The perverse concept of luck
Published: 2024-02-01 04:57:10

> Oh, you're so lucky!

Now, I don't really mind when people attribute my success to luck. Or I guess part of me does or I wouldn't have spent the time to write this article. What I mind more is that so many people out there don't put themselves in the positions necessary to get lucky. 
I have seen friends and family, time and time again, sit idle while complaining that they cannot find success in some domain, while simultaneously refuting any examples of success with

> They got lucky...

This is such a pervasive idea, and it has permeated every facet of our culture. 


## Luck is a four-letter word

Think about this. Any time a celebrity discusses what it took to get to where they are, they almost always attribute it to 'luck' or 'being in the right place at the right time.' The real story behind success is never so simple that it can be ascribed to 'luck'. You can't luck your way into being good at your craft. 
What happens then, when the successful people in popular culture perpetuate the myth that their success is due mostly - if not completely - to luck?

People give up. 

It's very easy to work through this logically. Imagine this hypothetical:
A teenager is toying with the idea of going into acting, singing, or some other entertainment-based career path. They go online and start doing some research. They see some articles and all of them quote 'luck' as a main factor of success. On top of that, all of the celebrities they look up to also talk about how lucky they were.

What point is there to dedicate your whole life to something where the end-result of success is a roll of the dice? Is it really a stretch that this hypothetical person would decide to give up on their dream? It would be crazy to place all your eggs in that basket. 
The problem with this mindset is that ALL those successful people DID put their eggs in that one basket.

Spreading this concept of 'getting lucky', never has a positive outcome. It only serves to belittle the work people put in, and as a platitude to people who have failed:
> Oh that was unlucky.

> Don't worry, they just got lucky.

> It all comes down to luck anyway.

Many people, after hearing that their success comes down to a coin flip, will stop flipping. It's the only logical thing to do.


## An alternative to luck

Focusing on the luck that others may or may not have is a fruitless endeavor. Instead, focus on what puts people in the position to 'get lucky' in the first place.

When you hear a story about some model being discovered in a mall and a year later being on the cover of some big magazine, it's easy to think that's just luck. And obviously luck is a factor, but to think you could head out to the mall wearing your mustard stained graphic tee with unkempt hair and still have a chance at being discovered is obviously ridiculous - even if the scout is out that day looking for new talent and you happen to catch their Wetzel's Pretzel after they slip on a random spill. There's way more to it than 'being in the right place at the right time'

Not only that, the reason we know about the whole 'being discovered in a mall' thing is because it's noteworthy. For every one of those, there are hundreds if not thousands of stories of future models grinding at auditions or whatever the model equivalent is.. I'm starting to regret this analogy. 
My point is, don't focus on the one that 'lucked' into it, focus on the 99 that worked their way into it. Be like them.

If you're thinking 'well they had to be lucky to be born pretty, or tall, or whatever' it's current year idiot. There's models of every size, shape, color, and complexion now. 

*The difference between lucky people and unlucky people is the lucky ones put themselves in a position to get lucky.*


## What does this have to do with software?

I'm getting to that. I find it's easier to understand a concept when you don't have a horse in the race. It makes a bitter pill easier to swallow when I start coming after you instead of some hypothetical wanna-be model. 
If you're still sitting there saying "Well people do still get lucky and you're underestimating the ---"

> Will you shut up, man
> \~  Joe Biden

When I decided in my early 30s to switch career paths from education to tech, I did a lot of things to set myself up for success and to capitalize on luck.
I have had conversations with more than a handful of people including co-workers, friends, and even a close family member who all expressed interest in also shifting gears, but were afraid to take the risk. They would often 'cite' stories of hypothetical people who fail, and when I would bring up a true-to-life success story (mine) or even the person I saw do it who inspired me they would basically say
> It's not that easy, there's a lot of luck involved.

Uh... who said success was easy? Also, if it was just luck wouldn't that be the definition of easy? And no it's not a strawman, because this is based on real conversations with a real man who isn't made of straw. 
*If you don't take the steps towards success you will never be "one of the lucky ones".* 

When I finally broke into tech, first as a technology analyst and then product owner (before I decided P.O. is a useless made-up position and became a software engineer), it wasn't because of luck.
I wasn't in the right place at the right time.
I wasn't approached randomly in a mall by a skeezy dude:
> Say, you got the look of an analyst, do a little spin for me baby

Gross, no.
I was working towards my goal, not waiting idly for *someone else to randomly decide I have what it takes.*

I consolidated lists of the requirements for the positions I wanted and grouped them by frequency
I took free courses
I read free books
I talked to people in the position I wanted
I shadowed people in the position
I posted for jobs. 

Each time I was denied an interview, or got an interview and was denied a job, I reached out and asked what I could do better for next time, or what I could focus on to help me get the job in the future. 

It was rare that I would get a response, but I kept doing it anyway. 
When I did get a response I took note of these things and ACTED UPON THEM.

Concepts I was shaky on, I practiced.
Ideas I didn't know, I researched.
Over and over again, until one might say I got 'lucky'.

A position opened up that perfectly encapsulated all my experiences and all the things I had been working on consistently and deliberately over the course of the last **two years**. 
For two years I did all of those things above while also:
- Living paycheck to paycheck
- Working full time
- Going to school full time
- Not getting a divorce
- Raising 3 kids, one of which was a newborn who had to have emergency open-heart surgery at 3 days old and almost died
- Getting diagnosed with PTSD caused from my time in the Army
- Getting diagnosed with depression

**Quit making excuses.** 

I didn't make excuses, and you know what?
I got the job.

If you're not willing to do the work, do not complain about being unlucky, and don't think for a second that you would be just as successful as those people doing actual work if only you got lucky like they did.

**Luck has a prerequisite**
and that prerequisite is the hard part.


## How I got lucky

I stepped into the technology analyst role and almost immediately started outperforming the entire team of 5 by myself. I was doing more, and at higher quality than four other people. This isn't an ego thing, I just want to paint the picture that I wasn't just coasting now that I got the job, I was out to do the best damn job I could. Not only was I going to do my job really well, I was going to be the best co-worker you could ask for. I would share my successes as team victories, and would take full ownership of any mistakes, I would go to bat for my co-workers when needed and do what I could to empower them. People on the team liked and respected me, and I liked and respected them. When our P.O. was pulled into new work, I was the obvious choice to take over even as the newest member. Everyone was really happy with the transition.. 
*Except for me.*

From a distance, the product owner role seemed a little (a lot) dumb and unnecessary. And going into the role, it was even dumber and _more unneccessarier_ than it looked. Sorry, I still haven't regrown all my brain cells. It is a fake position that only benefits lazy managers who do not want to do their job.

I started desperately searching for my next move.

After sitting in on some "mob programming" sessions as an observer, I was hooked. 
**I was going to be a software engineer.**


## How I got lucky... again

I had tried to learn how to code a little bit in the past, and in my younger days even made a simple static website complete with offensive tiled background and acid trip inspired color scheme. 
But I never really thought of it as a potential career. 

I got stuck in tutorial hell pretty quickly. I could do loops, conditional statements, and create functions in a handful of languages but didn't have the knowledge to progress from there. I didn't know how to take it to the next level. I looked online and some of the project ideas were so foreign or seemed so complex that it was more of a multi-month or year endeavor than something I could do in a couple weekends or after work with my current skill level.

I was struggling on what to do. I was thinking about a bootcamp or some other option, but then my work put on a hack day.

I immediately signed up. I didn't know what I was going to build or how, but I was not going to lose the opportunity to figure it out. 

I tapped a few co-workers on the shoulder and asked if they wanted to join. None of them had any coding background but I told them if we couldn't get something going we would just drop out of the event and go back to work. They hesitantly agreed and I enthusiastically put their names down.

We won.

We each got a pretty big bonus, and our idea ended up getting picked up by a group of actual developers to move forward with. Out of hundreds of teams, ours was one of the ~9 or so teams chosen as winners.

The idea was basically a desk reservation system to allow hybrid workers to reserve specific desks in our building and check capacity. I had been in the office about a month before this and heard some people complain that it was hard to know if there was space to work while also social-distancing, or that it was really hard to find a desk.

So that became the idea. Of course we brainstormed 50 or so other really cool features it should have, but almost none of those made it in.

We did a bunch of googling, and since I had recently started working in python we decided on flask.
When I say the code was bad, you can't even begin to understand the depths. 
All of our logic was in a single app.py file filled with hundreds of lines of code, no rhyme or reason to any of it.
Only the "happy path" was accounted for, and even that was buggy as all hell. 

After the event we tried to get feedback from a developer we knew and he noped out of it immediately.
To call our code spaghetti is an insult to every Italian Nonna out there. They would gladly chow down on some ol' Chef Boyardee if it meant never again having to set eyes on the travesty that was our code.
The presentation ran mostly on smoke and mirrors, and underneath was a poorly cobbled together prototype/complete crime against nature and affront to all that is good and right in the world

But we won, *so suck it*.

I learned so much during that project. It was my first time actually using version control with a team. It was my first time making a web app. It was my first time actually building something other than what the tutorials showed me. It was the start of the next level for me. It was what gave me the confidence in interviews to talk about concepts not from theory, but from experience. For all its warts, I was proud of my little slime monster.

When I talked to hiring managers over software teams, and expressed that I still had a lot to learn, they all basically told me the same thing - I was ready to interview. Just winning hack day alone was enough for them to put my resume in the "interview" pile.

Did I get lucky? 
Being chosen as a winner in a merit-based competition cannot be attributed to luck. 
We made it happen. We struggled until the last second, but we made it happen.
My hesitant team of analysts also went on to great things. One decided it wasn't for him and chose the Scrum Master route (I'll bite my tongue out of respect for him, but I'm coming for you next scrum masters), but the other member of our team took that as a stepping stone into software engineering and she is happily in her new role.


## Ok dude, wrap it up

When my close family member came to me with his concerns about his current job, I asked him what kinds of things he wanted to do. He told me he wanted to do something creative, like writing, editing, or even potentially coding. I gave him some actual steps he could take like:
1. Write/edit/code something every day.
2. Throw away everything you create.
3. One day you won't want to throw it away. File that one away.
4. Eventually you will have a portfolio of only work you are proud of. It could take months, or years, but you will have something.
5. Use that portfolio to get the job you want.
6. The rest of the owl (I say this in jest as I know that's what some of you hate readers are thinking right now)

I'm sure your excuses came immediately, just like my family member's did:
- Easier said than done
- I'm too busy with my wife and kid
- I'm so drained after work I can't even think about doing something else
and of course
- Do you know how lucky you have to be to make it doing this kind of work?

It's really sad, because I know they are creative and could succeed if they just *tried*.
Hell, they're more creative than I am, and would probably do better than me. 
Watching people throw away their own potential is heartbreaking.

### TL;DR
It's easy to sit back and watch someone succeed and say "Oh they got lucky". It's much harder to do the work necessary to be one of the lucky ones.
Do the hard work. You might just get lucky.