[axiom92]

I've at times stated that anyone who says that luck isn't important has possibly never had any success in life.

There are a lot of things that can go wrong in any pursuit. Hard work shrinks the error bars in the distribution of success but doesn't make them disappear.

[caymanjim]

Anecdotally, I've found the opposite. The most successful people ascribe their success to their own hard work first and foremost, discounting all the benefits that luck has brought them, most especially the accident of their birth (rich country, rich parents, race, gender, date, etc.). On the other end of the spectrum, those who are less successful tend to blame all their failures on bad luck and discount their own contribution.

[delete2]

The "You didn't build that" types vs. the self-made man with a million dollar trust fund types.

[ixtli]

I agree that the mistake of discounting the important role luck plays in success doesn't seem to know class bounds.

[rambojazz]

> The most successful people ascribe their success to their own hard work first and foremost

because it makes them feel greater, more merits for them and less to fate. They don't want others to think "ah you got lucky with that".

[p0nce]

Either it's a case of Fundamental Attribution Error, or the natural tendency for "luck" events is to be negative rather than positive.

[panopticon]

My anecdotal evidence also agrees with yours.

[chefandy]

Fact.

[psyc]

Looking back on my life, there are significant successes that were pure luck, and also those that had nothing to do with luck. I'm talking strictly about events here, and not traits. If you want to talk about the luck of having traits, precursors to those traits, and precursors to those traits, then I think that's a totally different conversation.

So I'll focus on events. Most of my success is due to being a programmer. That's not luck (again, disregarding traits!) I was always fascinated with computers and math. I worked my ass off to afford my first computer at age 12. I worked my ass off to learn programming, and I hustled my ass off to break into the industry with no degree.

Within the context of my career, the vast majority of my success comes from a six-month period full of extremely lucky chance events that just fell into my lap. It's like I was blessed for those six months, and every little thing went exactly my way with perfect timing. Working hard, networking, making good decisions - that's all just a baseline. Just the price of entry. Outside of that magical chapter, I was not working less hard, networking less, having a worse attitude, making stupider choices, or anything of the kind. This is why I have a gripe with people who always scrutinize your part in your circumstances. Yes, maybe its a good strategy to focus on what you can control, but in the bigger analysis, if you're trying to be more analytical about it, it seems like BS to me.

I was consistent. I always worked hard and all that jazz. But sometimes, chance events all went my way and I profited massively from it. Most of the time, either nothing happened, or everything that 'should' have gone right, went wrong. So I personally find the luck angle to be the interesting one - not in the motivational, how-to-live sense. Just in the big picture observation sense.

[phil21]

> Working hard, networking, making good decisions - that's all just a baseline. Just the price of entry.

This is the truth, and very hard to convey in a balanced manner. I typically have discussions with people who only want to focus on luck as being part of my (or their) success, and I also have the same discussion with folks who want to only focus on the hard work aspect.

I've found the same. Most of my financial success in terms of "getting ahead" you can look back to a short period of time where everything went right for you and you got lucky. What many folks completely discount is how your consistent work ethic put you into those positions to take advantage of, and of course no one can see the 9 other times you were in similar situations and it all went to shit. It's about getting back up the next morning and taking that tiny step forward again.

I find these discussions pretty upsetting most of the time as I can look back growing up (background sounds much like yours) and think of the kids I grew up around. You could have predicted with near 100% success rate which of those kids turned out to be financially successful and which would not. I imagine it's much harder in more wealthy environments where poor work ethic isn't nearly as damaging, but in a more austere environment it was completely obvious. Those that partied and never worked hard in their early teens pretty much universally have shit lives now. Those that applied themselves have various levels of what most would consider financial success. I truly think luck is a far secondary factor for this type of success.

The difference is luck truly was the only major indicator of who in that "successful" group went from "decent salary in a nice job" to "building generational wealth" - that seems very much more random than a baseline of "middle class" success.

[jellicle]

It usually goes the other way around: people who say that luck isn't important are precisely those that have been very lucky. They have no self-recognition of it. Rather, because they've achieved success with little effort, they have learned and believe that anyone making as little effort as they know they did should also be as successful, so by definition if you aren't successful, you must be lazy as hell.

"I'm a self-made man! I turned that $100 million I inherited from my Dad into a billion by picking the right investment firm!"

[eeZah7Ux]

> anyone who says that luck isn't important has possibly never had any success in life

...or want to attribute every part of it to their behavior.

Survivor bias is strong, especially in cultures where people are exposed to the idea of just world, aka meritocracy, from an early age.

Perhaps 95% of Hollywood narratives are around good guys vs bad guys and the good guys always win.

[bluetwo]

"The harder you work the luckier you get..."

[ionvoe3w]

True, only to a point. I knew someone who became homeless because the were unlucky enough to develop schizophrenia. They couldn't hold a job, or hold their life together without a lot of help. The assistance they got from the state was not enough to save them from dire poverty. One bad thing led to another.

So did they not work hard enough?

Another person I knew was kicked out of their parents house when they came out as trans. They were thrown out of their house as a teenager with no money and no relatives to turn to (all the relatives were deeply religious and believed that 'tough love' would make her change her wicked ways). She found work, and eventually got a place to live. But with poor education, and being a social outcast, she could only just make ends meet. It left her vulnerable, and subsequent boyfriends, "friends" and roommates would take advantage of that.

Now you can say these are edge cases. I agree. And for most people, the "hard work" advice pays off. But realize how smug it sounds, to proclaim that all you need is hard work, when some people do everything they can and still get stuck.

[confounded]

Perhaps true, though working-smart and being affable/networked seems more important than grinding. Still, IME, that variable amount of luck is tiny relative to ‘starting luck’, or straight blind luck.

I think it is fair to say that luck ‘compounds’ like interest. Being in a good position generally confers more frequent and higher-value opportunities to get into a better one. Getting lucky early is very important, and the earliest luck you can get is the circumstance of your birth.

[snarf21]

Mostly true. There is the other version of "luck favors the prepared". You can get lucky and not be able to capitalize on it.

[jandrese]

Or luck is required, but not sufficient for success. You also have to put in the hard work and be smart.

Put another way, you can't win if you never get to play the game.

The world no doubt has a bunch of self starting geniuses who are trapped in poverty in some third world country and will never amount to anything. It's an enormous waste of an incredibly rare resource.