
How to be successful (at your career, Twitter edition) - cryptozeus
https://twitter.com/sama/status/1214274038933020672
======
thomaspaine
>Getting caught up in the parts of a job that don’t matter is a dangerous trap
and for some reason one that a lot of people fall into. Let other people play
political games and avoid them as much as you can.

My experience at big companies is the inverse. The people who advance are the
ones who spend 80% of their time focused on politics, while the heads down
engineer will get a thank you and inflationary raise.

~~~
solidasparagus
I don’t think moving up the corporate ladder is what Altman considers to be
‘success’

~~~
cthalupa
No, but you need political capital even if your goal is making cool shit and
not moving up the corporate ladder.

Human interaction is political - unless your work is entirely self sustaining,
you have to be able to navigate the politics of human interaction. These get
worse when money is involved, and all of the other competing interests at a
company. I'm not saying focus on politics to the exclusion of directly
productive work, but this idea that you can ignore politics and still
accomplish things larger than one man projects seems incredibly naive. I don't
buy for a minute that Altman hasn't engaged in plenty of politics over his
career.

~~~
Ididntdothis
“I don't buy for a minute that Altman hasn't engaged in plenty of politics
over his career.”

He is probably a natural at it so he doesn’t even notice that he is doing it.
Reminds me a little of Steve Jobs. He was able to cut through bullshit but he
was also naturally a world class bullshitter himself.

------
0kl
“How to be successful” always struck me as the wrong phrasing. It suggests a
guarantee, the way “how to make a pie,” suggests if you follow these steps
perfectly, then you will have the pie they were trying to tell you how to
make.

Maybe a better title for everyone that is responding negatively to this might
be: “How to slightly increase your chances of success”

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
The saying "Luck favors the well prepared" exists for a reason. Keep an eye
out for opportunities and seize them when you can, and you'll find that your
chances of success increase quite a bit.

------
zpeti
Wow, not one positive comment so far. I guess the American dream really is
dead. Feels like Eastern Europe.

A man goes to hell and upon arrival sees two giant boiling cauldrons - one
with a large detail of devils, and one completely unattended. The man inquires
about the cauldrons and a helpful devil explains: "One is a Russian cauldron,
another one is American one. The American one needs serious attention, because
when Americans try to escape, they all start helping each other,and it really
is a bitch trying to beat them back in. TheRussian one, we just leave it
alone, when a Russian tries to escape - the other Russians pull him back in.

~~~
larodi
You may well be assured Eastern Europe seems quite different at present moment
from what you described now with lots of IT money pouring in nearly every
single EE country, many countries tax less than 30% on salaries, and less than
or around 20% in corporate tax. So maybe pick another place to relate with.

~~~
zpeti
I was going to include this in the post but then forgot :) I live there, so I
know, you are right.

------
gorpomon
> If there is a single key to success, it is the trait of being able to make
> things happen in the world—willfulness, determination, execution focus, not
> giving up when you hit a roadblock, the ability to solve any problem that
> comes your way, and self-belief.

This is a great distillation of what's needed to make it in America. It's
missing one vital ingredient-- the ability to take on risk, both by having the
actual means (money, time) and the mental fortitude.

------
codesternews
I think successful people think everybody can be successful like they know
some secret.

Not successful people have many problems like hunger, self-doubt, laziness,
distraction.

I think first step is very difficult. Most people like me do not know what to
do. What will bring success?

Is there really a secret?

~~~
tluyben2
Depends in the definition of success. Most people I know consider themselves
successful when they have a nice (upward) career, nice healthy and happy
family, close friends, 36 hr workweeks, vacation(s), car & house and early
retirement. For instance, for programmers in, let’s say the Netherlands
starting out now (today) fresh from uni, there is no worries achieving that
kind of success without working like a beaten horse, ignoring your friends and
family, running around an office trying to make everyone happy etc. You won’t
get rich but you’ll retire comfortably and will be the envy of most (which
should be incredibly unimportant to anyone, but I guess people who think ‘am I
successful?’ often need some kind of measurement tool).

Advantage of this view of success depends far less on luck besides where you
are born (or able to immigrate to).

------
samwestdev
unrolled version ->
[https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1214274038933020672.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1214274038933020672.html)

~~~
dot1x
thanks for this for us behind corporate firewalls

------
leothekim
‘Compounding success (which means “growth” in the case of an early-stage
start-up) solves almost all internal problems, particularly hard ones.’

I’d say that growth can compel you to ignore internal (and external) problems
more than solve them. You don’t develop the right culture that can stand up to
adversity or attract the right talent, your growth (and success) isn’t
sustainable.

------
mgamache
This post is related to the delusional discount that we all apply to luck.
Luck is the by far the single most important factor in success, but observing
that reality is counter productive. It keeps us working like mad and blaming
ourselves if we aren't successful, but without out that delusion no one would
play the game and we would have zero successful people. Humanity would suffer.

~~~
z5h
Imagine two people in a similar situation, except the first has been saving
money and working on a side project, while the second spends their money and
has no side project. They both lose their job with some severance pay. The
first sees it as an a lucky opportunity to work full-time on their side
project. The second sees it as bad luck. Luck is important, but we can make
some of our own.

~~~
save_ferris
That’s not luck, though. That’s simply being prepared for a downturn.

Being prepared is important, for sure, but if being prepared always or even
usually meant desired outcomes in business, our world would look much
different than it does now.

~~~
username90
Being able to quit with severance pay is lucky if you wanted to quit.

------
sequoia
Most of this advice is not actionable. It falls into the category of such
advice as "take breaks and have fun, but not too much" when the initial
question was how much is too much. That is to say, you don't know more after
hearing the answer than you did before.

~~~
ydnaclementine
I disagree, he says do things that are important but not popular. This could
mean asking to be put on an older legacy project that provides a ton of value
that people are scared to touch.

------
jeffshek
Blog Post (Last Year) : [https://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-be-
successful](https://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-be-successful)

------
anotheryou
I think another big aspect is having or creating opportunities.

"Chance" encounters at e.g. a conference or a great company are far from just
chance. I fear here once again the playing field is quite unequal.

------
lengxzai
step 1: lie, cheat, sabotage your peers...

step 2: write bullshit blogpost/ book/ tweets glossing over your dishonesty

step 3: get followers

step 4: $$$

~~~
a_bonobo
I found your steps particularly dishonest in the recent accolades for Shopify:
[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/26/shopify-ceo-you-dont-have-
to...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/26/shopify-ceo-you-dont-have-to-
work-80-hours-a-week-to-be-
successful.html?utm_content=buffer1b817&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer)

The reason Shopify is so successful is that they have 0 morals as to who they
host. They run a whole slew of shops for white power/neonazi pages and don't
care at all. They run shops for Rebel Media, a Canadian neonazi page, and
Breitbart. If you get rich by enabling Nazis you can talk about easy working
hours all you like, it's all BS.

------
harimau777
I wonder how happy those people generally are? Maybe that would be a better
definition of "successful".

~~~
0kl
Some of them are very happy. Some of them are very unhappy. Success =/=
happiness - I don’t see Sam saying it does.

~~~
ramblerman
> success =/= happiness

If you say so. Bit of a weird definition of success though, no?

~~~
0kl
> the accomplishment of an aim or purpose

Not trying to be cheeky, but that you understand immediately that I’m not
talking about happiness here tells you that success =/= happiness. We can
argue over what we should consider successful, but in the context of what Sam
Altman is saying it’s unproductive: we all know Sam is talking about
professional success, and most of us also know there is more to life than
professional success, but we (collectively) have been so burned out (either by
not achieving it, or by missing out in our lives achieving it) chasing after
professional success that have a knee jerk reaction to anyone talking about
it.

I also think it’s presumptuous of us to think Sam and whoever else did pursue
success ambitiously are not happy - everyone’s definition of happiness is
their own.

------
Ididntdothis
“However, they are willing to work on something for a long time even if other
people don’t get it. "Important" does not mean "popular".”

I don’t like this one. On the one hand you have some people who are successful
with a lot of persistence but then you have probably many more who fail after
being persistent. If you win you are being celebrated but if you fail you get
accused of wasting your time. I think there is a lot of luck and timing
involved when people succeed after working on something for a long time.

------
proc0
Part of success is choosing the right tools for the job. Twitter is not a
blogging platform, and posting 15 times in a row just looks silly, imho. Link
a blog FFS.

------
cryptozeus
Wow after reading the comments I feel I should not have posted this here. This
is crazy! Do some people really think he was just lucky or he just had money
to try all these things. These people take real risk and are smart enough to
see the world as it is. There are few things to be learned here. How does
these negative comments help in any single way ?

------
scandox
Subtitle: At Your Career

Stow the angst everybody.

~~~
Proziam
I sometimes wonder at the underlying cause for so many people to, seemingly
intentionally, take an uncharitable view of something. It seems to just be
part of the human condition, though HN is less rife with this than other
places.

------
jiofih
1\. Go to an elite college 2. Found a social network startup in SV around the
turn of the century 3. Get VC 4. Sell the espoil for millions. Enjoy

------
haecceity
Or just be lucky.

~~~
0kl
I like to think of all the things he said as stacking luck as much as you can.
It will always come down to luck, but you have to be prepared to grab luck
when it comes.

------
ameister14
I think Sam Altman is a smart guy and he's definitely an example of someone
who has met with success but I don't know that he's actually had a 'career'
yet. That being the case, I'm going to take anything he says about how to have
a successful career with a large grain of salt.

------
blackrock
Easy.

Step 1: Have a lot of money. Especially family money.

Step 2: Start a business with family money.

Step 3: Fail.

Step 4: Goto Step 1. Repeat 5 times.

...

Step 5: Maybe.. success?

Step 6: Write a book on how to be successful. Sell for $50.

~~~
zabana
you've just described the gary vee formula

~~~
jacobush
And Trump? Although being president is another level.

