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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 t
by mmkos 2y ago
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.
- gamebak 2y agoI share your thoughts. Sometimes you just need to be at the right place, at the right time, solving the exact problem and this is troublesome, especially in this era when so much is already invented. Maybe I just have a wrong view, but I don't know how to decouple from this.
- withinboredom 2y agoThe 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.
- jvanderbot 2y agoAnd 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 increase your "bias towards success" will have an effect over long time scales. Also, start early - stretch the time scale.
- withinboredom 2y agoThe way my dad explained it to me: "a heads or tail might matter, in the grand scheme of things, but at the end of the day, you gotta be there to flip the coin in the first place." Granted, he said that in regards to me being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the quote applies aptly here.
- ghaff 2y agoAbsolutely. I've been pretty lucky in my career, especially at a couple of critical junctions. But I had also put the foundations in place to be lucky at those junctions.
- akudha 2y agoNot just capitalism, luck applies to even ordinary things like getting jobs etc. This is not to say we shouldn't try or put effort into whatever we are doing, but luck does play a big part. In one place where I worked, this 18 year old kid got an internship. She wasn't terrible, but she wasn't great either. She masterfully did minimum work for maximum benefit. I learned she was the kid of a VP who worked there - I am sure there were plenty of kids who were more qualified/motivated than her, but they don't have a VP parent. There is a reason young people today feel hard work doesn't reward as much as it used to. Everything is stacked against them - from student loans to crappy jobs. SO MUCH depends on luck
- no_wizard 2y agoThere are many types of success. Tech has often been associated with novel success. That is success by inventing or perfecting a previously underrated, underestimated or wholly invented technology. This isn’t the only type though. There is success through persistence. In the long run, 95% of businesses fail. Simply running a component operation that outlasts competitors in a proven market can take you very far. It’s harder than it looks. Likewise this gets little traction on most media Then there is success by accident. The one that gets most traction in media is businesses that have some flash in the pan unexpected success. These seem to be a traditional combination of luck and persistence. Along these same lines are businesses that come to fruition during a time in which they can succeed, like TikTok and the pandemic.
- buzzardbait 2y agoSuccess comes from hard work and perseverence. Success comes from being at the right place at the right time. Both of these statements can be true at the same time.
- ErigmolCt 2y agoI would say that hard work and perseverance create the foundation, but timing and opportunity often determine the outcome.
- buzzardbait 2y agoYes. Although I suspect many would disagree since there's an entire subreddit dedicated to them! r/antiwork
- ErigmolCt 2y agoHard work alone isn’t always enough
- eevilspock 2y agoCombined with the willingness to exploit those two things to hoard as much as you can, without qualms about taking advantage of cheap goods and cheap labor even from those who work as hard as you but get less because of economic/power/freedom asymmetries, without concern for the Mathews Effect (that wealth breeds wealth, that poverty breeds poverty)...
- ttoinou 2y agoDamn you’re right I’m tired of naïve explanations we can find in books. Wouldnt the authors be in legal trouble though ?
- diggan 2y agoBack in the day, when authors were afraid of negative (public perception) pushback, they used to write and publish under pseudonyms. Not sure it'd work today, everyone and their mother seems so focus on building their "personal brand" and attaching their name to everything that it seems impossible for an author to not take credit for something that would surely make big waves.
- ttoinou 2y agoUnraveling a person behind a pseudonym and Doxing is much easier nowadays though. But I guess a self hosted blog would work just fine
- diggan 2y ago> Unraveling a person behind a pseudonym and Doxing is much easier nowadays though For state level actors, sure. But generally? I don't think that's necessarily true, as long as you come up with a pseudonym that is unique, not related to anything in your real life, and you haven't already published a lot of prose under your real name.
- ghaff 2y agoIt depends how much people care even outside of state level actors, how much of a celebrity you are IRL, and how much care you've put into covering your tracks including just not telling people. These days you can probably do some writing pattern matching if you suspect the true name of an author but you can probably stay pretty pseudonymous unless people really want to determine a true identity. I don't have a lot of doubt I could probably publish a pseudonymous blog if I took some reasonable precautions and didn't write stuff that especially provided a fingerprint pointing to my IRL identity.
- narrator 2y agoOne of the fun things about reading Young Stalin, which is a biography of Stalin from birth to the Russian revolution, is nobody liked him in Georgia where he grew up, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union, so it was easy for the biographer to get sources to tell all the negative and horrifying details of his earlier life building and running organized crime gangs to fund the Russian revolution. Imagine the most paranoid narcissistic jerks you've ever known who also happen to be exceptionally intelligent decide to take over a country and they manage to pull it off. Fascinating stuff.
- jvanderbot 2y agoUnorthodox suggestion - look at the documentaries and lit on mob tactics. The mob is basically a corporation, held together by a charismatic CEO. In its later years, violence was (I think?) less common, so politics and deal-making became the norm. However, given the subject matter, they likely wouldn't whitewash the reality of it.
- akudha 2y agoWhen 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 they really are good or I haven't yet about their practices. There is this podcast called Behind the bastards - in one way, it is eye opening. But it is also depressing, it does a pretty good job of shattering all our beliefs and respect for the rich and the successful. Is it even possible today to become super successful without doing shady/unethical/illegal stuff? Everything from garden variety wage theft all the way upto buying politicians and corporate espionage?
- theposey 2y agosounds cynical but I'm shifted to believing not. If you don't do it there will always be someone else who will. Not to say you should, that's a personal choice of course, but in a competitive environment there will always be someone or lots of someones who will do anything.
- dbspin 2y agoThis is why its vital to make unethical corporate malfeasance costly. Meaningful fines and criminal convictions for individual executives responsible for law breaking, wage theft, and intentional violations of regulation, provide meaningful deterrent. In their absence tax evasion and white collar crime become normative, which changes the game for anyone working in executive level roles.
- ghaff 2y agoFor any successful company, you can probably find ex-employees who think that some "fat trimming" was excessive and unnecessarily cruel or that they pushed some line or another in excessive ways. The Jack Welch case (and I'd add Mark Hurd at HP) was an example of financial engineering looking great for a time--until it wasn't.
- ants_everywhere 2y agoAn interesting question is how authors of these books look for stories to turn into book. Stories traditionally have a standard arc where the hero faces a challenge but wins in the end having learned something. I'd be curious to talk to authors about how much the desire to fit this template influences the selection of what they write about.
- verisimi 2y agoThat's because the literature has a value in its own right. Like history, the message that is presented, is for the present. Reality/truth be damned. The present day operational advantage is all. This is very cynical - but also freeing - when accepted. Do you think the yatch, billions, beautiful wife is worth your integrity? You decide.
- zie 2y agoIt's more of a, it generally wasn't illegal at the time they did those things, and of course now they want it to be illegal. It's much like pulling the rope up behind them so nobody else can climb the same ladder they did. There is a reason you have to have licenses to braid hair, cut nails, etc(and charge for it) in many US states for instance. It's not a simple license like a food worker has to do. It's much more involved. I mean if someone is going to mess with my hair, do a manicure or pedicure they should know the basic hygiene things much like a food worker has to do. I'm good with that. Why do they need more than that? It's not because we as a society actually care that much about a person that can't braid hair trying to charge for it. It's because all those beauticians want to limit their competition. OK rant over for the day.