

Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get - aymanfarhat

Do you agree? How does this apply to your life?
======
patio11
The best explanation I've ever heard of it is the concept of "luck surface
area", which I was first introduced to on the TechZing podcast. It's the
product of "work you do" and "people you touch with it."

There are hotel maids that work harder than any of us ever will. Nobody knows
their name. This does not result in them getting appreciable amounts of
career-enhancing luck.

There are people who achieve a brief bit of Internet stardom, on the basis of
a shallow connection, such as e.g. being the person a photo a meme was based
on. You will probably not retire on being a meme.

However, if you've written OSS that is key to 100 companies or if you have a
blog read that 5k developers would cite as one of their top five or if you got
two dozen people their jobs or yadda yadda, you'll be freaking amazed how many
lucky opportunities come your way.

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chrisbennet
The phrase "The harder I work, the luckier I get." is often spoken by those
who believe in the "Just World" theory. It allows them to believe that their
success is due to their own "goodness" and conversely, that others who aren't
as successful must not be as "good".

In reality, luck plays a huge part. When you see the hard working landscapers
around your building some morning, you should be thinking "That could be me if
I hadn't won the ovarian lottery."

~~~
tsax
That's tautological. He's lucky because he's lucky. But if you meant that
genetic inheritance plays a large role in success, then obviously I agree.

~~~
chrisbennet
Winning the "ovarian lottery" means you were born with advantages that you
didn't earn. Someone born in the US, has a huge advantage over someone born in
a 3rd world country. Luck probably plays a bigger role than hard work (in
success) due to these non-earned advantages. Many successful people would
rather believe that their hard work was the reason for the success than admit
their good fortune.

For example: I don't doubt the the Winklevoss twins are hard workers [you
don't get into the Olympics without hard work] but I think it would be
reaching to ascribe their current station in life to _just_ hard work.

~~~
tsax
Working hard is a necessary but not sufficient condition for success. Like
Patrick said, working very hard at digging ditches is not going to land you in
a C-suite, obviously, but very few people end up successful WITHOUT working
hard.

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dang
Probably an adage invented by a humorist named Coleman Cox in the 1920s:

[http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/07/21/luck-hard-
work/](http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/07/21/luck-hard-work/)

------
mindcrime
_Do you agree?_

Personally, I could not agree more. And five years ago, I think if you'd asked
that question on this site, and overwhelming majority of respondents would
have said that this is a no-brainer, where the answer is clearly "yes".

Now? The dominant clique here now will laugh at you for saying this, and
accuse you of believing in Horatio Alger stories, and will tell you that all
success is good luck, and that you can claim no credit for your work and any
resulting success. Work ethic, dedication, passion, sacrifice - these things
are verboten now. Now everything is luck, "white privilege", "male privilege",
"western privilege", or some other excuse to disparage the individual and
encourage a feeling of helplessness.

As for me? I say "you make your own luck".

An interesting thread on this topic from a few years back is here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6083826](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6083826)

My comment (well one of them) is here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6086079](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6086079)

And just for encouragement:

[http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=Horatio+Alger](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=Horatio+Alger)

