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Comment by thiago_fm | Hacker News Reader

It's easy to write that blogpost when you are in a position of a lot of privilege, in arguably the best software engineering company in the world, and got where you are surely for your competence, but also a high degree of luck.

Some other people has to grind harder and even be better than you to get half of your success, that doesn't mean that they are wrong, or that the book is wrong.

I believe a lot, if not all advice there in the book is necessary. Other people might not work at Google, but as I've said before, might need to grind different gears in order to be successful, if you don't -- good for you!

A lot of your suggestions would get you fired very quickly on many companies, it's good that it all works for you.

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My goal with this post was not to claim this is a universal template to success for everyone but simply sharing an approach that worked for me.

I tried to point out several times that, yes there are places where a "move fast with leadership" approach works better. And yes this only works in the biggest companies capable of sustaining an infra team for a long period of time.

It’s not luck. To assume so, let alone say so, is uninformed and quite rude.

Getting into these roles requires a ton of hard work. Yes, it’s a grind.

If you feel it’s only achievable with luck, I suggest you’re selling yourself short.

It is a large amount of luck, obviously. You didn't hard-work your way out of brain damage at birth. You didn't hard-work your way into your geographic location which gave you access to the resources that lead you to where you are, which are unavailable most places in the world. You didn't hard-work your way out of avoiding a draft for a war where you got killed at age 18.

Mmmmkay then.

Sure, if a butterfly flew past one of our parents on the day of our conception, causing them to spend a second glancing at it, then they may have had sex slightly differently that night and we wouldn't exist. We're all lottery winners in a billion different ways.

What is the practical application of bringing that to mind when considering what actions to take for career advancement?

> It’s not luck. To assume so, let alone say so, is uninformed and quite rude.

They did not say that. They said it included a high degree of luck. It's easier to get there when you grow up in a country where you have access to a computer, for instance.

> If you feel it’s only achievable with luck, I suggest you’re selling yourself short.

It most definitely is only achievable with enough luck: given the same "hard work", not everyone on Earth will get to the same point. I find it amazing how people don't understand that.

It doesn't mean that there was no hard work. Just that "I am here because nobody on Earth would deserve it more and luck has nothing to do with it" is... I don't know... narcissistic?

There are staff level jobs like that in every company. However they are hard to get into. You have to prove yourself constantly and for long enough that the executives trust they can leave you alone and you will solve problems. You here means your team, as a staff engineer you likely have a lot of more junior engineers working under you.

My brother had an internship in a medium-sized company, and after 6 months, a new product (that he was hired for basically) and 3 new internal tools (including one for reading data trace, which, after reading this, is quite a propos), he was hired as a staff engineer.

I do not have his proactivity for sure, nor I have his ease with other people, but I managed to land my job in an infra/tool for network and security without much difficulties.

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