Please explain why...
Ask HN: Luck or Hard Work?
1–10 of 20 posts
Re: Ask HN: Luck or Hard Work?
#2Both.
You need hardwork to exploit the luck you get.
Re: Ask HN: Luck or Hard Work?
#3Both. You need hardwork to exploit the luck you get.
Perhaps, but which is more important?
It seems more likely that someone could succeed by simply being lucky, than if they worked hard and never ran into the "right" person, found themselves at the "right" conference, been born into the "right" family or country or situation, etc...
Re: Ask HN: Luck or Hard Work?
#4A lot of "luck" is previous preparation - aka hard work.
And some luck is genuine luck, such as when your main competitor is out flying a plane when VeryLargeCorp wants to buy the software that both of you produce, reducing your competitor to irrelevance, and giving you a huge boost.
Re: Ask HN: Luck or Hard Work?
#5A lot of "luck" is previous preparation - aka hard work. And some luck is genuine luck, such as when your main competitor is out flying a plane when VeryLargeCorp wants to buy the software that both of you produce, reducing your competitor to irrelevance, and giving you a huge boost.
Ok, then I have a follow-up: Do you think that what you do is more important than who you know?
Re: Ask HN: Luck or Hard Work?
#6both necessary, none sufficient
Re: Ask HN: Luck or Hard Work?
#7Luck is a multiplier of work. It's exceptionally rare to benefit from pure luck-- to find buried treasure, or something like that. Usually you have to be working on something to give luck room to strike.
Luck can also set you up in a better position initially. E.g. you could be lucky enough to be born in a country not run by kleptocratic dictators, or to have a received a good education, or to have good health. But you always seem to have to work a certain amount to make a bridge from this initial luck to later stage luck.
Re: Ask HN: Luck or Hard Work?
#8Both. You need hardwork to exploit the luck you get.
Based on your name I think you might not be a native English speaker; so just in case you didn't realize, "hard work" is two separate words.
Re: Ask HN: Luck or Hard Work?
#9A lot of "luck" is previous preparation - aka hard work. And some luck is genuine luck, such as when your main competitor is out flying a plane when VeryLargeCorp wants to buy the software that both of you produce, reducing your competitor to irrelevance, and giving you a huge boost.
Ok, then I have a follow-up: Do you think that what you do is more important than who you know?
I come from a nerd background, therefore one of my axioms used to be "what you know is more important than who you know." I ran for election last year and I found that our society values the exact opposite: fads, fashions and popularity are far more important to the general public.
While I recognize that networking is important in a business environment, I also noticed that much of it is not very distinguishable from the popularity contests of high school cliques. It is as if the world pg describes in "Why Nerds are Unpopular" continues in a far less dramatic fashion after high school: that we can escape much of the harshness, yet not all of it.
Re: Ask HN: Luck or Hard Work?
#10"The harder I work, the luckier I get" - Samuel Goldwyn