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The world is absolutely packed with incredibly hard working people who make excellent decisions and die like a dog of a preventable disease in a slum somewhere.

The world is absolutely packed with incredibly hard working people who make excellent decisions and die like a dog of a preventable disease in a slum somewhere. Yes, luck. Hard work is table stakes. It is necessary but wholely insufficient. We shouldn't make the mistake of over-attributing our successes to hard work and ignore the massive social and economic advantages that let us capitalize on the work we do. Everyone else works hard too, they just don't get to reap the benefits of that labor.

rpdillon 8d ago
I agree with your core point that luck is necessary, but thinking that everybody works hard is simply fiction.
- idiotsecant 7d ago
  I hear a lot about these mythical slobs and slackers that we're all so much better than. I very rarely meet them. I mostly run into people doing their best with the resources they've got available to them.
  - rpdillon 7d ago
    The failure mode is not people that are supposed to work eight hours a day and then only work seven or six. And I don't really think of them as slobs or slackers. What they do is they come into the job and they turn the crank. They don't really think deeply about the impact they're trying to have. They do sort of what they're told, even if it leads to a dead end. And then maybe at some point they'll report that they hit a wall and you can loop back with them and adjust the plan. Iteration loops with these sorts of folks tend to be quite long. Decisions take more time than they should, and simple tasks turn into complex negotiations. I manage engineering teams by day, so I've seen my fair share of folks that have these traits. They're not bad people, but they don't care about the quality of their work, and they're not thinking very hard about what they're producing.
sgarland 8d ago
I agree. I grew up poor, was accepted to every college I applied to, but couldn’t afford any of them so I joined the Navy instead. 10 years later, after a brief stint as an Electrical Distribution Engineer, Samsung hired me because one of their Directors at their Austin plant was specifically seeking out Navy Nuclear-trained Electronics Technician senior leaders — pure luck. While I was there, working nights on a 4/3 - 3/4 schedule, I got into UT Austin’s SWE MS program. That was hard work, and those 2 years are largely a blur. My wife also pulled more than her fair share of work taking care of our extremely young kids, lest I claim I was the I only one working hard. After that, I convinced a hiring manager that I could do SRE work despite having zero industry experience, because I explained how I had done most of their job description at home. That was a mix of hard work and luck, I guess? Then it’s like any other industry: if you have experience, you can get interviews. Meanwhile, I have family on both sides who have worked much harder than I have, and have far less to show for it. Tech pays absurdly well in many sectors, and I think people often forget that on here.

rpdillon 8d ago

I agree with your core point that luck is necessary, but thinking that everybody works hard is simply fiction.

idiotsecant 7d ago
I hear a lot about these mythical slobs and slackers that we're all so much better than. I very rarely meet them. I mostly run into people doing their best with the resources they've got available to them.
- rpdillon 7d ago
  The failure mode is not people that are supposed to work eight hours a day and then only work seven or six. And I don't really think of them as slobs or slackers. What they do is they come into the job and they turn the crank. They don't really think deeply about the impact they're trying to have. They do sort of what they're told, even if it leads to a dead end. And then maybe at some point they'll report that they hit a wall and you can loop back with them and adjust the plan. Iteration loops with these sorts of folks tend to be quite long. Decisions take more time than they should, and simple tasks turn into complex negotiations. I manage engineering teams by day, so I've seen my fair share of folks that have these traits. They're not bad people, but they don't care about the quality of their work, and they're not thinking very hard about what they're producing.

sgarland 8d ago

I agree. I grew up poor, was accepted to every college I applied to, but couldn’t afford any of them so I joined the Navy instead. 10 years later, after a brief stint as an Electrical Distribution Engineer, Samsung hired me because one of their Directors at their Austin plant was specifically seeking out Navy Nuclear-trained Electronics Technician senior leaders — pure luck. While I was there, working nights on a 4/3 - 3/4 schedule, I got into UT Austin’s SWE MS program. That was hard work, and those 2 years are largely a blur. My wife also pulled more than her fair share of work taking care of our extremely young kids, lest I claim I was the I only one working hard. After that, I convinced a hiring manager that I could do SRE work despite having zero industry experience, because I explained how I had done most of their job description at home. That was a mix of hard work and luck, I guess? Then it’s like any other industry: if you have experience, you can get interviews. Meanwhile, I have family on both sides who have worked much harder than I have, and have far less to show for it. Tech pays absurdly well in many sectors, and I think people often forget that on here.