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I would argue the real luck was the depression lifting at a key moment in your life, and perhaps life circumstances that didn't stack up to reinforce it.

I had a tough start in mine (likely starting in childhood with trauma), and that issue worsened significantly through formative years of my life. It didn't ease up. As a young adult, being pretty ill and left untreated can reveal formidable powers of self-destruction.

Luck was there however, in the form or only succeeding partially through the little talent or brains I had in between depressive oscillations. Eventually with the untreated illness however that too can reach its limits. Eventually I still got lucky again, in the form of meeting a couple people who love unconditionally and a therapist who jumped into the fray and was creative with meds. These days I can almost see what it might be like on the other side of the fog for others, and I agree with your post and attitude overall.. But I'm not surprised. Empathy isn't a muscle we all work reliably, and it can be hard to constantly see it and retain equanimity (especially having some for everybody, in or outgroups, self or others).

With meds and therapy and work and time, I do think thatwith or without the depression, I can attempt to create my luck by living through principles that seed it. In my opinion those principles include living moment-to-moment lightly (some stoicism, some absurdist nihilism), and living moments profoundly in their value (anything is an opportunity, most things can be experienced deeply). A bit like a good boxer is light on their feet but heavy on the impacts.

Yeah, I was definitely lucky to have recovered from my depression. Or looking back, I may not have exactly recovered, but transitioned to a less totalizing, debilitating phase.

But I was lucky for a bunch of other reasons too. Some were manufactured, other the result of privilege and chance.

Incidentally, one of the things that helped me climb out of my depression was meeting a couple new friends who were very accepting of me. That happened at an event that I was at through one of the few activities I had chosen for myself to be involved in in high school. So it's actually a good example of opening myself up to the chance of a lucky event working out.

I really feel for folks who have had a worse experience of depression than me and I'm happy to hear you have experienced improvement of the worst of your depression.

I really like the idea that saying yes to everything leads to more luck. When you open yourself up to new opportunities the outcomes will surprise you. It sounds dumb but it really works, and it’s a lesson that I learned from Jim Carrey of all people. The movie yes man may not be a classic but the message stuck with me and has had a profound impact on my “luck”

It's worth reading the book [0] that film was loosely based on. It's a good book and concludes the point of the parent:

> Yes Man is a memoir written by Danny Wallace based upon a year of the author's life, in which he chose to say "Yes" to any offers that came his way.

> ... furthers his career by saying "yes" in meetings with executives.

Also read his other books, they are good.

0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Man_(book)

[author here] counter argument: some forms of yes have a "carrying cost". sometimes counterfactual (opportunity cost), sometimes mental, sometimes financial. some yeses are simply not worth it, then you get the counterswing phase where you go "hell yes or no" (aka default no to most things).

i recommend figuring out a happy middle between the two rather than swinging thru the extremes.

further nuance - keeping the option of saying yes (as opposed to directly saying yes) also has a carrying cost: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/5/25/desai-commencem...

Perhaps a different phrasing: default to saying 'yes' while keeping in mind that you can always say 'no.'

The problem isn't meritocracy. The problem is that what we are calling a meritocracy isn't one as it is based on luck and connections. All this "networking" talk that I see on here and any career development site - it's the opposite of a meritocracy and disadvantages anyone not in the "in" group.

Bingo. If getting the job requires you to know the hiring manager to even know about the opening, it is not a meritocracy. It's a birthright.

If you don't know the secret codes or secret power holders, you're just stuck on the outside looking in. And these secret codes have little to nothing to do with actual ability.

Sort of. Being effective in nearly any role requires interpersonal skills, and it's not unreasonable for the strength of one's professional network to play a role in landing interviews. Of course at one extreme, pure nepotism does exist as the "opposite of meritocracy" you bemoan -- but that hardly represents the majority case, where human connection and evidence that someone, somewhere, was glad to have worked with you, improves your perceived strength as a candidate.

TLDR even if you write code for a living, your career is still all about people.

The part you're missing is that candidate A might be just as better than and just as sociable as candidate B. But if the manager knows candidate B, candidate B will get the job. The result is that the best person did not get the job. It's observation bias.

I'm not really "missing" that part, rather I have a different PoV. In my experience on both sides of the tech hiring equation over the past 24 years, it's not a given that "B will get the job" (based solely on familiarity). I agree it's more likely, but mostly to a reasonable degree in that it helps de-risk the hire. I've also seen the opposite case, where a candidate's perceived ceiling or limited potential upside (based on outdated "familiarity" w/ their abilities) counted against them, failing to account for their growth.

My point remains: do good work and don't neglect connecting w people and making good impressions; relationships w colleagues are essential to a strong career.

"are essential to a strong career."

It seems we're discussing two separate things.

Our discussion stemmed from your complaints about career development advice, and the OP is all about what steps to take to have a strong career. No big deal, your point about observation bias is relevant, we simply apparently disagree about how important it is.

I was discussing how it is not a meritocracy. Whether the career advice is good or not is not the point. The point is that we are not in meritocracy.

Ok. You may be right about that.

The meritocracy measures along the vector of manipulation.

We are social animals. Sociability, communication skills and demonstrating that you "show up" have a lot of merit. I'm not very good at either of those things, but I appreciate them and try to improve on them, because they are important.

In my eyes the real problem is not whether there is an "in group" as you say, but whether there is gatekeeping and what it is based on. Do people just happen to have the right surname, gender or skin color? Or is it really about engaging, kind, fun personalities who are competent and hard working. If it is the former, then it is not a good group to be part of at all. But the latter describes a group that is based on merit.

"Sociability, communication skills and demonstrating that you "show up" have a lot of merit."

It depends on how that's done. You can have someone who "demonstrates" that stuff via manipulation. Those people are generally not great for achieving whatever your company goal is. While they might be an asset today, they can turn.

Gatekeeping is an issue too. But even if you eliminate those, a random candidate will almost always lose to a personally known candidate due to observation bias. The gatekeepers aspects are a part of this too - you are more likely to be in the "known" category if you share the same attributes as the manager.

I thought that too, once. But now I think that the concept of meritocracy is fundamentally flawed.

First, it has no ability to differentiate merit manufactured by previous iterations of the meritocracy game from other forms of potential or reasons to invest in a person or reward them.

Second, it implicitly devalues people who seem to be lacking in merit, amplifying the effects of any sort of disadvantage. I don't know that a society based on merit can ever truly be humanitarian. This plays out in very visible ways, in America, the most meritocratic of cultures. We tolerate an astounding amount of completely avoidable misery.

As an American, steeped in meritocratic thinking from birth, it's frankly scary and disorienting to imagine what things would be like if you took meritocracy off its pedestal. I think you'd see a happier society, but also a loss of the economic competitive edge that is the source of our power in the world. Meritocracy might truly be our state religion and the main thing that binds this country together.

I did and do the exact same thing!

Except it's still a grind and I haven't experienced any compounding luck. Just exercises in endless nail pulling.

Is it possible that you just... Got lucky?

>>I think the world is very random, practically speaking, but that probably distributions are highly mutable. I found that decisions I previously made set me up for higher likelihood of being chosen for subsequent opportunities.

Indeed. That quote from Sun Tzu's 'Art of War' - Opportunities multiply as they are seized.

One the great things about the GTD system is to make you arrive at the exponentially increasing opportunity trees. Once you act on something, think about the next task(s), when you finish them, think about the next- ad infinitum. Prune the tree every weekend based on your larger goals.

A few weeks to months of this you will have enough opportunities opening up for you which were previous invisible, and way out of your sight.

"Start by doing what is necessary, then what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible." - St Francis of Assisi

That's the underlying philosophy of things like GTD. It's not just about doing what's in front of you, but opening up new possibilities.

But meritocracy has more to do with capabilities rather than needs. We could argue that you've actually deserved what you got because you've worked for it (by fighting your depression and coming out to say yes to more things). You def proved that you are capable of overcoming it.

Btw I'm not arguing against the people that are in need and under-privileged, I totally get your point on that.

Seems possible that every individual could have similar enough capabilities if they had enough luck to overcome any disadvantage.

Meritocracy is based on the appearance of capabilities. This sounds like a nitpick but it's a huge difference.

Lucky people often appear very capable (crazy bets that just happen to pay off look like skill to less statistically trained people), as do the politically skilled (if you can convince someone that you're capable, you don't actually have to be).

All the career advice you see about networking is basically undermining the idea of meritocracy by taking advantage of biases, such as observation bias, to give some members a boost over others.

That's what meritocracy tells us. But I think we're actually quite bad at objectively measuring aptitude, which I would say is what we really want. Capability is a today thing, aptitude is capability plus potential.

We use apparent "merit" as a proxy for aptitude, and that leads to a rich get richer effect, because merit, at the time of evaluation, is often inflated by overinvestment. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. In other words, I think there are a huge number of false negatives in our meritocracy games.

As a hiring manager, I've taken advantage of this for years. I look for proxies for potential, rather than present capability. That allows me to acquire underpriced, overlooked talent.

> Merit is manufactured and compound

So much this!

I am the child of a black, single mother who didn't have a High School diploma. Statistically speaking, I shouldn't be where I am (being offered interviews for Director-level positions at software companies). You have to do whatever you can to turn circumstance in your favor. Don't turn down any help anyone wants to offer.

It's the "human capital" version of compound interest.

> Meritocracy showers opportunities on the lucky, rather than the needy or the deserving or even the highest leverage.

Advocates of meritocracy seem to forget that it wasn't coined as a positive term.

"For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but frim him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away."

Matthew 25:29

> This, incidentally, is the problem with meritocracy. Meritocracy showers opportunities on the lucky

Lucky and particularly the politically skilled!

These are the same thing! Luck can be manufactured and political skill is one way of doing it.

Reading your perspective was inspiring. It sounds like you are a more positive nowadays as well, which is great.