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Comment by camdenreslink | Hacker News Reader

Hard work and talent are related to success. But when the outcome is "become the richest person in the world", hard work and talent are a rounding error compared to luck. Does anybody really think Zuckerberg is even in the top 5% hardest working or talented people in the world? A decision as inconsequential as rewriting Facebook to a different language in the early days could have derailed the entire enterprise. There is a lot of luck involved.

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Yes, I would absolutely consider Zuckerberg as one of the top 5% most talented people in the world. Frankly, that isn’t a particularly high bar whatsoever. Haven't you ever been amongst the general populace?

You’ve committed the typical sin on this site of overrating technical prowess and underrating business acumen. There’s a reason so many founder CEOs from his era ended up getting sacked while he’s maintained control and Meta has become the behemoth it is. Next you're going to tell us how Steve Jobs was a charlatan and a cheat.

Is the act of buying a lottery ticket a "rounding error" when it comes to winning the powerball?

I think you underrate the talent of people in the general populace. There are very talented people everywhere. It rarely translates into wealth.

By the way, the act of buying a power ball ticket is essentially a rounding error. The odds of winning the grand prize (which is what we're talking about here) is 1 in 292,201,338. That is for all intents and purposes the same as zero.

Seriously, I work at a FAANG and Zuck would be in the top 5% most talented people at my company. Hands down. That doesn't take away from all the things he's clearly _terrible_ at, one being actually caring about other people, but still clearly an exceptional engineer and business mind.

Cut it with the FAANG exceptionalism, I worked for multiple FAANGs, you need to reevaluate many of your opinions. The biggest skill people at FAANGs have is getting hired at a FAANG and that is it.

I don't know where you got the idea that I have faang exceptionalism, quite the opposite

The United States has ~4.25% of the world population, but 8 of the 10 richest people in the world live in the United States.

Even if you just take the advantage of being born in the United States (which, fine, exclude Musk from that list then) 7 of the 10 people on the list, including Zuckerberg, are among 5% "luckiest" people in the world just based on where they were born.

This is eliminating any luck they got from hereditary wealth, geographical location, and catching the surge of value in their respective industry at the exact right time.

What if Zuckerberg fell in love with playing the flute as a kid and became one of the best flute players in the world instead of starting Facebook?

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