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Disclaimer: I know Vik very well.

It's always interesting how different people can read the same words and perceive them very differently! I thought Vik's post was incredibly raw and useful, especially for people who feel a bit disenfranchised by the way our education system works.

I have two thoughts about Vik's "floating through life and getting a few lucky breaks" (as you read it):

1) Vik is incredibly determined and took major risks to get where he is, luck and floating aside (those are subjective so I won't argue them).

2) I felt that his story served more as a narrative of how challenging it can be to find what you love when you don't have mentors or an education system that adapts to the different ways that people learn.

My big takeaway was that our education system lets a lot of people slip through the cracks and that many people are happy to just let it happen. There is a huge need for better credentialing in various fields and more dynamic education methods. Both Vik and I share alternate paths into technology, so I understand what he means.

I found it very useful. I'm going through something similar - I know I'm smart, but I made some bad career choices.

I'm now largely starting from scratch and seeing folks like Vik do it is encouraging.

I think the key takeaways that I take from it are (of course, I wrote it, so ymmv):

If the system doesn't work for you, it doesn't mean you're not capable.

Follow your passions, not external dictates.

Try to get as many different perspectives on life as you can.

Coding is making credentialing and "proving" you can do something much easier.

As for luck, I have a bad habit of framing things as lucky, and to some extent they are, but there was also hard work behind them.

You have an interesting story, thanks for sharing it.

I'm not knocking on your achievements, my point is more as a warning to many of the younger more impressionable readers of HN. They may read into this as an alternate path when in reality it will likely lead many astray.

Following passion is great, it's not great career advice.

P.S. I'm glad that you're comfortable enough in your career to share these insecurities. It sounds like that is a big milestone for you. Congrats on that.

Let me offer some (hopefully constructive) counterpoints:

> If the system doesn't work for you, it doesn't mean you're not capable.

Sure, but working with the system is a useful capability. Don't be lazy and dismiss it as worthless just because you can't (or don't want to) figure it out. I've made this mistake and regretted it.

> Follow your passions, not external dictates.

Following your passions is great, but doesn't always work out. Life is often about finding a balance between something you really like doing and something that society values enough to pay you for doing it.

> Try to get as many different perspectives on life as you can.

Yes, of course, but the challenge is weighing these perspectives appropriately. Everybody's perspective is right from some particular viewpoint, the trouble is figuring out what that viewpoint is, whether it applies to you.

> Coding is making credentialing and "proving" you can do something much easier.

Completely agree.

> As for luck, I have a bad habit of framing things as lucky, and to some extent they are, but there was also hard work behind them.

Sure, you always need some hard work and talent to succeed but it's often not sufficient, and luck is sometimes the necessary component that makes the difference.

ed: One last meta point that occurred to me was that you became successful when you took charge of your career. When you were just doing what others told you, you seemed both unhappy and underperforming. The lesson I would take is that we all need to take responsibility for our happiness and success. Sometimes this means introspecting and figuring out what we ought to be doing and not just drifting around listening to what we're told by society, our peers or parents.

>"I floated through life and got a few lucky breaks which led me into a relatively comfortable career that I enjoy"

To be honest, I think this is a pretty fair assessment, even as he himself admits in the post: "...it’s amazing how a life can hinge on seemingly simple moments."

Despite the lucky breaks, yes, many of us are incredibly intelligent, capable individuals who nevertheless don't "fit in". Many in the tech world can probably relate to that. Myself included.

It would be nice to get a lucky break to be sure. I suppose one way of looking at one's situation is: "it could be worse". Here's to that comfortable career doing what I would really like to do...

I think one unstated takeaway in the article is that you shouldn't rush into school. School is important, and there are a lot of paths that you close for yourself if you don't do well in college. It's not as big of a deal if your calling is software development, but if you want to be a scientist, professor, doctor, lawyer, banker, venture capitalist, etc, you're going to have to do well in school. And if you graduate high school with a 2.7 and don't know what you want to major in, you should put off going to college until you know where you want to go and how college will help you get there.

You don't need a special degree or even college at all to be a successful coder, as long as you have a passion for it. At least that is what I walked away with.

That take away oozes with survivor bias. Being a successful coder because you have passion for it still requires a lucky break somewhere along the way to discover that passion and/or have someone else recognize that passion.

In my opinion, if a story distills down to a lucky moment, you should probably refrain from taking too much away from it.

I wouldn't say it oozes with "survivorship bias". Clearly by your logic, any possible advice given to anyone oozes with survivorship bias, which is silly.

I would argue the tech industry is more egalitarian relative to other industries, which makes it possible to become successful without having a formal education. Sure it'd be difficult, but it's not impossible compared to another industry like finance.

Do you think the theory would bear contrasting to passionate college dropouts who have not become successful, comfortable software engineers? Because we need to consider those too, to avoid the survivorship bias. Unless you believe there simply are no such people.

> Being a successful coder because you have passion for it still requires a lucky break somewhere along the way to discover that passion and/or have someone else recognize that passion.

Many passion-stories involve someone growing up in an environment in which key figures around them - like one of their parents - encouraged or enabled them to do certain things, and they happened to also really like - or grow to like, naturally without any push-back - that same thing. So then they get the chance to develop their abilities from some young age, like say 8, and are naturally quite good at it when they reach college-age.

Now even if they don't "fit into the school system" or whatever, it isn't a story of 'life's ups and downs' - it's a story about them being incredibly, incredibly lucky in that they just fell into their passion straight from the start. Dropping out of second year of college becomes a minor nuisance in the grand scheme of things, for them.

I thought it was nice that he at least acknowledged his lucky breaks, and admitted that it could easily have gone very differently. Many times on HN (and elsewhere) we see people pontificating about how hard they worked to succeed and stridently denying that accidents of birth and circumstance played any role.

>"I floated through life and got a few lucky breaks which led me into a relatively comfortable career that I enjoy".

Show HN: I Am A Dull And Replaceable Administrative Cog In A Bureacratic Machine

What do you do that's so great?

Criticizing others does not necessarily mean that the person who criticizes is better. And being better is not necessary in order to criticize.

There's got to be some fallacy or pseudo-fallacy for assuming all of that, though.

This is all true, what you say. But the tone of the question prompted me to ask.