
Career advice for people with bad luck - Reedx
https://chiefofstuff.substack.com/p/career-advice-for-people-with-bad
======
mdorazio
I really want to see more articles like this on HN. However, this is really
"career advice for people at struggling companies." The luck part doesn't get
discussed in the way I expected. To me, bad luck is things like:

\- You're in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ex. you graduated in
2008-2010/now or your business sector got wiped out by COVID

\- Despite your best efforts at networking, you simply never meet that magical
person who can strap a booster rocket to your career/company

\- You don't have a resilient financial and mental safety net in the form of
good friends/family early in your career that enables you to take risks, or
you got dealt a bad hand in the form of things like dependents or health
issues and simply can't afford to take risks

\- Despite all your work, you get blindsided by things completely out of your
control. Ex. a big company straight up rips off your product/service/side gig
or an executive at your company guts your project/department

\- You don't have the magic paper credentials to get you through the doors at
places you want to go because you didn't know you needed them earlier in life
when they were practical to get

These are the kinds of things I want to see tackled with real-world career
advice since I think they apply to a lot of people. For every lucky executive
or entrepreneur there are many who were unlucky.

~~~
LarryDarrell
I suspect it's because there isn't much advice to give.

My answer, having checked a few of your boxes... Your lifetime wages are going
to be lower than many of your peers. This is unlikely to change. Adjust your
worldview accordingly. Don't assume any debt that relies on increasing future
earnings to be comfortable.

By all means, keep trying, but stay level headed. Success for most is not
always right around the corner. Prior to SV eating the world, the only people
that said that we all should be entrepreneurs really just wanted you in their
Amway downline.

Society doesn't like to show the magnitude failures out there, or worse, the
getting-by'ers. There are a lot of self-conscious IT people in the midwest
making $70k/year feeling like failures, when they are the winners of Kokomo,
IN.

Read some philosophy. Buy a reliable used car. Look inward for contentment.
Try therapy if your shitty childhood and shitty parents made inward a hard
place to look.

~~~
chosenbreed37
> Read some philosophy. Buy a reliable used car. Look inward for contentment.
> Try therapy if your shitty childhood and shitty parents made inward a hard
> place to look.

I'd recommend the following:

1\. Meditations - Marcus Aurelius

2\. 12 Rules for Life - Jordan B Peterson

3\. Letters from a self made merchant - John Graham

~~~
wwweston
> 2\. 12 Rules for Life - Jordan B Peterson

A note on this, since mentioning Peterson tends to spark controversy: I think
I think the people who get the best out of Peterson _don 't_ treat him as a
guru issuing rules written in stone tablets (in spite of the implication of
the book title) but as a provoker of attention/reflection. This is probably
generally true of anyone, but especially worth considering here.

I also tend to recommend his university course lectures over his public-
directed material; I'm not sure why it seems more moderated, but I'd guess
that professional accountability and contextual habits developed before fame
have something to do with it.

~~~
akurzon
> I also tend to recommend his university course lectures over his public-
> directed material; I'm not sure why it seems more moderated, but I'd guess
> that professional accountability and contextual habits developed before fame
> have something to do with it.

I've noticed the same thing. I think he's gotten into bad habits commenting on
subjects outside of his area of expertise, but I did enjoy his YouTube
lectures for the reasons you mentioned

~~~
gonzo41
Cut him some slack. When he's on JRE his conversations should be thought of as
some guy talking about how he feels about events. Just like you or I.

He's smart and thinks. That guy also just happens to be an expert in an area
of knowledge.

------
ashtonkem
> The company is not your family. Some of the people in the company are your
> friends in the current context. It’s like your dorm in college. Hopefully
> some of them will still be your friends after. But don’t stay because you’re
> comfortable.

This one hit hard. It’s amazing how many of the close work friends I had over
the years were only close because of the shitty circumstances we endured
together. Once that was gone, we actually had very few things in common.

Not that I don’t have any former colleagues I’m close with, but the ratio of
kept/lost has to be in the 1/10 range or lower.

~~~
moneywoes
Been working 3 months at my first job and this realization hit me. I enjoy
spending time with my coworkers but is it all in vain?

~~~
collyw
Nah. Two jobs ago had wonderful people and we still regularly meet up for
drinks (despite the company being a load for shite to work for).

Next job was a lot more family people and we rarely went for drinks together.
I am not really in touch with them any more (perfectly nice people but the
bonding never happened).

~~~
neltnerb
Of course, the family people probably were friends with each other.

~~~
collyw
Everyone at family company was friendly at lunch, it's just the we didn't
socialize after work at all (well a couple of times). The younger company
regularly went drinking together.

~~~
neltnerb
Are you sure the ones with kids weren't doing playdates and things? I feel
like there's often a gulf between people with and without kids.

Of course they didn't go drinking, they had to get home to take care of kids.
Or, like me, they don't drink. They might still invite over other families to
go hiking or camping or maybe even know other parents from school.

Not saying that was necessarily happening, but now that many more of my
friends have kids (I don't) I see them do this all the time. They can't really
hang out without a way to distract their kids. Board game nights are much more
likely to connect than drinking.

~~~
collyw
Not that I was aware of. The age groups of the children were different and a
lot of them lived outside of the city.

------
throw4failure
This seems like a good thread in which to try to solicit some advice, since
it's at least tangentially related.

I was terminated from my last job. In my opinion it was due to my chronic and
major depression that I have since been seeking extensive treatment
(medication, several months rent in therapy) for. I say "in my opinion"
because I really can't rule out that I'm just a lazy, crappy developer who is
trying to use mental health as an excuse.

Either way, I've been unemployed for over half a year and am now trying to re-
enter the job market. Obviously the gap is a bit of a red flag that I've been
candid about to potential employers, in the sense that I speak about a medical
issue, not the specifics.

If I could go back in time, I would have quit from my last job before being
fired, but honestly I was beyond caring about anything, period, so the
consequences of taking the career L barely phased me. There was no upside to
being fired, I just didn't care.

Now, I wish I had cared, because it's an elephant in the room I don't really
know how to address. Do I tackle it proactively by outright telling everyone I
was canned? Do I wait until they call up my former employer to verify my work
history?

If anyone else has been in a remotely similar situation I would greatly
appreciate any tips or feedback. Please just refrain from telling me I messed
up - I definitely know I did.

~~~
caymanjim
Never admit that you were fired. Your prior employer isn't going to tell
anyone, if they know what's good for them. Small, inexperienced companies with
no lawyers might, but no real business is going to risk a lawsuit by saying
anything bad about you whatsoever. They'll confirm that you worked there and
that's about it.

Six months is not a big deal. You've been told all your life that gaps in your
resume are a problem, and some people here will tell you that they ask about
it, but they're all just following a rote pattern. You don't want to work
anywhere that actually cares about this. Most people couldn't care less. You
can always leave the months off your resume if you're really worried about it.

Do not under any circumstances tell people that you were unemployed or lost
your job due to depression or mental health. I'm not going to sugar coat this
for you. Never admit this during an interview. It's a bad idea to mention
anything health related. It's also none of their business, unless you require
an accommodation that needs to be addressed before you're hired.

Companies rarely check references. They might check your employment history,
and they might ask for references to check your professional qualifications,
but hardly anyone speaks to references. Don't put any on your resume. If
someplace cares, they'll ask. Hopefully you have some ex-coworker willing to
say a few nice things about you. If not, you might want to say you haven't
stayed in touch with anyone from that particular job. If you can't summon any
professional references at all, that may slow down your job search, but
really, people don't usually check. Don't lie; just don't stress about it that
much.

Lying is never a good idea, but you shouldn't be offering up negative
information about yourself. Forget about what's fair, legal, politically or
morally correct: there's a stigma around mental health issues and you don't
want to bring them up with a potential employer.

You'll be fine going forward, although now isn't a great time to be looking
for a job, so it might take longer.

~~~
mywittyname
> but hardly anyone speaks to references.

I'd be surprised if this were universal. I've been the reference for several
people and had references checked for every job that I've had.

I can totally understand why a company wouldn't check references (bias,
mainly), but HR is full of a lot of cargo cult superstitions.

~~~
caymanjim
I'm probably biased here due to the length of my career; at this point, my
resume is extensive and speaks for itself. References may be more important if
you've got less experience.

~~~
Sodman
I think that's kind of the point of references though, right? Your resume
speaks for itself, but _you_ wrote your resume. It's a good sanity check for a
potential employer to quickly verify that it's actually accurate.

People exaggerate on their resumes all the time. Maybe the 2 interns they
supervised materializes as them managing a team of 4. Maybe the project on
which their boss did the brunt of the work on becomes a project they
architected and lead. It's easy enough to make all of this sound true in an
interview, so it's totally logical for an interviewer to want to fact check
and keep the interviewees honest.

~~~
exolymph
> I think that's kind of the point of references though, right? Your resume
> speaks for itself, but you wrote your resume. It's a good sanity check for a
> potential employer to quickly verify that it's actually accurate.

This is 100% true. However, people are lazy and skimp on due diligence. Just
because something is a good practice doesn't mean it's always done :P

------
pjc50
Retention offers: yeah. I've been given retention offers twice, and the second
time round I explicitly said "I don't want money, I want you to change the way
this team and product is managed, like the previous times we discussed this,
but that's not going to happen, is it?"

I ended up getting much more money, less responsibility, a nicer less open
plan office, and a less dysfunctional process.

Risk: yes, sometimes you just have to go full Light Brigade and charge the
guns. Generally the worst possible consequence is you lose your job and
everyone forgets it, but be aware that sometimes the consequences are worse
and your chances of landing on your feet depend on your privilege level. You
have no right to judge people who don't do this.

~~~
collyw
> a nicer less open plan office,

Impressive.

~~~
pjc50
To be clear, this wasn't the retention offer, this was the new job! And it's
still technically open, but nicely spaced with sound-absorbing partitions. The
dysfunctional place had a pingpong table within earshot.

~~~
chrisabrams
This was not clear :O Would be good to clarify in your original post.

~~~
pjc50
Edit window now closed, but yes. My point was that a counteroffer can only
ever change a very small set of things, so they're very rarely worth bothering
with.

------
rb808
A lot of talk here that colleagues aren't friends.

What is wrong with you people? If you like your colleagues you can invite them
to do stuff after you or they leave. They probably haven't invited you because
they never got around to it either.

Most of the older generation people met through work is the only way to make
friends.

No wonder loneliness is so rampant now.

~~~
alufers
Yeah, I really feel sad when I see those articles and comments telling you not
to share anything that you don't want your boss to know with your colleagues,
or even better ignore them completely and automatically treat as deadly
competition. If you cannot trust anybody and have difficulties with assessing
if someone won't turn his back on you, it may be a problem with your social
skills, not with other people.

This kind of thinking encourages situations where the employer may have total
control over his employees, like with Amazon.

~~~
SolaceQuantum
There are definitely personal details that are dangerous for you to talk about
with your co workers. It is still legal to fire someone for being gay or trans
in a significant minority of states. There are two Supreme Court cases right
now purely because of workplace bigotry.

I also don’t know how safe it would be to disclose having a disability or
chronic condition in the workplace.

------
2sk21
Having worked for a dying tech startup at one point in the early 2000s - I
spent time agonizing over the fact that if I quit, the company would become
unviable - I was one of the key technical people and was the only person with
a good understanding of our entire product. After much dithering, I did
ultimately leave and the company did fold shortly thereafter. I did feel bad
at the time but in retrospect, I have come to realize that it was inevitable
and I should have left even sooner.

~~~
larrik
I feel like this situation calls for making you a partner. If you are SO
valuable the company can't even _survive_ without you, then you ARE the
company and should be treated as such.

~~~
specitley
I’m in this position now as the only developer in a successful company that
has been operating in lean startup mode for years and every employee has
become “irreplaceable” with no contingency plans. I brought partnership up
with the owner and he wouldn’t consider it. It’s going to be rough For them
when I leave and any “friendships” will definitely be erased.

------
mettamage
Finally, a post that isn't all hunky dory. I'm at the bottom quartile at the
moment, so I'm happy to take any reasonable advice that doesn't sound like:
study algorithms and get into Google.

Ok, I studied algorithms, got rejected at the paper round. Now what? The tough
part isn't passing the interview, it's getting a chance in the first place.

This advice is better. Some points that really stood out to me and that I'll
take to heart:

> But if you have an amazing manager at a shit company you’ll still have a
> shit time.

> “Take any role, at any pay, on a rocketship and everything will work out” is
> only sort of true.

With that said, a lot of the advice is quite US-centric. Not many Dutch
startups would offer stock options as far as I know, for example.

~~~
okt
my 2 cents: there is rarely a shortcut available and is hardly a 6 months
course work designed to get into google or the alike unless you have a friend
or family member who guides you through the whole process and points you to
the right direction, not least giving hope and motivation.

you have to develop a sustainable long term learning habit to hone your skills
without being getting burned out and without hoping a dramatic success in the
short term.

To get noticed or get an interview you have to identify people there and
somehow get them forward your CV and/or build some proof of your skills in
form of personal projects which many others like you dont have. Chances you
are, you will get atleast an interview somewhere at big tech, if not at
google.

~~~
mettamage
> some proof of your skills in form of personal projects which many others
> like you dont have.

I have quite a bit of personal projects, actually.

------
efficax
The point made in here about how your company is not your family cannot be
emphasized enough. Corporate culture, and especially tech startup culture,
likes to make you believe that we're all family and best friends and love each
other.

That attitude stays up right until the day they lay you off without warning.

It's great to work with great people that you enjoy being around, and we
should treat each other all with human dignity and respect, and with a bit of
fun. But your boss is not, and never will be, your friend.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
But I think there can also be too much negativity around "the company is not a
family". At this point, with 3 major crashes in the past 20 years, I feel like
only bad companies say the company is a family.

Good companies say, and act like, the company is a team. People can work hard
together, they can be friends, but they are clear that the reason for the team
is to accomplish a goal, and if the structure of the team needs to be changed
to accomplish that goal, people will be cut. This team mentality can provide
true clarity of purpose, and can eliminate any sense of bitterness if things
don't work out. When people are cut from a high caliber sports team they may
be immensely disappointed, but if treated fairly they understand it.

The family mentality almost _always_ results in bitterness, because what kind
of family kicks out their members when things get slightly tough?

~~~
pmiller2
Exactly. If a company says "we're a family," then, either they are (a family
business), or they're lying. I always say "you don't fire your brother," when
people say something like this.

------
hmart
I live in a 3rd world country, worked the last 20 years as systems
administrator. Recently lost my job and while looking for a new remote job I
have been touched by the hard reality: The world changed and I was full of
self leniency, years using the same bash scripts, the same tricks day to day.
Did lot of things maintenance, networking, security,databases, mail servers,
anti spam. I consider myself capable of put a SMB connected and working. My
job didn’t demanded me new skills an I was self indulgent, happy to have
enough money for the day. Some recent job interviews showed me a depressing
reality : I did the least, I know the minimum, never upgrade my knowledge,
just relied on Google search. I didn’t know about CI, CD, containerization,
DevOps in general. I have a B.S in Systems Engineering (Some sort of CS ,
without the ‘science’ part) enjoyed math and code in college, done tens of
websites in WordPress, Joomla and some Drupal, I’m capable of code in Php,
some bash, some ruby, some python. I’m in my mid forties a kid 4 years old and
cannot afford to stay worried, I have to do something to land a remote job, I
want to thrive and motivated enough to learn, but time is ticking would like
to hear some advice.

~~~
karimdxy
Since you like coding and apparently you happen to enjoy building websites why
not transition to web dev? The barrier to entry is relatively low. Give
freecodecamp ([https://freecodecamp.org](https://freecodecamp.org)) a shot and
let me know if you ever need help!

~~~
hmart
Thank you!

------
WhompingWindows
The concept of "bad luck" is reinforced by endless self-comparison with those
who had extremely good luck.

It's MUCH more valuable to compare yourself to those who are unlucky: the
mentally disabled, those who died from COVID at age 29, those born/raised in
North Korea. Compared to these people, we've all hit the fucking jackpot.

Adjust your mindset and you'll notice you're luckier than you thought you
were.

~~~
hpoe
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human
freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose
one’s own way.” ― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

~~~
JackRabbitSlim
“But it was alright, everything was alright, the struggle was finished. He had
won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.” -- George Orwell, 1984

~~~
breischl
Frankl was a holocaust concentration camp survivor. I don't think that's
exactly what he was getting at.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl)

------
znpy
Regarding retainment offers and somebody commenting on the fact that he asked
for changes instead of money for retainment:

I recently took note of this beautiful quote by Bryan Cantrill: if you can't
make the right thing happen then it's time to leave.

------
CSMastermind
> Your equity package is a lottery ticket with expected value of zero.

That's good advice no matter where you're going.

~~~
giantg2
Good stock market advice too. It doesn't matter what your account says your
balance is. It only matters what you get when you sell it.

~~~
travisjungroth
Considering the expected value of your publicly traded stocks at 0 is not good
advice. If you actually believe that, then it would make sense to trade all of
your holdings for a dollar.

~~~
giantg2
I think you ignored the last sentence of my previous comment :)

~~~
travisjungroth
I didn’t ignore it. It’s just in conflict with your first sentence. I’m not
sure if you’re talking about EV in technical terms, or a more lose “count on
it way”, but neither makes sense to discount to 0. Like if you’re 50 and have
a million dollars in stocks for retirement, you should put an expected value
of 0 on that? Seems silly to me.

~~~
giantg2
Fair point. My unstated perspective was from investing in a single stock
without stop-loss orders using an informal 'don't count on it' definition.
Yes, depending on the stock and many other factors - it probably shouldn't be
zero. Same should be said of the equity package in the parent comment
depending upon the circumstances and terms.

------
brobdingnagians
> It’s also okay to take risks. Staying at a company that’s slowly dying has
> its costs too. Stick around too long and you’ll lose your belief that you
> can build, that change is possible. Try not to learn the wrong habits.

I love this. I recently decided to move towards quitting at a job that is
slowly dying and find something else to do. My mood immediately lightened,
even though nothing except my mental direction has changed. I don't want to
let cynicism seep into me; I want to find something I'm excited about.

~~~
meddlepal
+1 on this. I bailed out of a startup I was an early engineer at and worked at
for close to four years awhile back and immediately my depression and
frustration cleared up.

------
undebuggable
_\- good luck!_

 _\- don 't need it, never had it!_

------
jorblumesea
> Your equity package is a lottery ticket with expected value of zero.

While this is true, it's vastly more true for startups and privately owned
companies vs publicly owned. Amazon's stock price might fluctuate but the
chances of it being worthless are slim.

~~~
foreigner
But equity packages are typically stock _options_ , not stock. So they're only
worth anything if the stock price goes way up.

~~~
jorblumesea
For publicly traded companies, many equity packages now include RSUs, or give
you the option to choose between options and RSUs. Which are worth something
so long as the stock has any value. Perhaps I am twisting the value of what
equity package means.

------
conformist
This seems to be good advice for anyone with not-top-quartile luck, not only
bad luck.

~~~
AmericanChopper
Perhaps it’s simply good advice, and the people you see as being “lucky“
already know it (if only intuitively).

------
OliverJones
Lots of great insight here into the weltanschauung of scrambling startups.
This one especially: "It’s the nature of boards that they ignore (externally)
problems until their hand is forced."

Translation: if the execs are doing a bad job, the board WILL NOT INTERVENE.
Nobody on the board wants to take over for an inept manager. If you're waiting
for them to do that ... don't wait any more.

------
giantg2
To the people questioning why it is about luck: I think it is because it is
written from the perspective that you are at a bad/dying company or have a bad
boss. A lot of this article seems to be about leaving that situation. If you
had good luck, then you might have been hired onto a good company in the first
place.

I do think the article should point out that sometimes bad luck just happens
and there's nothing that could have mitigated it. I work for a good company
(top 20 IT best places to work) and I have had good managers (some bad too)
and I have still been unlucky. I saw a coworker get promoted rapidly for
filling the tech lead role for one year. When he left, I stepped up to fill
that role for 1.5 years. I didn't get promoted or even the highest performance
rating. My manager even told me they believed I deserved it but didn't have to
power to make it happen.

------
andrelgomes
> Don’t think that there won’t be politics because there wasn’t politics
> before. Politics emerge when the players believe the game is zero sum. In a
> recession, the players are more likely to believe the game is zero sum.

Another related quote from someone I read on another post "People call it
politics when they are losing" [0]. A major draw to work for a early/medium
startups is that there is "no" politics/bureaucracy, to get out of the "cog of
the machine". As the company grows, processes are naturally developed and when
the term "politics" is more frequently used. This projected recession is
accelerating the development of processes, i.e. politics, for all companies.

[edit] [o]: hackernews, motohagiography

------
diogenescynic
Graduated with my BA in 2009 and definitely dealt with bad luck. Now, I work
at a good company and have a good job (for now), but they are clearly making
moves to shift the jobs to Texas. I’m just finishing my MBA and finding it
really hard to find a job. Everyone wants you to have 5-8 years of experience
doing exactly what they’re hiring for and don’t seem willing to train if you
have 60-80% of the qualifications. Really sucks because trying to shift from
one finance discipline (treasury/tax/FP&A/Corp Finance) doesn’t seem like
companies are willing to consider.

~~~
non-entity
> Everyone wants you to have 5-8 years of experience doing exactly what
> they’re hiring for and don’t seem willing to train if you have 60-80% of the
> qualifications.

This is a big worry for me. I'm leaning towards switching to a loosely related
disciple in a few years, but with programming domains. However, when I
research jobs in domains in looking at, a vast majority explicitly want at
least a couple years in that exact domain, but most want upwards of 5 years.

------
dhosek
The bit about the equity package rings true to me. I've never had options that
have been worth anything. And I had an employee stock purchase program that
was a can't lose deal where the shares would be priced at the lower of the
price at the beginning and end of the purchase period. Problem was, between
the end of the purchase period and the delivery of the shares, the stock price
dropped by 30%.

------
jerzyt
It maybe too cynical, but I'm fond of the saying that I'm loyal to the company
as longs as the paycheck doesn't bounce.

~~~
pmiller2
I think you're not cynical enough. You should definitely keep an eye out for a
bigger paycheck elsewhere. Your company wouldn't hesitate to cut you loose if
they thought it would make or save them a dollar in the long run.

------
vmception
Its been impossible for me to get a tech job in the last 6 months, I stopped
with the global COVID outbreak.

In the past I used to have 1 month of unemployement max, from the time I
reached out to the first recruiter (internal or third party), to actually
starting a job.

Now recruiters all tap me for Level 5's and Level 6's and reach out within 24
hours of my cold submission through their websites - after the disclaimers all
say "expect 4-6 weeks for reply".

At first I realized I needed to brush up on Leetcode, what people are actually
looking for in System Design interviews, and even behavioral/leadership stuff.
A few educational SaaS subscriptions later, I find it all really fascinating.
Although when I see the answers to a lot of "hard" problems, I really question
my abstract problem solving capabilities. But I know this is not what happens
on the job, thats the kicker, but I have accepted that my full time job was
getting good at the interview job.

Later on, after I was solving the brain teasers in 5 minutes in the
coderpad/in browser compiler, and asking "is there another part to the
problem" and getting no, STILL to be rejected, I realized this was not the
best use of my time.

I have no idea what people are looking for, maybe I need to delete all my
online profiles and pretend my resume has half of the experience (Founder,
small acquisition, probably too public and nobody can say so. Maybe they
expected a savant and my moderately above average interview performance wasn't
good enough.. for me. Seems like a trap for founders.)

I didn't want lower comp ranges and was at least getting interviewed by
everyone imaginable... ? I was just about ready to lower my ask, until COVID
hit and realized I can't get evicted, my health insurance won't get cancelled,
my phone bill and my internet won't either. I don't even want to see what
offers look like right now, and there are a ton of other priorities. Low key,
I only needed time, but after how gamified leetcoding has become it started
becoming a point of pride for me to get accepted. But I don't really need
golden handcuffs, I would stay for the 1 year cliff, maybe. I don't think this
was oozing through my fascade in interviews, of course I'm passionate about
your flying scooter fintech platform :D (eye roll), but feel free to think
thats why I was getting rejected.

In my notes it wasn't all rejections. Some (VC backed, and also mid-size)
companies said they cancelled the position after talking with me and realizing
they needed a completely different role, or the hiring manager didn't really
have as much autonomy over the role they thought and the company focused their
efforts on another team. In others (Big Tech) they didn't even know I wasn't
already in the company, and therefore I was at an inherent disadvantage and
pulled harder from internal pool. (Other big tech does matchmaking after an
offer).

All I have are anecdotes. I had friend and founder referrals to their current
startups, every "in" you could imagine, and still rejections. The silver
lining? I did get exposed to Tech Lead, and his soap opera of a life is very
engaging! The people you meet along the way, right?

------
dudul
Overall really good post, but I'm curious about the "Politics emerge when the
players believe the game is zero sum".

What are the arguments that it's _not_ a zero sum game? In theory, sure it's
not. Everybody works to increase revenue and profits, ergo everybody benefits,
but in reality?

------
lukejduncan
"luck is the residue of design"

------
anonymous24
I'm considering myself as a back luck person. Graduated with CS major but has
been stuck in a QA engineer position. So, after many failures to become dev, I
decided to take a M.S degree to sharp my skills and my resume. But when i'm
gonna graduate soon, the Covid-19 happens.

------
sys_64738
My advice is to do a startup as early in your career as possible. Then you'll
feel failure and the emptiness as it hits the skids. It's a life lesson in a
few months because startups that fail usually tip over the cliff real fast.

~~~
rwmj
In my experience the worst start ups _don 't_ hit the skids fast. They kind of
keep bumping along, often for years. Neither growing much, nor dying, nor
making much money, nor losing enough to go out of business. I even co-founded
one of these a few years ago. If you're in one of these my advice is to
recognise it and quit.

~~~
Kye
Those kinds of startups should have been lifestyle businesses, but someone
convinced the founder it was unicorn or nothing.

------
cocktailpeanuts
Just loaded the website and it says "Not Found". Brutal...

Does this mean people with bad luck should give up?

[https://imgur.com/a/s5AhAEZ](https://imgur.com/a/s5AhAEZ)

------
betageek
This is one of the most useful posts ever to grace the front page.

------
kursus
> The company is not your family.

Yes, and it's also not your friend. That's an easy mistake to make. You owe
your company nothing more than work and loyalty.

------
ptero
Most of it is reasonable, if already often quoted advice. But I did not see
what does it have to do with the title: "for people with bad luck"

~~~
Kye
People with good luck are probably not looking for career advice.

~~~
ptero
I am not so sure of this. IME folks who do well are, on average, much more
willing to hear external advice. They do not take it as direction (and, on
disagreement would rarely try to convince the speaker that (s)he is wrong),
but they would actually listen and try to understand the point, then make
their own decision on whether they should act on it.

Also, (not bad_luck) != good_luck. I think most people would consider
themselves average_luck.

------
black_puppydog
Somehow that page 404'd on me and just showed "Not Found". I nearly closed it
thinking I had read what I had come to read... XD

------
hachibu
> Every time I’ve outsourced my thinking for a job change (n=2)

I love the n = 2 aside. I really like OP's sense of humor.

------
YesThatTom2
I’m sure that’s good advice for SOME people but I just read about this bitcoin
startup that...

------
f2000
Best career advice I've lived a number of times:

"If you're on a sinking ship, get off"

------
haskellandchill
diversify income, I'm learning tattoo and working food service jobs because
I'm too high variance in programming. I can be really good but I also go bust
a lot :)

------
yingw787
I've been reading the Incerto series by Nassim Taleb and he talks quite
frequently about nonlinearities and their outsize impact.

He mentions how a friend of his saw how during the Gulf War, everybody had
planned for the war to increase the price of oil. So his friend bet against
everybody else. Turns out, everybody was stockpiling oil due to the war, and
given how short it was, there was an oil glut afterwards. His friend turned
$300,000 into $18M.

It's difficult to work for a FAANG and become _wealthy_ , as in move between
socioeconomic classes. You have to play politics and become fragile in your
building of human relationships, which can fall apart much more quickly than
your competence as a software engineer (barring a brain aneurysm or a TBI,
where you have much more pressing problems).

If you bet that the stock market would absolutely tank by end of March, and
acted on that impulse financially, you would be wealthy today. Renaissance
Technologies rose 39% and is having one of their best years ever. It's not
secret, exclusive knowledge. I started taking health precautions two weeks
before the crash. I didn't act financially, because I honestly didn't think of
it, and because I don't like the principle of shorting the market and betting
against my country and my people.

My takeaway isn't go on wallstreetbets and attempt to yolo my way through
life. My takeaway is people who bet on linearities are much more similar than
you think. $300K, $70K, does it really matter? In the grand scheme of things,
you're still a peon either way. You're a middle class guy, with little
influence on Capitol Hill and less access to PPE and ventilators, high taxes,
one primary income stream, and still trade time for money instead of building
capital and having money work for you.

So if you feel down, keep a good head on your shoulders, don't despair, and
consume as much information as you can on a regular basis. If you want to,
look for ways to benefit from nonlinearities. And if you do make it, be a
humanist and don't forget to give back to the people who raised you and taught
you and care for you.

~~~
mywittyname
> It's difficult to work for a FAANG and become wealthy, as in move between
> socioeconomic classes

You're goal should not necessarily be to move up a social-economic class, but
to at least provide your children with more opportunity than you had. Inter-
generational wealth accumulation is very important.

Most _people_ don't go rags to riches, it's typically _families_ that do so
over multiple generations. With poor people focusing on educating their
children, who become professionals, who then have kids with the opportunity to
make it big. If you look at Bill Gates, he's the son of a judge. Zuckerberg is
the son of a dentist. One of the Google founders is the son of a college
professor. Even our president came from a wealthy family.

------
personaenon
Anyone know/have a work from home Solaris SA gig?

My end of IT is DEAD!!!

Yes, I know Solaris is dead, but RHEL doesn't have much atm either.....

------
imdsm
That missing ) is bothering me

------
username90
Step 1: Get a well paying job at a big tech company. There is very little luck
involved in this, just get really good at algorithms. No need for a famous
school, specific degree etc. It requires intelligence, if you don't have that
then you need luck.

Step 2: Save more than two thirds of your take home salary, you can still live
way better than the people sweeping the office floor.

Step 3: You now have a ton of money saved up, take whatever risks you like or
just retire early.

~~~
ChuckNorris89
_> Step 1: Get a well paying job at a big tech company. There is very little
luck involved in this, just get really good at algorithms. _

Let me stop you right there. Maybe that works in SV but in most of Europe(the
world?) you aint getting in to any _well paying job at a big tech company_
without a degree from a prestigious university or previous experience at
equally big and famous companies.

Companies here don't have the FAANG resources to whiteboard everyone who
bothers to apply and check their algorithm skills when all the future employee
needs to do is work on some CRUD app so they initially select based on how
impressive your resume is and run you through some coding test later to weed
out the bullshitters.

Although I live and work in a city with one of the top 300 technical
universities in the world where graduating means you have to study algorithms,
advanced math, etc. almost no jobs here outside or research and academia
require knowledge about algorithms. Companies just want an experienced
node/python plumber ASAP.

~~~
0xfaded
Step 1: Move to SV.

I'm sorry, I'm Australian and studied and worked in Australia. I spent 4 years
in SV, and now founded a startup in Europe.

Even after the Covid issue has played out, I'm convinced SV will still be
where a passionate technologist can optimize their impact and lifetime
earnings. There's just nothing that can compare to being surrounded by so many
smart people who share your interests.

I've heard stories about the dotcom crash, and how it was awesome because
everyone who had no business being there left. You just had the geeks that
wanted to build stuff for the sake of building stuff, and it turns out there
was still plenty of money floating around after things got going again.

Europe has laws which makes hiring people risky and expensive. And even if you
do become a top earner, expect to pay 50% in taxes (+ 25% VAT). It's hard to
fathom individual engineers would be able to save enough to have the sort of
financial freedom to bankroll a company while still in their 20's.

But don't worry, there are government grants for you! Just be prepared to
spend 1/3rd of your time dealing with paperwork and hourly reporting of what
you did on a day by day basis, all for 50k here, 40k there. I feel these
grants are designed to be demoralizing and the startup equivalent of
unemployment benefits. And then you realize that almost all R&D in Europe,
from startups to multinationals, is subsidized by EU funding schemes and
mountains of paperwork.

Don't underestimate how good SV has it with the "I like you and your idea,
here's $1m and come back next year and tell me if it worked".

</rant>

~~~
the_af
> _Step 1: Move to SV._

What about...

\- I don't want to move to SV, I'm not that young anymore.

\- I don't want to move outside my country, or

\- specifically to the US and SV, which are not a particularly good place to
live in anyway, or

\- even if I wanted it, entry to the US is stressful and not that easy, or

\- I have friends/family ties where I live, and those are important to me

There's plenty of reasons why your step 1 is bad advice for a lot of people.

~~~
vikramkr
No pain no gain. If the US and SV opportunities aren't a type of gain that's
compelling to you then of course you dont need to worry about it. But if they
are, then you need to make your own luck by making those sacrifices. Things
about family ties and wants and stress are all part of the work you put in to
make your own luck.

Being American is a pretty great gig, for all the stuff you keep hearing on
the news. There's a reason silicon valley is silicon valley, New York is New
York, and so on. Theres a lot of luck that comes from being here. My parents
left behind their entire support network in india to set out on their own,
navigated the complex immigration process (granted, easier 20-30 years ago
than now), and made those sacrifices, and it more than paid off. And I got
lucky by just getting to be born here. Things like "you dont want to move
outside your country " are completely valid, and part of why american
immigration works is because immigration is such a hard thing for people to do
(leaving everything behind) that it self selects for the people willing to
make those sacrifices.

The one valid one you mention is the difficulty of immigrating. That can be a
straight up barrier in the way of a motivated person that would be a useful
addition to this country and should be removed. This is the country of
immigrants. We should keep that part of our culture alive.

~~~
dkersten
> No pain no gain. If the US and SV opportunities aren't a type of gain that's
> compelling to you then of course you dont need to worry about it

There are many reasons why this might be out if your control, beyond visa
requirements. Maybe you have dependents your can’t bring with you (sick or
elderly family for example), or maybe your SO has a job that’s hard to move.
Or you have a family and can’t afford the crazy SV rent for a place large
enough.

~~~
vikramkr
I was replying to the bulk of the comments in the post above, which were along
the lines of not wanting to go because of age/liking hometown etc, and
specifically mentioned at the end that there are valid barriers to consider,
including one in the original post about the complexity of immigration. There
are true barriers in the way, my disagreement was with the ones listed above.

~~~
the_af
I disagree with your disagreement about the barriers, namely:

It is _false_ that the US is the ideal place to live in (or to temporarily
migrate to if you're in tech). It is _false_ that, all other things being
equal, one should prefer to live in the US. The US is not the default place
people should aspire to live in, not even people in tech. Even _within_ the
US, SV is not the best place to live in. _Living_ in some place means much
more than just _working_ in trendy tech companies.

For a lot of us -- I'd say the vast majority, outside the HN bubble -- the US
is not a particularly interesting place to live in, _even_ if there were no
immigration barriers. Which there are, anyway.

~~~
ativzzz
The U.S. is absolutely not the ideal place to live in. However, it is the
ideal place to aspire to if you want to make a lot of money without being born
to an already wealthy family. (Wealth of course being relative, because you
need some wealth to immigrate nowadays)

Money, and opportunity for their children to earn money, is the reason so many
people have immigrated to the U.S in the past century.

Money isn't everything, but you can sure buy a lot of freedom with it. Of
course, nothing in life is risk-free, and making money is no exception, and
the U.S. is unforgiving when it comes to those who come here and fail.

