Why smart hardworking people don't become successful (2018)(medium.com)
medium.com
Why smart hardworking people don't become successful (2018)
https://medium.com/@melissachu/7-reasons-why-smart-hardworking-people-dont-become-successful-d4d3b6119cbc
71 comments
> "Not all who wander are lost."
I'm not really sure that quote means what most think it does. The source seems to be:
“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
The implication is not that wandering aimlessly is OK but kind of the opposite: that one who looks like a wanderer has a grand purpose and destined greatness within him that is merely temporarily hidden.
Anyway, going back to the main point, a different quote comes to mind: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” ― George Bernard Shaw
I'm not really sure that quote means what most think it does. The source seems to be:
“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
The implication is not that wandering aimlessly is OK but kind of the opposite: that one who looks like a wanderer has a grand purpose and destined greatness within him that is merely temporarily hidden.
Anyway, going back to the main point, a different quote comes to mind: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” ― George Bernard Shaw
> The implication is not that wandering aimlessly is OK
That wasn't the point of the GP.
> I'm not really sure that quote means what most think it does
Wandering is exploring a domain. Knowing a domain is part of forming a strategy or merely the goal in itself.
That wasn't the point of the GP.
> I'm not really sure that quote means what most think it does
Wandering is exploring a domain. Knowing a domain is part of forming a strategy or merely the goal in itself.
Not all who wander are lost is a reference to Aragorn who as a Ranger wandered all over in his duties. The poem is about Aragorn ushering in the 4th age. So I'm not sure there are deep lessons here.
thank god for a voice of reason. I love this damn site.
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This article glosses over the fact, known to us who have witnessed humans up close in business environments, that success is almost entirely political within an organization.
Not to mention one of the most important factors of all: luck.
But survivorship bias means we assume all successful people hold a unique skill and wisdom that, if we only did the same, we'd find similar success.
But survivorship bias means we assume all successful people hold a unique skill and wisdom that, if we only did the same, we'd find similar success.
Yes. 100%.
I don't think anyone likes to admit that very few things in life are actually within our control, which makes it desirable to ascribe success to hard work, or intelligence, or whatever.
I started a consultancy that failed, was part of a small team with a moderately successful product, and now am part of a small team with a much more successful product.
All of that happened while former colleagues were working on much more successful products making a lot more money than I was.
In none of those cases was the outcome related to hard work, skill, or desire.
Sometimes you have the right people together in the right place at the right time. Sometimes you don't.
---
None of which is to say that luck is the _only_ factor. Part of taking advantage of the luck is doing the best work you can, and honing your skills to the best of your ability, so that if the opportunity pops up you can grab it.
But just because you haven't had the success you've wanted doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you at all.
I don't think anyone likes to admit that very few things in life are actually within our control, which makes it desirable to ascribe success to hard work, or intelligence, or whatever.
I started a consultancy that failed, was part of a small team with a moderately successful product, and now am part of a small team with a much more successful product.
All of that happened while former colleagues were working on much more successful products making a lot more money than I was.
In none of those cases was the outcome related to hard work, skill, or desire.
Sometimes you have the right people together in the right place at the right time. Sometimes you don't.
---
None of which is to say that luck is the _only_ factor. Part of taking advantage of the luck is doing the best work you can, and honing your skills to the best of your ability, so that if the opportunity pops up you can grab it.
But just because you haven't had the success you've wanted doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you at all.
Would you agree that working hard will generate more opportunities to be lucky?
I would agree that having wealthy parents generates a lot more opportunities to be lucky.
Which is itself just another form of luck.
So does buying more lottery tickets. Surely, the odds at being lucky are better than in playing lottery. However, they are much less predictable than people assume. We tend to systematically overestimate our own influence and underestimate external factors.
Then why do we value talented people at all? How much of their work is luck and how much is talent? If not much is talent, then I should be able to get lucky with people who aren't talented.
There are degrees of success. Doing good work is only the most basic. Even really good work you're talented in.
Getting anything else requires opportunity. Even discovering where your talents lie takes resources.
And there's also genetic luck, not necessarily biological but also wealth and environment. Without that many talents are unknown or undeveloped. This kind of luck cannot be made.
Nobody can actually find people with undeveloped talents. You'd have to force them to try a wide variety of occupations, preferably early so that they can develop it.
The people we value are not just any talented, they're developed talents that have been noticed, and beyond that lucky geniuses.
Getting anything else requires opportunity. Even discovering where your talents lie takes resources.
And there's also genetic luck, not necessarily biological but also wealth and environment. Without that many talents are unknown or undeveloped. This kind of luck cannot be made.
Nobody can actually find people with undeveloped talents. You'd have to force them to try a wide variety of occupations, preferably early so that they can develop it.
The people we value are not just any talented, they're developed talents that have been noticed, and beyond that lucky geniuses.
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No. Or rather yes, but it also generates equally more opportunity to be unlucky. So the two cancel out.
But hold on, why don't you just buy this cargo-cult self-help book and you too can be a success*!
One would think that being smart should be an asset when playing politics, though.
I think you really illustrate GP's point in a fantastic way. Let's define "smart" as the kind of smarts that would be in abundance on HN: Technical smarts, rapid learning smarts, knowledge smarts, creative smarts, idea smarts.
A smart person might be good at school and individual contribuitorship, and so believe that they should naturally be good at political games as well. But truly, politics takes a whole other set of smarts and the things that make you an excellent IC do not much overlap with things that make you good at the political game: charisma, selling, risk-taking, deep emotional intelligence, extroversion, strategic intuition, sociopathy, commanding presence.
Many smart engineers can't even see see that the game is being played or they realize it long after the match has been won. They are not the players, but the pieces on the board.
A smart person might be good at school and individual contribuitorship, and so believe that they should naturally be good at political games as well. But truly, politics takes a whole other set of smarts and the things that make you an excellent IC do not much overlap with things that make you good at the political game: charisma, selling, risk-taking, deep emotional intelligence, extroversion, strategic intuition, sociopathy, commanding presence.
Many smart engineers can't even see see that the game is being played or they realize it long after the match has been won. They are not the players, but the pieces on the board.
This is so true and sad. Often the smartest people at a company are literally just being moved about by the business people. They literally can't see the real game above them.
That's because they are smart enough to know better. It is dumb people who play games with the lives of others, it is the fool who loves power.
Typically not in my experience. Smart technical folks are subjected to plenty of suffering at the hands of leadership. The ones "smart enough to know better" find a way to insulate their livelihoods from capricious decision makers by either learning how to play the game or finding a way not to play (consulting or maybe creating their own product).
And I don't think it's accurate either to say that only fools love power. The need for power and status is deeply rooted in our evolution and psyche. To go back to Aristotle, man is the political animal.
And I don't think it's accurate either to say that only fools love power. The need for power and status is deeply rooted in our evolution and psyche. To go back to Aristotle, man is the political animal.
Very accurate to say the love of power makes a fool. A fool is just closer to an animal than a "wise" man. Power over another is just selfish, as love, or the care of more than yourself is altruistic. By smart enough to know better I meant they aren't the ones perpetuating the games, not that they are not suffering from the games. You flipped it backwards.
Politics require social skills, being smart is detrimental because it lets you see thru all the bullshit.
People who succeed at politics are able to do so because they can see through the bullshit, but also because they can pretend it’s not bullshit. Politics is war without the violence. You need you be able to signal to potential allies what you’re willing to give and take with plausible deniability.
Many smart, principled people aren’t able to sufficiently lie to themselves or feel comfortable using ambiguous terms and/or outright lying, and that hampers their ability to covertly send and receive signals to others, so others who are successful at politics would do well to stay away from them. You have to compromise in order to get things done, but it doesn’t behoove you to lay out all of your cards for everyone to see.
Many smart, principled people aren’t able to sufficiently lie to themselves or feel comfortable using ambiguous terms and/or outright lying, and that hampers their ability to covertly send and receive signals to others, so others who are successful at politics would do well to stay away from them. You have to compromise in order to get things done, but it doesn’t behoove you to lay out all of your cards for everyone to see.
The Elephant in the room. When it's all politics, as it is in most of modern society, success really has much more to do with the ability to lie and deceive than most are comfortable admitting. There in lies the entire problem, and the solution is inchomphesible to polititions who owe their entire self worth to their abilities to decieve.
If you see the bullshit but don't deal with it, that doesn't make you smart. It makes you very, very stupid.
Dealing with politics in an advantageous way takes serious time and practice. You might be well behind the curve vs professionals.
If you were smart, wouldn't you know how to optimally deal with bullshit?
This takes a whole different set of skills against e.g being good at programming.
For example, how do you react to inherently unfair situations, someone taking advantage of someone else? If you start picking on people good politicians will quickly “plausibility deniability” you out of the equation.
It’s much easier to accept (with a bit of anger) that you made a mistake in your program that bring defaced due to your “judgement being clouded by anger”.
You may be smart enough to even understand what you have to do, but it will take practice to do it well even if you understand it conceptually.
For example, how do you react to inherently unfair situations, someone taking advantage of someone else? If you start picking on people good politicians will quickly “plausibility deniability” you out of the equation.
It’s much easier to accept (with a bit of anger) that you made a mistake in your program that bring defaced due to your “judgement being clouded by anger”.
You may be smart enough to even understand what you have to do, but it will take practice to do it well even if you understand it conceptually.
Just because you're a good programmer doesn't mean you're smart.
There are many different heuristics for what is "optimal". To many it is to be left alone to work on things they find interesting.
How is that detrimental in politics?
Smart, nerdy people tend to spend a lot of time alone with books/computers/hobbies, so they simply do not spend enough time with other people to properly develop their social skills.
That is completely off track.
Playing politics might be to abstract of a term. How about if someone in a position of power above you likes you or not. If say your bosses boss thinks your amazing then they can pull you up. Keep in mind though this big boss might only want to pull you up to undermine your current boss. that's the political part.
Smart people I know tend to make their own decisions, including whether to participate in specific games or not.
This doesn't mention charisma, and the fact that smart hardworking people often lack it.
From what I have observed charisma is by far the number one factor for success. It's more significant than hard work, intelligence/IQ, appearance, or the quality of one's ideas. You can put charisma behind an obviously stupid idea and get quite a bit of traction. It does often fail eventually but the charismatic founder often profits nonetheless and moves on to something else.
Charisma is so powerful that I find it disturbing. I've watched people who really ought to know better become transfixed at the presence of a charismatic person even if the stuff coming out of their mouth is nonsense. I think it works so well because it bypasses the rational mind and speaks directly to the brain stem and says "I am big alpha, follow me and I will get you food and safety" or similar. It speaks to the most ancient parts of the brain.
I don't mean to sound totally negative. Like any power it can be used for both good and evil. It's just that I've mostly observed it being used for evil in today's world.
From what I have observed charisma is by far the number one factor for success. It's more significant than hard work, intelligence/IQ, appearance, or the quality of one's ideas. You can put charisma behind an obviously stupid idea and get quite a bit of traction. It does often fail eventually but the charismatic founder often profits nonetheless and moves on to something else.
Charisma is so powerful that I find it disturbing. I've watched people who really ought to know better become transfixed at the presence of a charismatic person even if the stuff coming out of their mouth is nonsense. I think it works so well because it bypasses the rational mind and speaks directly to the brain stem and says "I am big alpha, follow me and I will get you food and safety" or similar. It speaks to the most ancient parts of the brain.
I don't mean to sound totally negative. Like any power it can be used for both good and evil. It's just that I've mostly observed it being used for evil in today's world.
Another post about success is only measured by position at work and money and "following your dreams", where usually the dream is get rich and/or famous.
According to my 10 years old me, I'm the most successful person in the world, because I wanted to learn to play the bagpipe (in my original country it was pretty impossible), now I'm moving to Scotland and learning to play the bagpipe.
Please don't buy this bullshit, that success is measured in job titles and whatever you can do at work. (Dont get me wrong, my job is important part of my life, I have a nice and IT fulfilling job, which buys my family food, a roof over our head because Scotland is pretty rainy.)
According to my 10 years old me, I'm the most successful person in the world, because I wanted to learn to play the bagpipe (in my original country it was pretty impossible), now I'm moving to Scotland and learning to play the bagpipe.
Please don't buy this bullshit, that success is measured in job titles and whatever you can do at work. (Dont get me wrong, my job is important part of my life, I have a nice and IT fulfilling job, which buys my family food, a roof over our head because Scotland is pretty rainy.)
Ugh but it’s so hard to let this go, I lie awake at night thinking to myself “stop spending so much time doing work” and every morning I wake up and crush work again because it feels good. Work is like a drug :p
I always found the notion that we have to climb upwards and always make more money to be a bit weird.
As long as I have enough to live comfortably, stash some away and not worry I'm good, I don't need more. As such, I don't really get involved in most of the things that this post is about nor do I particularly care to do so either.
Work is what I do in order to sustain myself, it's not my life. The minute I walk out the door at work I've forgotten all about it and never think about it until morning. I realise this is me being pretty lucky but I'd probably even change career completely if I couldn't do this anymore working in tech. I think a lot of people struggle to find that balance, sadly.
As long as I have enough to live comfortably, stash some away and not worry I'm good, I don't need more. As such, I don't really get involved in most of the things that this post is about nor do I particularly care to do so either.
Work is what I do in order to sustain myself, it's not my life. The minute I walk out the door at work I've forgotten all about it and never think about it until morning. I realise this is me being pretty lucky but I'd probably even change career completely if I couldn't do this anymore working in tech. I think a lot of people struggle to find that balance, sadly.
I think that the issue is that most people do not make enough money to live comfortably, stash some away, and not worry. For example, if someone wants to own a home in a major cosmopolitan city in the United States, then they must be extremely wealthy.
If you can't afford a home in "a major cosmopolitan city" then you probably shouldn't be there.
All major cities in the US have 50-70% of the population as renters. Let me deliver the news.
I wasn't making a distinction between renters and home owners.
The majority of employment opportunities in certain fields are in "major cosmopolitan cities", so being skilled in these fields obliges people to live there, whether it's financially comfortable or not.
The point is if it isn't financially comfortable then you probably shouldn't stay.
I'm not sure that I follow your point. What would you have people do instead? It seems to me that having a home in a place one wants to live is part of basic prosperity.
Yes, I'd like to have a home in London but I don't earn enough so I adjusted my expectations. I could try and bend reality by living in a bedsit or taking a long commute but neither of those results in a good life. It's much better to adjust your expectations to your income.
>As long as I have enough to live comfortably, stash some away and not worry I'm good, I don't need more.
If I was single and had no dependents, I would need very little to make myself feel comfortable. But with dependents, I feel as if I need to however much I can to ensure their security. That means the living in the best neighborhood I can afford, cultivating a network that can be useful to them in the future, having sufficient income for legal/health matters, and passive income if I become incapacitated.
And this feeling is compounded by the fact that the numbers indicate that if the kids don't get funneled into the "right" tracks, then they will fall further and further behind in society as the wealth/income gap grows and it becomes that much less likely for them to be able to catch up.
If I was single and had no dependents, I would need very little to make myself feel comfortable. But with dependents, I feel as if I need to however much I can to ensure their security. That means the living in the best neighborhood I can afford, cultivating a network that can be useful to them in the future, having sufficient income for legal/health matters, and passive income if I become incapacitated.
And this feeling is compounded by the fact that the numbers indicate that if the kids don't get funneled into the "right" tracks, then they will fall further and further behind in society as the wealth/income gap grows and it becomes that much less likely for them to be able to catch up.
It's always a trade-off too. More money and status means more time-investment, more responsibility, more stress.
Success as defined by society isn't always what smart people aspire to.
``Thus is happened he became neither musician nor poet - - if we use this latter term in its every-day acceptation. Or it might have been that he neglected to become either, merely in pursuance of his idea that, while a high order of genius is necessarily ambitious, the highest is above that which is termed ambition? And may it not thus happen that many far greater than Milton have contentedly remained `mute and inglorious'? I believe that the world has never seen -- and that, unless through some series of accidents goading the noblest order of mind into distasteful execution, the world will never see -- that full extent of triumphant execution, in the richer domains of art, of which the human nature is absolutely capable.''
-- Edgar Allan Poe (``The Domain of Arnheim'')
``Thus is happened he became neither musician nor poet - - if we use this latter term in its every-day acceptation. Or it might have been that he neglected to become either, merely in pursuance of his idea that, while a high order of genius is necessarily ambitious, the highest is above that which is termed ambition? And may it not thus happen that many far greater than Milton have contentedly remained `mute and inglorious'? I believe that the world has never seen -- and that, unless through some series of accidents goading the noblest order of mind into distasteful execution, the world will never see -- that full extent of triumphant execution, in the richer domains of art, of which the human nature is absolutely capable.''
-- Edgar Allan Poe (``The Domain of Arnheim'')
Another missed reason: Derailed by a lengthy divorce. Or, corollary to that reason, family difficulties that drain you of energy and attention. Many heroes out there whose struggles will never be know but who deal with a lot.
Even a divorce which is not lengthy and avoids acrimony can leave one feeling like the "reset" button got pushed.
There is a more basic reason missed by the article: many smart, hardworking people don't know how to sell. Almost everything in life, regardless of what you work on, is selling and no one is born with this particular skill set. You learn it like any other.
It was likely the single most valuable skill I (eventually) learned, as a "smart hardworking people" by nature.
It was likely the single most valuable skill I (eventually) learned, as a "smart hardworking people" by nature.
I agree with you and am so frustrated that this is true and that this is how the world works.
Why can't someone just learn for their own or for the sake of learning?
I hate having to sell/praise myself. It makes me feel like a fraud.
I second the question below. Any particular resource you really recommend for learning to sell (aside from lot's of trial and error along the way)
How did you go about learning it?
Read Influence by Cialdini. Take an improv class. Find some mentors with skills orthogonal to you. Learn to be fine with being uncomfortable as you learn and get feedback.
There are definitely people born with talent for that particular skill.
Its called charisma and some people are just born with it. But you can also work on it.
Its called charisma and some people are just born with it. But you can also work on it.
Seems like the #1 reason smart hardworking people don't become "successful" is that the author has a vague and kinda weird view what constitutes "success". If some super-smart, hardworking dude is just drifting along reading HN instead of climbing the corporate ladder or whatever, I'm guessing they're also smart enough to be doing it that way on purpose.
This is good advice, especially for folks who entered the workforce during the Great Recession.
You have to take risks and be uncomfortable to grow. But you also have to accept that your choices have opportunity costs and it takes time to make them come to fruition.
You have to take risks and be uncomfortable to grow. But you also have to accept that your choices have opportunity costs and it takes time to make them come to fruition.
Because life is full of uncertainties, randomness and unfairness. Even the most successful ones are not inmune to this. Steve Jobs was fired from his own company and died of pancreatic cancer at 55.
Because people only want what they can’t have.
Not all who wander are lost.
This post is terrible advice, it's like a sermon from the Church of the Silicon Bubble. Smart but not successful? You don't reach out enough. You don't sacrifice enough. You're too distracted. You don't take enough risks. You don't believe in yourself. You can't commit. It's all in your head!