Ask HN: Luck or Hard Work?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=514177

by zdmc23 • 17 years ago

6 19 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Please explain why...

vaksel• 17 years ago

Both.

You need hardwork to exploit the luck you get.

zdmc235• 17 years ago

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...

cperciva• 17 years ago

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.

comatose_kid• 17 years ago

You need a combination of shrewdness and wisdom to exploit opportunities (or to see opportunities where others see none).

These opportunities often present themselves when you work hard.

Tangurena2• 17 years ago

A 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.

zdmc235• 17 years ago

Ok, then I have a follow-up: Do you think that what you do is more important than who you know?

Tangurena2• 17 years ago

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.

http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

HSO• 17 years ago

both necessary, none sufficient

pg• 17 years ago

Luck 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.

zdmc235• 17 years ago

I certainly agree that "tinkering around" can lead to amazing discoveries (e.g., penicillin, chemotheraphy) and/or great timing (e.g., pets.com)...

The reason why I posted the thread is because I've come across a lot of brilliant people who just so happen to be very "self-righteous." They assume that their intellect and sheer willpower will translate into entrepreneurial success...

icey• 17 years ago

"The harder I work, the luckier I get" - Samuel Goldwyn

mixmax• 17 years ago

http://www.maximise.dk/blog/2009/02/getting-lucky-is-hard-wo...

Disclaimer: Shameless self plug...

GrandMasterBirt• 17 years ago

Without hard work any lucky oportunity can fade away

Without luck you just work hard nonestop with little payoff

cmos• 17 years ago

every time my company has almost gone out of business, something has happenend to keep it around. Sometimes it's a spike in sales, other times a last minute investment.

I consider myself the hardest working luckiest guy in the world.

pasbesoin• 17 years ago

At the level of anecdote, the misfortune that many lottery winners eventually encounter (lose it all, and/or enter social isolation) makes me think that luck is not sufficient. Without work and preparation, you will not be able to capitalize on luck when it does occur.

Now, if someone wants to prove the contrary, feel free to give me a bunch of money I wasn't expecting.

zdmc235• 17 years ago

"Now, if someone wants to prove the contrary, feel free to give me a bunch of money I wasn't expecting."

Sorry, you're just not that lucky!

sho2• 17 years ago

The question is bad, the binary options are false.

Imagine I build and launch twitter2.com. I put a lot of hard work into it. It fails, of course. Was I unlucky?

Obviously there is (at least) a 3rd dynamic at work. It's hard to nail it down, but let's called it insight.

When I first saw twitter, soon after it was launched, I thought it was stupid. Actually, I still think that. But obviously they were onto something. Obviously the market for that kind of service is much larger than I would have imagined.

They worked hard, no doubt. They had luck, I suppose, that the idea first occurred to them, that they had the skills necessary to pursue it, that they were born into a rich society with the leeway available to pursue speculative opportunities, etc. You can go as far as you like with that kind of digging.

But without insight, that people would want such a thing, they'd have nothing. "Luck OR hard work" is meaningless. It removes any kind of decision-making from the equation. That decision, of what to work hard on, in which arena luck might have the opportunity to shine on you, is critical. Anyone can work hard. Anyone can experience a little bit of random luck. Insight is what ties it together, turns good into great, turns mere effort into rousing success.

zdmc235• 17 years ago

Bah! There are plenty of people who think they have insight into a particular market when they release their product. Some of those people show "insight" in hindsight, but what about the others? Were they less insightful?

If twitter2.com takes off: you look like a genius; but if it flops, you just lacked insight?

sho2• 17 years ago

"Some of those people show "insight" in hindsight, but what about the others? Were they less insightful?"

Well obviously?

"If twitter2.com takes off: you look like a genius; but if it flops, you just lacked insight?"

Sure, more than you lacked "hard work" or "luck".

I was presenting "twitter2.com" as an extreme example. Of course, it will never succeed. We can recognise that because it takes just a minimal amount of insight to predict it. What I'm trying to demonstrate, through this contrived example, is that luck won't save you if you worked hard on something dumb.

Insight! Decisions! What to do, what to make! These are key; why bother arguing?

The question presumes that there are just two factors to success: hard work and luck. I'm trying to say that there is at least one more critically important factor, which I loosely labelled "insight", with a disclaimer no less! I don't see why this is controversial, it seems self-evident.

Ask HN: Luck or Hard Work?

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