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Comment by darby_nine | Hacker News Reader

> The formula for success in any field is simply to make a product that other people want to consume

Well, the formula for success in selling products is this. Most people don't define success in terms of business acumen.

Except, of course, businessmen. If you perceive our society as centered around successful people, of course you'll see it as merit-based. If you perceive our society as poorly run and catering to the rich, of course you'll see success as primarily a product of circumstance outside of your control. Is it so hard to see that "merit" is necessarily defined in subjective terms?

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This is just arguing over phrasing. It doesn’t matter what you’re trying to do, if you’re making YouTube videos, or music, or paintings, or cakes, or web apps, or cleaning diveways, your ability to succeed boils down to your ability to provide something other people want. That is the objective source of your merit.

Perhaps your own idea of success in life is something that revolves exclusively around your own satisfaction, like going off and living in the woods. But this is exactly the same situation, you’re just only trying to provide the things that one person wants in that scenario, yourself. Your ability to do this will again come down to your own merit.

Of course if you’re chronically frustrated by being less successful than you would like to be, then looking for alternative explanations such as luck will be an attractive scapegoat that could excuse you from scrutinising your own capabilities. But the human inclination towards doing that is certainly not morally righteous.

I don't think its black and white. I think sometimes success is a matter of luck. For example, in large organizations there can be a lot of roles generated where there isn't always that much direct pressure and people can be hired through luck (e.g. getting on with the boss, some types of diversity hires, being loyal to a company even if you are not that good etc.). If teams of people make products/reports etc. sometimes it can be hard to shine, and 'talkers' who don't contribute much can get promoted into a 'lucky' role. Its not black and white.

You illustrate a perfect example of simply not understanding what people want. Talkers get promoted because talkers have social skills, and companies are social systems, and social skills are required to advance through them. Social skills are probably more desirable than technical skills most of the time. It’s not luck that these people succeed, it’s the fact that they have the qualities that people want.

You can succeed through partially through luck, like if a record executive decides they going to manufacture some massive level of fame for you. But this isn’t a viable long term strategy, only providing what people want is. Over time the variance of luck goes away. The luck outlook relies on the fallacious idea that you only get one opportunity to succeed, but you don’t, you have as long as you’re willing to keep trying. Maybe a failure on one particular day can be explained by luck, but you get to wake up and keep trying every day, and if you have what people want then luck becomes irrelevant and eventually you will succeed. That’s how basically every single successful person you’ve ever heard of has done it.

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