Of course, it is not all luck but to believe wealth accumulation is a type of purely deterministic meritocratic game without a giant stochastic factor is ridiculous.
That might even be the dumbest aspect of our society. Believing the powerball lottery winner is a genius for picking the numbers they picked is obviously stupid. Yet we basically have that view with everything else besides the actual lottery.
I'm reading "So good they can't ignore you" and although I'm loving it, it's also guilty of that.
Cal Newport tells the story of a Clean Tech VC and how he got the job using a personal connection to VC. But then he dismisses it by saying that "such small breaks are relatively common".
Why is it so hard to admit that someone success is partially due to luck?
I’m wealthy now: very wealthy by any standard (mid 7-figure net worth). I came from humble beginnings (nearly homeless frequently as a youth with a single mom), but I am quite intelligent (PhD in physics) and I worked hard. I would have retired with the same 401k any other white collar worker would have but for the sheer luck of choosing the right company at the right time to win an IPO lottery. I wouldn’t have got hired without the work I put in: but there’s no doubt in my mind that my wealth is the product of luck more than that work. Literally billions of people worked harder than I have in that same period of time and have nothing but poverty to show for it. But to hear my engineer peers talk you’d think luck was negligible. They simply don’t want to discount their hard work and bias toward putting much more weight on it than is merited
It requires significantly greater extremes of wealth before luck plays a more frequent role. I know people well into 8-figures who were never anything more than blue-collar grinders. They worked hard and smart for decades with nothing that you could identify as being particularly lucky.
Can you elaborate? I don’t see how that’s possible unless they started work in their early 20s, have been maxing their retirement, never had an accident or have been unemployed, made incredible investment decisions, and are now 60+? Even then I dont see how it’s possible for blue collar folks. Well into 8 figures is like … at least 30 million.
Having been involved in small businesses, it's exhausting and often times it's simply impossible to transition from "doing" to "overseeing" (hiring people to do things is much harder than you'd imagine) and there are plenty of easy ways to accidentally blow the whole thing up. But if it works out, it can work out really well.
I have a few of these in my extended family and seen how they've done it over my life. It is repeatable but I don't think many people would put in the level of work required and it is a slow, long game. Maxing retirement is easier but it also won't buy you beautiful estates on three continents. The people that do this also never really stop doing it in my experience, their work becomes a part of who they are.
How can you “hard work” yourself into any of that?
Blue collar grinds to wealth are mostly fantasy. There is a large amount of luck involved: friends/family helping build the business, market conditions, location, etc. That hard work is also required doesn't mean luck didn't play a role (and outsized at that).
Being born in, or allowed passage into, a society that allowed one to do so in the first place is considerably lucky.
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/16/warren-buffett-says-being-a-...
Simply avoiding major adverse life events is also a form of luck, as are a whole host of other environmental factors.
Besides that, one must be incredibly lucky to land a FAANG job. Every applicant knows they have to do the leetcode grind and be up on their highly scalable distributed systems design knowledge. There are hundreds of thousands of wanna be FAANG engineers. To be one chosen out of any given round of hiring is sheer luck. The hard work is also required--but it's no harder than any other applicant worked.
It is not about working hard. It is about working smart, i.e. working on the right things. You choose those things, it is not luck.
No lotteries there.
Success is mostly attributable to luck, and ignoring that is just an exercise in outsized ego & shows a sense of agency that borders on the absurd.
Did they "come across" it in their mom's basement?
> The fact that they were born with the genetics to be smart enough to contribute to it was fully within their control?
You don't need to be a genius to be successful. Doing drugs and alcohol is also sure to reduce your smarts.
> The fact that they weren't killed in a car accident when they were 12 was due to their agency?
You can blame your parents for your life up until 18. After that, it's up to you.
> Success is mostly attributable to luck, and ignoring that is just an exercise in outsized ego & shows a sense of agency that borders on the absurd.
Baloney. Successful people 1) make their own luck 2) make it easy for luck to find them.
No, they came across it by being in the right place at the right time, supported by habits and behaviours that were mostly determined by their environment.
> You don't need to be a genius to be successful. Doing drugs and alcohol is also sure to reduce your smarts.
Some people are just not born with the brains to "make it". I know people who will never be able to contribute to a high growth field like ours who are excellent nurses, childcare workers and teachers. This, yet again, isn't decided by agency but by circumstance.
> You can blame your parents for your life up until 18. After that, it's up to you.
I'll remember that the next time a drunk driver tbones me.
> Baloney. Successful people 1) make their own luck 2) make it easy for luck to find them.
Our attitudes, talents and disposition are a sum of the actions we have taken, and experiences that have influenced us. Those actions are informed by our previous attitudes, talents and disposition. The experiences aren't in our control completely either. It's a feedback loop that we have minimal control over.
You can't honestly tell me that you'd come to the exact same conclusion that you are now if you hadn't had gone through what made you you. Just as I couldn't claim to come to my conclusion if I didn't have my experiences.
You're obviously successful mate. Just remember that even if some people can make it to your position, that doesn't mean everyone will. Most people do the best they can given the hand they're dealt, and that's okay. Enjoy your full house.
Yeah, I can. There is nothing particularly special about me or my background (lower middle class). I know lots of people with the same attitudes I have - all have survived failure and went on to success.
> I'll remember that the next time a drunk driver tbones me.
My dad told me he was once driving on a 2 lane country road, when a drunk passed him at high speed in a corvette. There was a stop light up ahead, and the drunk stopped at the light. My dad cautiously stopped about a quarter mile behind him. Good thing he did, because the drunk took off at full throttle in reverse.
More generally, there is a technique called "defensive driving", which is not merely following the traffic laws, but keeping an eye out for threats. I don't drive drunk, I don't get in a car with drunk drivers, I watch for erratic drivers and stay well clear, I wear my seat belt tight at all times (that one saved my life), and when I brake I check my rear view mirror, and have pulled off on the shoulder as the driver behind me hit the guy in front of me. I look both ways when crossing an intersection, even when I've got the green. I stay off the road on New Years Eve, and am generally on extra alert on the road after the bars close.
> It's a feedback loop that we have minimal control over.
You can change your thoughts and attitudes. They are under your control.
People aren't doing the best they can if they believe their lives are victims of chance rather than consequences of their choices.
I bet if I knew the details of your life, I could point out the choices you made that decided things for you.
Yes, however those attitudes aren't derived from the ether are they? They'd be informed by circumstance and background. You can "choose" to take an attitude towards something much like a rock "chooses" to fall when dropped. If your prior beliefs and experiences would have led you down the same rationalisation for that choice every time, is it actually a choice?
> re: defensive driving Defensive driving covers both how to avoid bad situations and how to recover from them IIRC. The implication there being that defensive driving is risk mitigation, not elimination. You're still relying on factors outside of your control to keep yourself safe.
> You can change your thoughts and attitudes. They are under your control.
idk man, hormones are a bitch and genetics predisposing people to addiction and suicide say otherwise. You do the best you can, but looking at every situation and stating that everything is a consequence of choice is assuming that some people's faculties aren't compromised from the start. Things like CBT can help, but not everyone is self aware enough to understand that cognitive distortions exist let alone treat them.
> People aren't doing the best they can if they believe their lives are victims of chance rather than consequences of their choices.
I'm sure you would find dozens of people per successful person with the same mindset as you described, purely due to a knowledge or talent gap. They'd see the same choice, make the wrong one where we'd make the right one and then suffer for it. Feedback loop, little control.
> I bet if I knew the details of your life, I could point out the choices you made that decided things for you.
So could I, but only because I made the bad choices based on the available information and influences in the first place. It's a feedback loop.
I mean, I eat dinner every night now so it's not like I'm not successful.
People choose their attitudes. I changed several of mine that were unhelpful.
> hormones are a bitch and genetics predisposing people to addiction and suicide say otherwise
I never said making choices was easy.
> I made the bad choices based on the available information and influences in the first place
It's always someone else's fault? The Marines have no tolerance for excuses. One takes responsibility. I'm not a Marine, but I admire them. I've had the privilege of working with some, and enjoyed their "no excuses" attitude and behavior. I'm not surprised the Marines are winners.
> it's not like I'm not successful
You also get to choose what success means for you.
The literal idea that people can change is one you have to learn on either reflection or outside influence. You do realise that, right? If that idea isn't in your vocabulary, it just isn't an option.
>> hormones are a bitch and genetics predisposing people to addiction and suicide say otherwise
> I never said making choices was easy.
When in that position, the most "logical" choice is usually a hit or a noose. It feels like you ignored the point about reasoning capacity being compromised in the first place due to whatever reason. Alternatively - I met a street preacher who was convinced god wanted him to do things he didn't want to (homelessness, etc..). Did he meaningfully have a choice, or does this fall under the "no excuses" doctrine too?
>> I made the bad choices based on the available information and influences in the first place
> It's always someone else's fault?
I'm not asserting fault here. I'm just talking about state diagrams.
Are you implying that people can make choices without knowing they exist? You only learn about possibilities and consequences from either external influence or experience. The mere idea of "no excuses" expects people to grow from their _previous experience_. You know, taking feedback from previous experience and having it inform future ones. Coming to reasonable conclusions based on that experience. It's a feedback loop.
> You also get to choose what success means for you.
I mean, besides my issue with the whole choose thing yeah, expectations for success moderate what you consider successful.
Yes.
> You only learn about possibilities and consequences from either external influence or experience.
You can choose to do research.
You're making a distinction without difference. I literally had no idea whether the company I work for was even going to go public, much less how successful (or not) it would have been. There was no skill or intelligence involved in picking it. It was pure luck.
Why do you model life as a single bet where you have a 1 or 2% chance of winning? In reality you are making bets every day, each with a range of odds of succeeding and each success can produce a range of outcomes.
Look at poker, a game that has a massive "luck" component, people still consistently win.
The amount of decisions you make in a game of poker vs the amount you make in a lifetime are not even remotely comparable. And unlike life, in poker there's no risk in making bad decisions during the game while you're still learning. Worst case scenario you just start a new game until you get the hang of it. Life is not like that. There's no practice run, and when you make what turns out to be the wrong decision it can follow you around for the rest of your life.
His point is that it's extremely possible, and in fact happens every day, that you can be a talented, hard worker who put in the same amount of hard work and time that someone else did, and make all the objectively correct choices, and the difference between the levels of success you both achieve can and will be huge.
This is not true but will be at some point.
> And unlike life, in poker there's no risk in making bad decisions during the game while you're still learning
You haven't met most poker players, they almost all start playing with real money before they even have a clue. What make s poker a truly terrifying game is that you can win a lot while making all the wrong decisions and get hooked for life while being a terrible player.
> Worst case scenario you just start a new game until you get the hang of it. Life is not like that. There's no practice run, and when you make what turns out to be the wrong decision it can follow you around for the rest of your life.
Yes, there are many unfortunate people that have made life altering decisions while young and the decisions follow them forever. Thankfully not all failures in life hold such dire consequences, in fact some failures seem like the end of the world but in reality the consequences are not as big as you expect (eg getting fired from your first job or failing an exam).
1. stay in school
2. pay attention in school
3. go to college
4. don't do drugs
5. don't do crimes
This is a solid ticket for anyone wishing to get into the middle class.
6. Don't have children out of wedlock
That derails a lot of people.
On the other hand, I've seen plenty of people who took responsibility for their lives, and thereby improved them dramatically.
If I may assign you some homework:
1. what do you want to accomplish in life?
2. what are you going to do about it?
I know the current popular narrative in the United States is nobody ever actually accomplishes anything. It's always luck, privilege, you didn't build that, etc. I don't buy it. It's all excuses, defeatism, envy and misery. If you want to improve your life, don't buy it, either.
I was once told I was so "lucky" that I had a propensity to work hard. Geez. I laughed at the guy. (Actually, I'm very lazy. My dad said I was never afraid of hard work, I'd lie down right next to it and fall asleep.)
And before you call this defeatism: actually pushing harder than is realistic usually makes disability much worse! It’s instead important to realistically understand what’s available to you and frankly speak upon factors beyond your control. Otherwise people end up despairing and killings themselves way more, because they keep setting up expectations and blaming themselves when their circumstances prevent them from doing things they used to do before their disability.
Those are not even remotely comparable conditions.
Believing that your local witchdoctor/economist can predict the weather/economy is perhaps stupid. Believing in Karma might be too. But what's the alternative? Accepting you live in an uncaring universe where you have no control and terrible things could happen to good people at any time?
Much more psychologically safe to blame the victim as a way to ward off the thought that you could suffer the same fate.
I.e. the trick is to enable luck to find you. At some point, it becomes inevitable.
For another example, stock investing. You can't make money in stocks if you don't invest in stocks. Individual stock performance is a bit of a crap shoot. But if you're a patient investor, pick good companies, follow a sensible investment plan, the math is inevitable that you're going to make money in it.
People like stories of people who bet it all on black and win, though, so they think that's the model for success. Really, the way to win is just to not lose.
Lots and lots of choices one made to get there.
Treating each and every case as fully comparable based on just their outcome merely hurts those that have already been hurt.
For most successful people, the safety net comes in the form of saving money wisely, making the right friends who can give you some work to fill in the gap, or - like my multi-millionaire landscaper - being willing to be underemployed for a period of time while you get back on your feet. If you support a partner or a family, it can be a lot harder to keep yourself safe like this, but you might also have another income to fall back on.
> the safety net comes in the form of saving money wisely
This FULLY ignores the many reasons that make it harder so save money exactly BECAUSE you don't have a safety net. A genius born into a bad environment with some medical preconditions might never be able to save ANY money due to needing to spend it to stay alive.
And that's not even looking at the many very expensive aspects of being poor like preventative care.
> making the right friends who can give you some work to fill in the gap
Right, except that poor neighbourhoods have fewer people able to employ you. So you're either lucky to meet the right people and have them like you (!) or you move out of your poor neighbourhood with the money you don't have.
> being willing to be underemployed for a period of time while you get back on your feet
Okay, and how will this help anyone pay their bills? Should people just say "guess it sucks I can't feed my family, but they just gotta power through, soon it will be worth it"?
---
Please don't read this as me saying that things like safety nets are 100% absolutely luck-based. But it's incredible to me just how much people are willing to look at "what they can do for themselves" without being willing to see why the same could be harder for people in different situations.
Sometimes it might be better to trade the option with higher average damage for one that is more volatile, because you might get lucky at just the right moment.
The luck narrative is often used to justify wealth redistribution.
The article does not disregard this - luck and family wealth are the two factors they propose as causative.
They all came to America by choice.
In fact, America is a nation of immigrants. They came here to establish a country based on freedom, and took advantage of that freedom.
Any country could do what America did, if their citizens chose to.
LOL. First generation immigrants everywhere you look in the US.
> not everyone literally can do that
There is nothing special about America that every other nation could not do if their citizens wanted it. America was created by immigrants to be what they wanted it to be.
That's right. They chose not to.
> most people certainly don't have the means to improve it
There are many, many historical examples of individuals of no means rising to strongly influence and even command a nation. There are also many examples of citizens toppling their government and replacing it.
You know, like the American Revolution, which revolted against the British that ruled the world at the time.
You sound like you subscribe to the "great man" theory of history. That theory is, quite frankly, bunk. No man is an island, and one, single person can't accomplish anything meaningful without the support of others.
You allude to this in another comment, but I do know who you are, and, no, you didn't build that. Everything you accomplished was built on the backs of what people who came before you did, and you got lucky to end up in such a privileged position to be able to even have some of the opportunities you had, much less take advantage of them.
Do you even remember what your argument is? Because I don't.
Yeah, if I'd just watched TV the whole time, the outcome would have been the same. Right?
> single person can't accomplish anything meaningful without the support of others.
Great men go out and get the support of others.
Do you think Apple would have existed without Steve Jobs? SpaceX/Tesla without Musk? The Soviet Union without Lenin? The Church of England without Henry 8? The US without Washington? Why is the US so different from the other North and South American nations? The Haber process without Haber?
Do you know about Norman Borlaug, who is credited with saving over a BILLION lives?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
There are great men, and they have great influence over history.
Haber and Borlaug? Yeah, I know they bear a lot of responsibility for overconsumption in the world today.
Likewise for every single person you named. You couldn’t have done what you did had you been born a serf in 1375, and had you been so born, I would wager nobody would know your name even 10 years after you died.
No, sir, you didn’t build that.
I see you admit Jobs did it. Oops!
> what you did
You admit what I did, too. Oops!
> you didn’t
Too late!
The same mistake has much worse consequences if you don't have wealth.
If anything, it's easier to go from having nothing to a comfortable, middle-class lifestyle than it is to go from middle-class to wealthy.
I guess people who live in the third world and have mastered English see living proof every day of where their hard work can get them.
The poor people who burn out completely and stop working end up on the street and either die pretty fast or find some more motivation to keep going even in that state.
Also, sadly what many poor people lack is not work ethic but capital, in the sense that they can't just take on a ~20-30M loan to send their kids to school and wait for them to start working and then pay it back. So instead of doing this they are forced to do very near-zero ROI things.
It's not a lottery game, it's a poker game (and in reality, it's much easier than poker because the economy is positive sum and poker is zero sum). If you only consider "wealthy" to be people who have made billions or hundreds of millions then it's a lottery. But someone that consistently makes decisions that maximize expected monetary gain can consistently become a "rich" person if our definition of rich is have more than $10million.
(Poker is negative sum if you are playing in a raked game)
https://www.kiplinger.com/personal-finance/605075/are-you-ri...
This is very achievable to most HN types. Maybe not in our 30’s, but easily by retirement. Just maxing out your 401k for an entire tech career will get you there.
If I understand right, this is the perception right now, not in the future. Probably then it will be higher.
Would also be interesting to know if people in general even count 401k as “wealth”. I feel like it occupies a different bracket in many people’s minds.
Should be pretty easy to reach 2.2m for many people in 40 years, inflation corrected that's something like 500k.
You have a finite number of bets you can make in your life, if you waste them by partying, gambling and being high on drugs then yeah, I can see how it can feel like it's impossible to succeed.
And life is a lot easier than these board games, there isn't one winner in life.
Yes, and they deplete their family's centuries-old hoards of wealth within 2 generations.
Also immigrants usually don't come to literak nothing. While its certainly difficult for them, usually there are cultural or religious groups that help them out or they have family that immigrated before them to help them get on their feet.