[a_random_canuck]

I wouldn’t call most of those Amazon, FB, YouTube etc, people the actual smart people either. They’re mostly just lucky. What made Facebook or YouTube successful over any other competitor? Just luck that their design turned out to be the one people like more?

They mistakenly think their success is due to how skilled or smart they are they think they’re hot shit and their thoughts are gold. But most of them are just like Elon Musk: average intelligence people who got lucky enough to climb to the top of the pile.

The same is true for most software people. We think we’re super smart because we have logical thinking and understand a complicated thing that most people don’t, but then you can always get a good laugh reading the HN crowd try to talk smart on other subjects like physics / quantum mechanics.

[Enginerrrd]

A ton of skill, talent, adaptability, and mountains of hard work are still prerequisites for "getting lucky" in that way though. Just because luck plays a big role doesn't make it the only factor.

[kortilla]

> The same is true for most software people. We think we’re super smart because we have logical thinking and understand a complicated thing that most people don’t, but then you can always get a good laugh reading the HN crowd try to talk smart on other subjects like physics / quantum mechanics.

Talking out your ass about subjects you don’t understand isn’t limit to software people. It’s funny you mentioned physics because really smart physicists would frequently spew all kinds of stupidity about software when I was in grad school.

[dmoy]

> It’s funny you mentioned physics because really smart physicists would frequently spew all kinds of stupidity

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/793/

Not all physicists. Some are pretty chill. In fact a physicist I worked with was the one who clued me in to the whole "lots of physicists think they know everything" joke/not-a-joke thing, he thought the whole situation was very funny.