281–290 of 454 posts
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreaming_in_Code
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The fact that capitalism can be modeled by pure random chance only drives the point home, in my opinion. So much depends on luck... That being said, luck can be engineered, to a degree: - meeting people; networking - having access to resources - recognizing potential opportunities and taking advantage of them That being said, I'm by no means "successful" but I'm also not a "failure" ... I win some, and I lose some.
And just following up: Even though there is a significant amount of random chance, that does not mean you are randomly sorted into success and failure. Even if you move from 0 to success with a very-small positive bias on your random walk, even the lower-bound on most of the results will be increasing with sqrt(n). Don't let randomness dissuade you from effort, even maximal effort, because every thing you can do it i…
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When I was a kid, I read about Jack Welch and thought he was great. Later I learned of all the shenanigans he pulled, not just unethical, but illegal stuff. And the way he trampled people. Bill Gates is a respected philanthropist today, he too did all kinds of shady, ruthless stuff to get to the top. Everywhere I look, same story - Amazon, Facebook, Google... The only big company I think is okay is Costco - either th…
Perhaps not, but I think you can be "very successful" while remaining ethical. Most people want to be successful because success brings happiness. But there is a level of success at which happiness starts to plateau and yields diminishing returns of happiness.
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That's my problem with a lot of the literature on building successful businesses. They all seem to be offering a white glove path and don't talk about all the tactics ranging from shady to downright illegal that helped many of the biggest companies today to be where they are now.
When I was a kid, I read about Jack Welch and thought he was great. Later I learned of all the shenanigans he pulled, not just unethical, but illegal stuff. And the way he trampled people. Bill Gates is a respected philanthropist today, he too did all kinds of shady, ruthless stuff to get to the top. Everywhere I look, same story - Amazon, Facebook, Google... The only big company I think is okay is Costco - either th…
Prior to reading this book, I naively assumed Cortes waltzed into Meso America and took over, this is a well sourced historical account of everything that happened that led to the fall of Tenochtitlan.
Details, among other things, the engineering challenges faced during the development of the F-117 Nighthawk and the SR-71 Blackbird.
He became an orphan at age 9.
Started working in factories at 14.
Started working in glasses factories at 16.
He built his own first at 27. Grew it from 0 to 6,000 employees.
Died while still being the CEO of the company aged 86 years old.
One of the best stories of perseverance, and doing hard things from nothing I've ever witnessed!
I read these three books last year and I believe that each would be interesting to you: Undaunted Courage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undaunted_Courage This is about doing something extremely hard with a huge amount of unknowns, and the type of person it takes to succeed. How Big Things Get Done https://www.amazon.com/How-Big-Things-Get-Done/dp/0593239512 This is about project planning and has plenty of real exampl…