumination I think, looking at people like Gates and Bezos...they have it in full swing.
They could own the universe and there is once in a billion chance of multiverses and they'd keep working to make sure they take on the new challanges that those multiverses represent
Besides, in this world the shit is everywhere it's just the color that changes and the window dressing that makes people believe otherwise.
I'd rather deal with impoverished people and deal personally with my security than some scum of Silicon Valley such as Elizabeth Holmes or Elon Musk.
I lived for some years in a "good" suburb of a pretty well-known third-world city. Everyone had security bars on the windows and razor wire (or similar) atop their walls. Many of our neighbours employed round-the-clock armed guards.
I personally witnessed a police-vs-robbers shootout (leaving at least one dead on the ground) from my office window. For a while, carrying a pillion passenger on a motorcycle was banned because it was such a popular way to do drive-by shootings.
The majority of the expatriate community I knew there had personally experienced violent crime of some form (armed break-ins, hold-ups, car-jacking, etc). So had some of my local friends, of course, though many of them were much less well-off and therefore less of a target (you can't snatch someone's car at gunpoint if they don't have one).
When disorder and violence is that pervasive in a society, it can be pretty hard to live with.
But many aspects of the cost of living were indeed lower.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout
Present day Lagos is not that much unlike the Los Angeles of the 1990s or the NYC of the 1970s and 80s.
Problem , of course there'll always be a safer place, by the same token people who live in present day LA or NYC are suicidal considering they could live in Montana or Utah, or Zurich.
Where nothing ever happens (good or bad)