"The largely dominant meritocratic paradigm of highly competitive Western cultures is rooted on the belief that success is due mainly, if not exclusively, to personal qualities such as talent, intelligence, skills, smartness, efforts, willfulness, hard work or risk taking. Sometimes, we are willing to admit that a certain degree of luck could also play a role in achieving significant material success.
But, as a matter of fact, it is rather common to underestimate the importance of external forces in individual successful stories. It is very well known that intelligence (or, more in general, talent and personal qualities) exhibits a Gaussian distribution among the population, whereas the distribution of wealth - often considered a proxy of success - follows typically a power law (Pareto law), with a large majority of poor people and a very small number of billionaires. Such a discrepancy between a Normal distribution of inputs, with a typical scale (the average talent or intelligence), and the scale invariant distribution of outputs, suggests that some hidden ingredient is at work behind the scenes."
> Such a discrepancy between a Normal distribution of inputs, with a typical scale (the average talent or intelligence), and the scale invariant distribution of outputs, suggests
The authors started with even distribution of money, and random transactions with uniform probability, yet they arrived to very uneven distribution of outcomes.
This makes perfect sense given the multiplier affects built into the Capitalist system. The more money you have, the more easily you can grow that money. The moment an imbalance forms it would naturally continue to grow.
The fact that Capitalism will amplify and exacerbate any imbalance that forms, does not preclude the possibility that there are structural factors that help form those initial imbalances in Capitalism. Factors like differences in family wealth, access to education, access to connections with loan or startup capital, access to political connections, and so forth.
Have you read the article? It's written by physicists not capitalist. It discusses how 100% fair random transactions result in very uneven outcomes. Not unlike Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, which is also very uneven: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%E2%80%93Boltzmann_dist...
I understand what you are saying to a degree, however I've had more success than many colleagues due to me spending time every day to improve myself (usually technically).
What you are saying is like saying some people are thin due to genetics, which can be true, but also many people are thin because they workout.
Just as anecdotally, I know many people who have put that work and it has made no difference, or they've been made redundant etc. Equally I know drifters who happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Hard work buys you more tickets in the game of life, but luck is always there to some degree. How much is luck, who knows :)
I've seen more of the paradox effect than hardwork paying off.
For example, when a large company collapses, being the very worst can be an asset to get out and into new companies earlier and through less critical processes (that then end up overly critical of the people trusted to shut off the lights).
56% -- the majority of conscientiousness, it seems -- is not heritable. They can decide to, and be, but it sounds like a decent chunk of that is due to genetic predisposition.
Genetically I'm not much of a runner compared to my brother, but I work hard at it 3-4 times a week. But if he got around to hitting a treadmill as much as I do I'm sure he'd outperform me.
The importance of luck and circumstance to success is difficult to discuss because successful people who worked hard often get offended at the idea that there might be more to it than that.
You can do things to skew the distribution, but hard work is far from a guarantee of success, and likewise laziness is no guarantee of failure.
>I understand what you are saying to a degree, however I've had more success than many colleagues due to me spending time every day to improve myself (usually technically). What you are saying is like saying some people are thin due to genetics, which can be true, but also many people are thin because they workout.
Then there always is the argument that you have access to a gym and markets with healthy food. You can always under/over exaggerate personal responsibilities.
Just like Brett Kavanaugh worked his ass off to get in Yale, which he probably did, is this negated by his family's connections? Difficult.
Well, when you're not supposed to be doing a universal study, what happened to you is your first line of evidence.
If all scientific evidence says oranges are harmless, and you eat one and have to puke, then you'll avoid it, and rightly so, based on your empirical observation of 1.
>You can't always do a large study, but when you're presented with one it doesn't help do give anecdotes in response.
No, but it's healthy to be skeptical of a study in face of contrary immediate experiences. After all it's a product of a flawed human process (and most are crap, even according to researchers themselves).
1. how do you know you are not a screaming asshole that other people tolerate, with your inflated sense of self worth about your technical ability being your motivator for demanding more - so you call it success.
Have you overcome any longstanding relationship issues with anyone in your life? have you supported someone through a mental breakdown?
The very fact that you measure your success "over" your colleagues to me highlights that at no point have you been working towards making a better world.. I mean its cool that you are an aspie and all but ts actually of not much use to the humanity.
If anyone is coming off as an asshole in this thread, it's not him. Some people don't like competition and would like to make a better world for everyone. Some people like are more competitive and like to win over others. It's OK to be either.
I don't think that the second one is okay.. I think it is not only harmful to the whole of humanity its also a vacuous existence where your self worth is based on a others without ever actually respecting them.
I know my comment is shitty, but i get depressed that i work in an industry that has its head so far up its own arse that the people who work in it forget that it only has value in helping people do things.
If you are not helping people do things (e.g. you are not making a tool you are trying to sell some pish or something) then you are not a benefit to humanity. and if it was not for the other peopl ebeing off doing things themselves anyway then everything you do would be of no use.
All technical skill is inherently an order of magnitude less valuable as it is a second order skill - this is something that most people in IT really dont want to accept and they cause a lot of hate and pain in the mean time trying to convince everyone else they are right - normally through bully, intimidation and the general lack of empathy that goes hand in hand with all of this.
> Such a discrepancy between a Normal distribution of inputs, with a typical scale (the average talent or intelligence), and the scale invariant distribution of outputs, suggests that some hidden ingredient is at work behind the scenes."
There's no mystery here. It's the accumulation of value by the top end outliers and recognition of the value they provide by others. Preferential attachment produces a power law.
This demonstrates that the outcome isn't entirely a linear function of the inputs. But it doesn't show that the inputs mentioned aren't monotonic and a complete explanation of the outputs.
It may very well be that "luck" matters a lot. (And I'd argue that at a metaphysical level all of those traits are due to luck.) But that argument simply doesn't prove the result.
Never understood people's infatuation with reading CEO biographies. I've read a few and never found anything in it that could relate to. May be I am not meant to be one of those people. Even if I worked hard, got in at work at 5 am every day, I don't think I could go from being a lowely team lead to cto or CEO of a multi billion dollar corporation. I don't think it just works that way. I could be very wrong, but that's my experience.
You're focused on the actions rather than the results. Common mistake.
People become leaders by creating and commanding change that positively affects the company. Land a major deal or create a new product line that doubles revenue? You're getting to the top.
Working harder than the others is part of this process, and sometimes that means you come in at 5am, but it's not a requirement nor is it something that anyone in that position actually focuses on as more than just a means to an end.
I remember when I was early in my career and fixed an enormous flaw in ad allocation for a large online publisher. It led to easily over a million extra in revenue that year.
My boss was delighted to take credit for it while also ensuring I stayed on message that it wasn't actually a result of him screwing up and being generally incompetent. I eventually figured I had nothing to lose and talked to his boss (politely of course) just saying how successful that had been and that I had plenty of other ideas for improvement. It was not well received.
But I hear my old boss is doing quite well these days.
It led to easily over a million extra in revenue that year.
My boss was delighted to take credit for it
Had a similar experience once. A small change generated $2m/year extra revenue. That amount just about covered the bonuses of two execs while I got the standard 3% raise. Not the only reason, but I left shortly afterwards.
I recall when I did an early web project in 94 using DSDM (agile) and two of use delivered in a month what another team had quoted 2 years for I got a £25 voucher :-)
I put it together with the one I had from my prior project and brought a rio diamond mp3 player.
Dishonest people will be a constant obstacle, but communication is also important so others know what your contribution is. There can't be progress without measurement.
Being accurate and quantifiable without becoming confrontational is an art though, but ultimately necessary. Going over people can often lead to worse results. Eventually the truth does come out but whether it's worth the time and effort is up to you.
I had another offer lined up when I decided to chat with the boss' boss. It went about how I expected, I took the offer, and learned a good deal about how business works in the process.
Communication is important - very important - but it's also often what people focus on when the reality is just a bigger pain in the ass ("so and so is a selfish twit who takes credit for others' work" is much harder to say than "we need to address communication issues between departments")
I think that's an issue both in communications and in handling people.
For example, did you have to take credit for that particular situation? What was the true downside of your boss taking credit? Why not cover for him and gain the ally? Build the relationship and you'll often find that it pays back in multiples.
Business is 99% about relationships. The only way you can get what you want is by helping others get what they want.
I don't get it - his boss took credit for his work, likely without his consent or even knowledge (I'd guess he came to know after his boss took credit). And yet, you want him to cover for his boss? He also mentioned his boss was incompetent. How can you trust such a person to watch out for you, even if you let it go?
Because relationships matter, and that's how you build that trust in the first place.
Why not work with them, teach them, and make them better. Instead of being upset, be on their side. Almost always, they'll help you in return. Being confrontational and going around them though, will only guarantee more negative outcomes. Remember that your boss's boss and other colleagues probably don't want to deal with someone who is seemingly more interested in getting credit rather than getting things done.
I'm glad your life has led you to have such faith in management. I hope it's because you've been treated well. If you're early in your career and think this is how it works most places, I worry you may be in for a rude awakening.
I had a colleague who once told me "the trick to making good ideas happen is to make your boss think it was their idea". And they were completely right! It didn't stop them from quitting in frustration years later having never been promoted.
I had a new job and a pay raise lined up. It was mostly to toot my horn after feeling slighted, to be completely honest. I was young and naive at the time (and a bit less circumspect).
These days I'd just quietly polish the CV and move along. But I have a much better job now.
Because performance is unlikely to be repeated and at some point the person who is wrongly taking credit will not be able to perform, but this can take days or decades depending on the organization.
Decades? Are you kidding? Nobody's got time for that. Least of all people like myself who started in 2008 when the economy was utter garbage.
If you don't manage to build a decent career/salary/position by your mid-thirties in tech you're quite likely screwed (though before I'm too depressing, I understand there are counterexamples here on HN). Waiting a year or two for recognition is career suicide.
The point is it's highly variable. As stated in the first comment: whether it's worth the time and effort is up to you.
I'd argue that 1 year is way too short. The lack of patience causes far more problems today than building up the relationships and gaining the network and momentum to get into higher positions. Most people I know who stuck to a clear goal within a organization that has openings have done better than those who kept jumping around looking for the quick rise.
The boss could very easily at least make it known which engineer did the good work to fix it. If that isn't standard practice, something is seriously wrong. I make it a goal to be clear about who did the work when talking about something my team accomplished, even if I had the idea.
Land a major deal or create a new product line that doubles revenue? You're getting to the top.
Be in charge of the department/team that "lands a major deal or create a new product line that doubles revenue" and you're on your way to the top. Being the person who was in the office until 3 am working out the final details of that deal or fixing the show stopping bugs that let you actually launch the product won't get you anywhere.
But that is your job, is it not? What is wrong with the person in charge of the entire department being recognized for meeting the goal? Are they not working hard in their position? What did they do before their current position and what is stopping you from getting to theirs?
There's a tendency to minimize the work by others because we don't have the same perspective, but it's rarely ever accurate. Or helpful.
What is wrong with the person in charge of the entire department being recognized for meeting the goal?
If they played a material role in meeting the goals then nothing. The question is so much about who is getting recognized as who isn't getting recognized. If you want to get recognized and get ahead then simply putting your head down and doing hard work isn't going to get you there.
Smart companies reward those workers, dumb ones often do not. This naturally pushes some of the smart and self motivated talent towards organizations where they will be rewarded.
The one other exception is personality. The toxic person who works until 3am will rarely if ever get rewarded, because people judge more on the toxicity than anything else.
At all? I don't know what you mean by "underclass" developers but it is common to see many devs who spearhead projects get higher titles and progress faster. There are many such examples just in SV companies.
Part of it is making sure contributions are measured and noticed. People can't act on what they don't know.
I started out at my company building HTML emails. I started seeing places things could get better. Better code base so I built it. More sophisticated tooling and build chain so I built it. Problems with the Econ site so I helped find and fix them. Possible places to integrate and become more efficient so I helped build them. 3 years in, 3 raises (I’ve more than doubled my starting salary) and 3 promotions now I’m a Systems Architect. I recently presented to the owner of our parent company and (feel at least) that I’m valued and make real contributions. I work on big projects and am seen as a leader. So it can happen.
That's great and I am in no way diminishing your achievements; but a work of caution for others reading too:
It's most likely that you were severely underpaid in the first place, the raises have just slowly brought you up to industry standard, just spread over 3 years.
Your title increase is also great, but keep in mind, having you feel like you are a leader is also a great retention tool for you to keep working for them, producing good work.
I recommend looking in the marketplace for a new job to really see where you can be in your 4+ years. Don't feel like they have been so good to you that you couldn't increase your salary again by 30% by switching employers.
That’s sobering but good advice. It’s easy to fall into the “hey, they do care” trap just for some more money. Good advice also on looking into other places in the same industry - I’m still 3-5% too low for median!
"it is common to see many devs who spearhead projects get higher titles and progress faster"
True, but if we're going with anecdata I'd point out that it's also common to see devs (and managers) who are taller get higher titles and progress faster too. My own experience is that the correlation is at least as strong as that with getting stuff done.
I mean the blue collars sitting with other developers at lunch. We can pretend there is a meritocracy out there, but that's simply not true.
Sure, in theory it might be possible to progress as a developer but in practice the roi of putting in enormous effort is simply laughable compared to the alternatives. A few percent raise realistically. Getting to the top? Not a chance.
Blue collar (in the US) refers to manual labor positions, not software developers.
There are a rare few who are extremely talented and productive individual contributors but most are not, so try to maximize output by working with others. Even small teams have managed to make big impacts in massive companies so I reject the notion that you can't do anything.
But regardless, many people have gotten very high up in many organizations through persistence and patience. It's not easy, and each level will get harder because you have more intense competition for fewer slots, but saying "not a chance" goes directly against the fact that many have done just that.
I claim no one gets to the top for being a hard working developer.
Also claim quality engineering is only loosely correlated with advancement, it is one of the less efficient ways to secure a promotion/raise. In fact, managers often have no idea who is doing a good job.
As an absolute statement that is factually incorrect. My former CTO started as a senior developer at the company 16 years ago.
If you want to make the weaker statement that growing from engineer to CTO almost never happens, you’re going to need statistics.
Realistically, humans are mortal and C suite types are made, not born. While not every engineer will become a CXO just due to disparity in job openings, someone needs to be promoted to take the CXO jobs once the previous crop has aged out of the work force. Some of them will be advanced because they’re good workers, others because they’re good at politics. You’ll need some statistics to back up any claim about what percentage are good workers and what percentage are politicians in business clothing.
You can't get to the top doing the same job. The responsibilities change. There is no CTO who is a day-to-day developer in any sizable organization. The higher you go, the wider the impact.
Some people don't want that change and are happy where they're at. Others cant make that change. But that's what it takes. You can definitely climb the levels by excelling at what you at that particular level. If you still disagree then I would point to the generations of millions of immigrant families that arrived with nothing and earned their way to the top primarily through raw technical merit.
And yes, as stated, impact needs to be measured to be judged. If you do something that nobody knows about, then there's not much you can say.
By definition developers etc are "professional" grades.
Unfortunately those who are the first in their family to go to uni and go into a professional job don't always get the support and informal knowledge passed to them.
One example would be read a proper newspaper - I can recall when being asked which newspaper you read was a common interview Q in the UK
I would disagree and say that Elon Musk has repeatedly cited working twice as hard as everyone else as the key to his success. But the trick he seems to be following is that if you work flat-out on difficult problems until exhaustion, you spend a lot of time in flow state and consequently learn a lot faster than someone who isn't pushing themselves.
I'm not sure what you disagree with, since it seems to fit with that I'm saying. Elon doesn't focus on the work, he focuses on the results. The effort he puts in is just what's necessary to meet those ambitious goals.
Waking up at 5am because other people are doing it won't get magically get you anywhere. However when you focus on achieving similar goals, you'll probably find yourself getting up at 5am too.
Anecdata. There were undoubtedly many other engineers working just as hard as Musk at other startups that never turned into Paypal.
You can credit him and his cohorts for having the foresight to work on products/services that turned out to be winners, especially given that he's followed that success with other potentially successful ventures. But I don't buy that work alone got Musk where he is.
Same appeal as any other type of cargo-culting: it's a lot easier to get up at 5am, shake hands firmly, and dress for success than it is to spot an extreme growth opportunity, bet everything on it, and be correct.
I appreciate that the work is hard, what I cannot come to terms with is the apparent and total lack of accountability of the role (speaking about big-company CEOs).
Yes, a "bad" CEO will be fired, meaning that he will pocket a fat severance package and he will be able to try again in another company with almost no stigma attached.
Even if he did it so badly making himself unhireable for similar positions, he will have already earned more money that most people (even with professional jobs) see in their lifetimes.
"With great power comes great responsibility" seems not to apply to CEOs, more like "the house always wins".
Most CEO's don't do 'bad' as in illegal stuff, this is very rare. If they do really bad stuff their equity disintegrates.
The reason the golden parachutes exist is because CEO is likely going to be 'the end of the career' for most. There are so many reasons to get fired and it will probably happen. After that, there's not much else.
Nobody in their right mind would be a 'Big Co CEO' without some kinds of rewards even on the downside - many of these folks can make quite a lot of money in some other C-level position and do just fine right there. Why put your head on the chopping block?
You might also ask the question why athletes are paid gazillions for doing something fun, that they enjoy that comes with zero responsibility basically, and can often do very well even if they don't perform, although usually that's not the case.
And FYI most CEO's don't make gazillions of dollars, that's just what we see in the news.
It's all relative. Someone in life always has it worse than you and these positions just cant be compared like this in any productive discussion.
Being a CEO doesn't mean you're the boss. It means you serve everyone, from employees to customers to shareholders, and are responsible for every single thing that happens. If someone doesn't do well, it's your fault. And being responsible for others livelihoods with every decision you make is definitely not easy.
>Being a CEO doesn't mean you're the boss. It means you serve everyone, from employees to customers to shareholders, and are responsible for every single thing that happens.
Golden parachutes ensure that this responsibility means almost nothing. CEOs have driven whole companies to the ground, losing the jobs of thousands, and got their fat check in the end. Heck, even white collar crime goes largely unpunished.
The hard parts are "getting to the top" and "staying there," not performing the duties.
I am sure the duties are "hard" in an absolute sense, but not relative to pay and accountability, not when compared to other jobs that are hard in an absolute sense, as you point out.
Yeah, some are harder than others but I can't think of a CEO job that isn't hard. It's always fraught with political risk, changing times, etc. etc.. From the 'inside' we might think it looks easy, we get a paycheque, it's all hunky-dory ... but from that top spot it's almost always hard.
If someone said to me: "you can either work in an Amazon warehouse (either shift 7.00am-5.30pm or 5.45pm-4.15am) or be the CEO of Amazon but you're going to get paid the same whichever you choose" I know which I'd do.
Whether a job is hard or not depends on more than just how many hours you work and the physical aspect. Which of those jobs is more stressful? CEO, hands down. The decisions you make as a warehouse worker don’t matter all that much - if you make a bad one, the impact of that decision won’t be felt far. If the CEO makes a bad decision, it could lead to his removal, the failure of the company, huge financial losses, people losing their jobs. Just because something isn’t physically demanding doesn’t mean it’s not demanding.
I’m sorry, no, I believe the precarious warehouse job is many times more stressful. Especially in the US where time off is limited and health care is essentially contingent on your employers goodwill. Stress is very often a function of lack of agency.
The CEO of an Ambulance company I know has about 500 staff, he's been doing it for 25 years, it all seems like a smooth operation but they're constantly facing issues. Labour and training problems, international actors that won't pay and their governments won't help, shipping problems, supply chain problems. Liability issues. IP issues with some special things they do. Orders come in batches, they might have a down year and possibly have to play people off. And I'm not even getting into the very basics of product development, financing the working capital i.e. the regular stuff employees do.
People who think CEO's just show up and wear suits and have meetings, and kiss up to the board ... I don't think have any exposure to what the job entails.
Again, that's not hard as in big "physical or mental toll". Being a miner is hard. Being a surgeon is hard. Being a mathematician working on big problems is hard.
A CEO compared is a walk in the park. All those issues you've mentioned ("Labour and training problems, international actors that won't pay and their governments won't help, shipping problems, supply chain problems") are there in any business (even in a single person shop).
I’m sure it’s hard if you’re a normal person with human feelings and take seriously your responsibility to your employees and shareholders.
If you can avoid that, it must be a great job. Massive pay, no labor, people do what you say, and if you screw up the politics and get fired you’re still set for life.
This does not explain how CEOs such as Fiorina and Elop can inject themselves into established companies, run them into the ground, and still walk away with lavish rewards. They are in a completely different category than ordinary Workers.
Hard to get right is different than hard to do (physiologically, in the way it affects the mind and the body).
And even hard to get right matters little if you have a golden parachute (as many CEOs do). You can drive a company (or an entire sector) to the ground and still get your nice bonus.
No, there are many cases where the CEO will be involved in financial issues, especially where it will affect the company as a whole.
A European company with major cash holdings may want to diversify currency, but that could be seen as speculative.
The working capital requirements and details of the revolving loans they have from the bank. The list goes on.
True, I was mainly referring to making decisions with company money, like how much to invest in resources and development. Not managing the accounting details.
A stable company with good people will run itself. There may be execution issues, but the good people should be able to handle those.
The value-adds from a good CEO are outstanding strategy, positive corporate brand creation, and investor/shareholder relationship management.
The first two aren't hard in the bureaucratic sense, but in the creative sense. A lot of CEOs are terrible at them - see the long list of companies run into the ground by very poor decisions.
The last one is helped a lot by having the correct class background. It's nightmarishly hard for outsiders, and can be anywhere from not hard at all to equally nightmarish for insiders.
Unless your company is small, being a CEO is hard. Knowing about all projects and developments in the company (often several hundred projects and initiatives) and deciding on which opportunities to take is not an easy job.
Even when your company is small. I mean just the emotional pressure alone, you're still responsible for the well-being of however many employees you have, in addition to your own.
No wonder a lot of top level executives are psychopaths, the emotional detachment must really help.
> spot an extreme growth opportunity, bet everything on it, and be correct.
> Or be born into money. No amount of self-help is going to tilt the scale towards that.
While there are undoubtedly success stories which resemble both of these caricatures, I think they're in the minority. I can't say I'm hobnobbing with the Forbes billionaires list but I have personal relationships with many people who built successful businesses. Betting on a unique opportunity is often an amplifier, so is starting in a good place in terms of money/family. But what they all have in common is they focused religiously on the top line, they didn't fuck up the bottom line, and they worked very hard.
You can't bet on an opportunity if you don't have any money to bet. I've lost count of how many ambitious and talented people I know who had ideas they wanted to bet on, but couldn't because of lack of disposable funds.
Having the resources to take risks is the number one factor to succeeding, I think. Being able to identify good opportunities comes after that.
And a lot of these people have the resources to keep betting after they fail. I recall someone I know who failed 4 businesses, falling back to his rich family after each try while he cooked up the next one. Eventually hit the jackpot on the fifth one and acted as though he was a self-made genius.
Even if you have no money you can bet your personal time and effort.
I agree that having financial resources is a huge leg up, but I don't believe it's mandatory. My beliefs are formed from personal experience. I came from a working class family that lived below the poverty line. My parents kicked me out at 18 with a warning that if I ever wanted to come back I'd better be ready to pay them rent. (Resolved that I would never take them up on that offer, never did.) When I started my business I had $250 in the bank and no idea how I was going to pay the next month's rent.
For years I failed and I sacrificed where I had to. I worked long hours at terrible rates, I didn't spend a dollar more than necessary to survive, I gave up on my hope of saving and buying property, I neglected my health, I gave up on my hope of finding a partner and starting a family because women aren't interested in a nerd who has nothing to his name except dreams.
These are the sacrifices you can make if you aren't born into wealth but you want to achieve it. Some people absolutely have success handed to them. They have a safety net which allows them to fail until they succeed. For the rest of us, you sacrifice time, energy, opportunity, and health.
It took years but it worked, one day I hit on a great business and it all turned around.
Being broke certainly limits the type of opportunity you can invest in, but there's always something.
In betting on opportunity, often times they have everything riding on it.
Where does the "harm" you talk about come from? Usually it's because there are other responsibilities you're engaged with. If you literally give everything else up to focus on one thing, these barbs aren't in your life. I'm talking forgoing rent to crash with family/friends, eating ramen, selling/getting rid of your things, live on credit cards, etc, and have a 24/7 focus that keeps you going.
You'd be surprised how much that frees you from the immediate "harm" you describe, but you also have nothing to fall back on, because you pretty much have nothing else anymore than your pursuit, and can be amassing enormous debt (financial and otherwise). It's a huge amortized, pushed-forward harm in the hopes that the gamble pays off. For many, it doesn't.
That sounds like a fairly large financial privilege to me. If you are working two jobs to just get enough food to survive, and your friends are in a similar situation, you don't have that opportunity or ability to take risks.
Spoken as someone who denies the safety net beneath their high wire act. For some the risks described and the comforts forgone in the hunt of prosperity are called life. Losing these resources means intense uncertainty of paralyzing outcomes. It's not our job to understand the plight of all around us with compassion, but it does make it easier to justify incongruent rewards they bring.
> You'd be surprised how much that frees you from the immediate "harm" you describe, but you also have nothing to fall back on..
All the things you described doing are the fallback options - you have to have a family and friends, things to sell, credit to burn. Even then,
family or friends have less patience to carry you when you’re taking a moonshot unless they also have a lot they can fall back on.
Specifically, I meant there's nothing to fall back on at the end if the gamble didn't pay off. Your family/friends are sick of you, you have nothing left to sell, any credit is trashed, and your venture didn't pan out.
That's a very complicated situation. People, especially when young, have incredible freedom and really don't need much at all to survive. As they get older, 95% of the responsibilities they take on is their own doing.
That's not a judgement on what they choose, but many times the "lack of privilege" is really they because they made different choices.
Or personal health outcomes in themselves or people they care about. As we get older this should not be understated and bears out in personal bankruptcy applications. Good health is the ultimate privilege. Many factors that determine good health are rooted in real privilege (safe streets, clean water, quality diet, free from sexual abuse, etc.)
Nearly every self-help book mentions the importance of goal setting. It is important even for those with a pedigree and born into wealth (I recognize not every student in this study was born into wealth but the median Harvard family earns at least 3 times the national average).
“Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?” In 1979,
interviewers asked new graduates from the Harvard’s MBA Program and found that :
84% had no specific goals at all
13% had goals but they were not committed to paper
3% had clear, written goals and plans to accomplish them
In 1989, the interviewers again interviewed the graduates of that class. You can guess the results:
The 13% of the class who had goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84 percent who had no goals at all.
Even more staggering – the three percent who had clear, written goals were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97 percent put together.
Edit: I had often heard of this study and just pasted the first reference I found. I would delete this post, if I could, as its credibility is questionable. Thanks femto.
Bo Burnham on getting into showbiz: "Don't take advice from guys like me who've gotten very lucky. Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner saying 'Liquidize your assets! Buy Powerball tickets! It works!'"
Ah Taylor Swift, she didn’t really win the lottery though, or if she did, she was able to start off buying a loooooot of tickets. Her father worked for Merril Lynch, from three generations of bank presidents. Her mother worked in finance. When she was 14 her father moved the family to Nashville and worked for Merril Lynch there, and invested in a record label called Big Machine to the tune of $120,000. This was the company that first signed her.
She grew up rich, with the freedom to pursue her passion from the age of 10, when her mother would take her to karaoke contests. The ability to up stakes and move to Nashville, to have your father buy your way into a record label... well... it doesn’t overshadow her natural ability, but it helps to explain how she was able to leverage it so effectively.
Even with all those advantages, success isn't guaranteed. I think you're reinforcing the parent's point, which I read that Taylor Swift was given the opportunity to follow her dreams and that worked out really well for her; that doesn't make it good advice for other people to follow, especially if they don't have the advantages she had.
She won more lotteries than that. She won the lottery of being born rich, white, and connected. And in a country like the US. She won the lottery of being beautiful, of having an excellent voice and musical talent, of having parents willing to use their money and power to further her career of choice. She won the lottery of not having any crippling mental illnesses or learning disabilities, of not being sexually assaulted, and more lotteries besides.
But Bo Burnham’s quote really isn’t about that, he’s talking about getting lucky and having your career take off. The truth is that many many lotteries typically need to be won before you can even enter that lottery. My point was that Taylor Swift didn’t just “take a chance” on music, she used all of her existing wins to stack the deck in her favor. If you look at a lot of CEO’s the same is true of them, and it’s not just the luck of their career taking off, but the luck of ever being in a position to have that happen.
Nitpick, but this isn't actually true (see lawsuit she won), and we don't really have any way to know if it was true even before she became famous. I agree with your general point, though.
There is nothing wrong with leveraging your opportunities. Most people don't even do that and would be surprised at just how far they can get if they did.
Interesting perspective. Is it your belief that people read these as how-to or self-help books?
I enjoy reading them the same way I enjoy learning from my co-worker's habits. I take what matters to me and throw away the rest. I'm always trying to improve how I do my current job. It's not enough to have an open mind about work habits / techniques, one has to actively seek out new information.
Also it's usually an interesting look into someone else's life, at times even fascinating.
Biographies can be interesting, but books that extrapolate directives from case studies of winners are totally useless. If 8 of the top 10 CEOs do x, you can be sure it will be reported in that kind of book, even if 999 of the bottom 1000 failed business leaders do the same thing.
There are tons of these books, and the only lesson they teach is how often people fall for the trap of survivorship bias.
They are often sold as self-improvement books. I picked up a "wise quotes from CEOs" book thinking it'd have some gems as well. Just made realize that most of the people writing and saying these things were grossly out of touch with the people they direct.
> Interesting perspective. Is it your belief that people read these as how-to or self-help books?
My friends and acquitances definitely read these books to glean some sort of inspiration/hidden jem that would start them on path to riches.
My life has no parallel to lives of these people and there's nothing I could copy.
It's my opinion that the odds of me being a CEO of a huge Corp are same as a person who is homeless for years going through college and getting a job making six figures.
I don't think it's helpful to copy what they do as CEO. I look for what they did in their lowest paying job and how they changed as they progressed in their careers. Of course, very few autobiographies cover this.
I think this is quite insightful. There was a post on here a while ago about William Faulkner being an absolutely atrocious postmaster when he was in college. Of course, a lot of artists tend to have a more meandering paths than a lot of CEOs, but his habits as a postmaster were probably just as important to his writing career as his later habits.
This may be more applicable to artists, but my own take is that a lot of people would be surprised at how much a lot of really successful people looked like "losers" for a significant part of their early lives, due to them living in their own world and not working hard enough on anything they didn't care about because they spent all their time thinking about the one thing they really cared about.
> Faggin: Well, for the timing of the product out, that was put three-and-a-half months of my life at 80 hours a week doing the layout. I mean, that was the only way I could solve that challenge. We couldn’t find a layout draftsman. They weren’t experienced enough or fast enough. And that was the absolute, the limiting time in terms of getting the product out. Because the design, Shima pretty much was doing it all the time it was allotted, but the layout was just not getting done fast enough. And so that’s why I had to do it. You know, a CEO doing layout draftsman job was not something that would be normal, but that’s what I had to do, and I did it. So that’s how I solved that problem. And that certainly saved many, many, many months for the project. As I said, I did two-thirds to three-quarters of the chip drawing it myself.
Great point. Telling us how the CEO operates day to day now when they are the finished product is not helpful in understanding how they became that person. A step by step description of their career would be more useful. How did they get every promotion, how much was luck by being in the right place and how much from hard work and talent. What were the thinking and strategies they used along the way.
Have you found any source for this kind of information. Sometimes I’ll look over the work histories of founders LinkedIn, but employment history is pretty superficial information.
It seems like such a dull choice of reading material. I could read about poetry, a math book, a biography of someone at the level of an actual historical figure, a great religious work, or even just the news. But instead I’m going to read about some guy who sold database software or ran a printing company.
Well I don't even know what a cto does. I have been in many meetings with them, but besides making high level decisions and asking for status, I don't know what they do.
Besides I was born in poverty and needed lot of efforts to be able to socialize with people born upper middle class. I can only imagine what else I need to learn to socialize within upper echelons. I can't explain it to you fully.
Thanks for asking though, I never thought through this before.
In my experience all C level executives do a very good job of seeming like they know what they are doing. That seems to be a huge part of the job. Seeming like you know what you are doing, seeming like you know what is going to happen in the future (despite that being fundamentally unknowable) and being vaguely intimidating.
Beyond that they select from the set of possible projects that could be undertaken ie create a new product, overhaul some existing system, lay off a bunch of people etc etc. Having made that selection from the options put in front of them their reputation improves if the project goes well (or at least looks like it did). Their reputation takes a hit if the project goes badly.
They may have little or nothing to do with the project execution upon which their career rides. It seems like a bizarre job in that regard. Decide on a high level course of action then wait 6+ months to see if you will be considered a genius or an idiot. During that time your involvement is limited to periodically listening to status updates while looking stern.
C-suite is about setting the vision and aligning teams and departments. It’s anything but choosing from presented choices and waiting months on end for results; to the contrary it is constant evaluation and communication to steer the ship as well as possible. You are right that projecting confidence is important, but that’s not the main job by a long shot.
I agree that is what it looks like from the outside to people who have no experience at it, but I doubt that is what it looks like at all from the inside. Just as from the outside a programmer might look like a sweary toddler who keeps you from messing up his toys out of pique.
I may have told this anecdote before, if so here I repeat it:
There was a Friday meeting at a place I was consulting at, the C-level executives were outlining the way projects would run to the end of the year. It seemed in some ways less than optimal, they then in a rare bit of insight into their processes said 'I know this looks less than optimal but the reason why we are doing this is ---blah blah blah 3 sentences of finance technobabble'.
It was quite clear the suboptimal process had been chosen to maximize available moneys for projects due to accounting decisions and specific legal regulations. Although exactly how eluded me.
I was pretty sure that most of the people there understood as little on the matter as I did but everyone did that expression on their face to signify they did understand that people generally use with me when I describe how stemming/decompounding works and why this means we will have to take another way in structuring our data for the search engine.
But yes most of the time I would look at those people and say that they don't do anything.
> making high level decisions and asking for status
That's it. Along with hiring the right talent which is the half of the job (and often invisible) so that the work actually gets done. High-level decisions can affect hundreds or thousands of people and many more customers, so fewer but more important decisions is the trade-off, then delegating the rest so that other workers can do what they do best.
This description seems minor but the larger the company, the harder it is to keep things on track for a long-term focused vision. Also people don't do things just because you tell them to and you'd be surprised at just how hard it is to keep people working towards a goal.
It might be a good thing the next time you have a meeting with a CTO to ask them what they do what their jobs is before or after the meeting. I asked a VP that question at biotech company I was consulting at 15 years or so ago and the answer was very revealing. It didn't make me a VP or even a manager but I have a much better perspective on that level of management then I did before.
You need to believe in yourself first. It sounds like you have an inferiority complex. Most CTOs I know aren’t “upper echelon” anything — they just got great at their job and weren’t afraid to take risks (such as joining a tiny startup.) Plenty of non tech founders would love to have someone like you with your experience.
(I don’t mean to be disrespectful; just wanted to implore you to not fall for the self-imposed bigotry of low expectations.)
Just look on Angellist and you could probably find yourself a CTO or role — or one that could quickly lead to one. Just be excellent at your job; learn how to influence and be confident: you know more than most!
As part of that journey you should also seek to understand if you actually _want_ that job, because it will likely be a lot different than you're current one, and possibly quite a bit different than you imagine. That makes a good conversation point to have with the CTO however: "I want to learn more about what a CTO does". But I wouldn't let your conception of your poverty block you. My parents both grew up poor and eventually ended up in executive positions (in completely different fields).
Being interested in understanding problems in detail and working on solutions can be disqualifying for a CTO position. As a CTO you must have an overview of everything that's going on and where the company is heading. That means, you won't have any time getting lost in the nitty-gritty of a project or problem. Understanding everything a bit but nothing in perfect detail is something many people dislike but which is unavoidable as a CTO.
Never understood people's infatuation with reading CEO biographies.
We can't assume that book sales perfectly represent public interest in the books sold. Anytime someone who is very well-compensated in fields other than writing has an inexplicably successful book, we have to wonder how many of those books ever touched a reader's hands. Publishers just want to sell books; they don't care if lots of them are sold to a CEO-author as some sort of vanity project.
Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography was a very well written, engaging bio about a deeply flawed but very interesting man. There’s no need to have delusions about becoming a CEO while reading it, it’s just an entertaining book.
At one time I thought highly successful people would be more like each other than less successful people. I believed it even more when it was explained as the Anna Karenina principle. But my experience hasn't borne it out. There are many things you can point to as advantages or "best practices" but in the end it all seems to dissolve into our penchant for telling stories. One guy is successful because he was born into it, it's all he saw growing up, every element was demonstrated for him and instilled in him as normal his whole life. Another guy is successful because he was born with nothing and had to fight for every little thing, and he kept fighting for the next thing until he had a whole company. These are both coherent stories, but they don't explain the difference between those two and all the other people who were born to success but reverted to the mean or who were born into poverty and stayed there.
I've seen people succeed with vastly different, contradictory strategies. I've seen engineers promoted to management earn respect by getting in the weeds and doing unwanted grunt work, and I've seen engineers promoted to management stay so hands-off from technical stuff that new employees assumed they were MBAs who didn't understand the work they were managing. I've seen people with humble origins flaunt them at every opportunity and others all but deny them. I've seen people who immersed themselves in detail to see the whole picture and people who carefully rationed the information they consumed to avoid being overwhelmed, systematically delegating the responsibility for details.
Conclusion: that's the wrong way to try to understand the difference between luck and skill. Suppose you ran a huge experiment where you had 1000 chess grandmasters, 1000 masters, 1000 good amateurs, and so on down to 1000 chronic duffers, and they each inherited a thousand games starting at move eight (crediting the first seven moves to luck, circumstances, and childhood.) You wouldn't learn much by asking whether the winners attacked or defended, opened the middle or jammed it up, preferred their knights or their bishops. Those aren't the right questions. A grandmaster doesn't move a knight just because she likes knights, or because moving knights is the baller thing that all the grandmasters do. It's because it accomplishes something in their situation. If life was a game you could play over and over again, with executive control gradually fading in starting in the teenage years, a brilliant player might play each lifetime very differently. It's an interesting thought experiment to ask what skills you would develop as you "played" dozens or hundreds of lifetimes! Certainly not rigid rules like "wake up at 5am" or "wear the same thing every day."
Wow. This is honestly the best analogy I've ever seen. I still think that some particular behaviors are generally good and should be emulated (like e.g. exercise) - but even there you'll find exceptions.
But taking CEO quirks and designing lives so that they include them... That's just guessing the teacher's password (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NMoLJuDJEms7Ku9XS/guessing-t...).
The analogy of inheriting a position in a game played by somebody else is great. Winning or loosing depends on how you finish it. What I can't agree is using chess itself: in chess there's no luck, if you play better than your opponent you will certainly win. In life, even after you inheriting the position, luck is a relevant factor, and the better player can loose.
Paraphrasing Nassin Taleb, a good player is somebody that optimises the chances of black swans to happen in life. But even this might no grant you a win.
I appreciate that your conclusion was that the starting position helps determine the strategy necessary for success, rather than your starting position already determining your ability to succeed.
A lot of comments in these kinds of threads just assume a kind of fatalism that success is determined purely by change and the circumstances of your birth.
This is exactly right. Setting overly ambitious goals from a young age is likely to prevent one from developing mastery and capitalizing on the serendipity that leads to great opportunities. You can’t manufacture success, but you can set yourself up to get lucky.
Given this issue a lot of thought, mostly after reading Jeffery Pfeffer's views about how most CEO biographies are designed to kick the ladder away behind them.
Given the exponential / power law distribution of returns, if you are anywhere on the left hand side of that curve, you are doing phenomenally well, even if your actual place on it is random. This curve is the mechanism behind the Matthew Effect as well. To get there, you just need to survive long enough to end up on it somewhat randomly. The competitive environments in offices are really about getting exposure to opportunity - not reaping the rewards of work. This is why some seemingly dumb people do well. They have the relationships that get them exposure to the opportunities to end up somewhere randomly on that exponential curve.
You'll notice that people who fail or stagnate in offices are the ones who have been isolated from peers, customers, sales people, and other sources of exposure to randomness, and that is not an accident. Highly successful people ensure they are at the front of the queue for those random opportunities, and whether they do that through merit or mendacity is ultimately immaterial. Being smart is not about problem solving or abstraction, it's an instinct for always getting the option on opportunity.
I think another thing that influences annoying habits of "effective" people is that no executive/manager is going to hold a CEO accountable for being late/strolling into work, whereas if a CEO didn't like it that person would be be immediately told to stop and change their behavior.
> no executive/manager is going to hold a CEO accountable for being late/strolling into work
I did this. I had just been promoted to the lowest manager position at a global bank. Our global head had a habit of starting meetings late.
After one, I asked to speak privately. I said I had been working hard with my team on improving their timeliness. They responded, and our mornings became more productive as a result. But once a quarter they came to these meetings and saw the top guys in our division stroll in late. It undid work I fought hard for, and which I continued to believe in.
He thanked me for my perspective and was never late again. (Another example: CEO assigned our intern class a book assignment. I proceeded to reject the author’s thesis.)
Organisations that don’t permit upwards feedback are, in my opinion, unhealthy.
(In the interest of balance, I have also given upward feedback that was rejected. The reasons for their rejection changed how I worked going forward, every time productively.)
on this thread. There is defensible feedback and there is just being contrarian. If you have a reasonable position, you may just be missing the CEO's context and they should be smart enough to see the gap and fill it in for you. Without requiring a pink slip.
> Were you ever terminated or had your contract not renewed for providing upwards feedback that was rejected?
Not to my knowledge. More memorable was the positive response I received to both of the aforementioned pipe-ups. Granted, I'm pretty up front about wanting open communication in any corporate culture I join, so I'm heavily selecting–during interviews and random conversations–for teams who value that.
Just on "late shaming" in general, sometimes people have legitimate reasons for starting later. They might have been up until early morning in conference with another time zone, they might have family responsibilities, etc. If they're late to scheduled meetings by all means hold them to standard, but if they're just arriving in the office later then everyone else I'm not so sure that's cause to be held "accountable" no matter your level.
Most see those who can't reliably reconsile family responsibilities and the responsibility of having a job to provide for said family, as bad employees. Maybe only bad because of lifestyle fit, but bad for your org. Being unreliable is worse than not being there at all for most jobs.
What a strange, disappointing article. I was expecting trends in annoying behavior, but this was just some low-grade complaining about rich people. And I'm not complaining about people complaining about rich people, I'm complaining about the poor quality of the complaints:
- Richard Branson once said that he didn't like when people were late, but Virgin's trains aren't very timely
- Tim Cook would probably be just as successful if he got up three hours later (opines the writer)
- General fear mongering about the dangers of executives like Jobs and Zuckerberg wearing the same attire every day
I always laugh at this obsession with early rising. Many factory line workers wake up at 4:30 am every day, because their shift starts at 6:00 am, and somehow that does not make them billionaires.
Getting up early - before you’ve had a full sleep window - is a sign of idiocy, not discipline. Those people are damaging their health and will underperform at work, even if they don’t realise it.
I'm pretty sure a few of those wake early simply because it is expected, not because of discipline. They aren't the only ones that have discipline either.
1. verb "train (someone) to obey rules or a code of behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience."
2. noun "the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience."
So yes, having to wake up to make it to a job at a certain time or else you get in trouble is actually the very definition of discipline.
If people on my team are constantly getting to work late and I have to talk to them to come in early, I've disciplined them and they now change their behavior because of it (come in earlier).
You don't gain discipline by waking up earlier than necessary. If you don't need to be at work until noon, waking up at 5am doesn't add discipline to your life. Waking in time to go to work is discipline, but if you don't need to be at work until 9am, there is no need to wake any earlier than it takes you to get to work on time. Waking early for the sake of waking early or having general "discipline" isn't such a thing.
> You don't gain discipline by waking up earlier than necessary.
You absolutely do. Please take a second to actually lookup the definition of the word. It may not be added discipline in your life, but it is for many other people that don't live with the same daily habits as you. You don't get to change the definition of a word to fit your narrative, sorry.
The point is that waking early is not inherently a thing of discipline. You can no more judge one's discipline by one's waking time any more than you can judge one's discipline by whether or not they play an instrument every day. Both can be part of a disciplined life, but neither are actual markers of it. Neither are going to suddenly give one more discipline in their life just by doing that one thing. It isn't a magic cure. This is definitely not changing the definition one bit - you have already provided it.
You seem to have a New Age definition of what discipline is. There is no such thing as an "inherit discipline".
A marine, doctor, rock star, sanitation worker, train operator, and professional athlete are all going to have drastically different things they consider good discipline.
If I have a problem responding to text messages in a timely manner, I can improve my personal discipline by introducing a new habit to take 5 minutes before I go to bed to reply to every message. If I have a problem with my weight I can start going to the gym and change what I eat, discipling myself to take more care of my body. If I have a problem finishing projects, I can discipline myself to set realistic goals and expectations of what "complete" means so I can feel more confident ending things.
Changing behavior to achieve a goal (whether it's self-imposed or from your boss) is by its very nature achieved through discipline.
Getting up early is only a sign of discipline if you need to get up that early. Getting up early with little sleep is self-sabotage: Getting up early when you are more productive later in the day is ignoring self-knowledge.
If you simply want to get up early because you are more productive that way doesn't require more self-discipline than staying up late for the same reasons. There is nothing "urgent" about it - you can very well do the same thing waking up at 8am or even noon (admittedly, noon has its drawbacks, but 8 or 9 am gets folks by with the greater world most times).
Getting up early is just a sign of discipline. Ignore that Notch may be a sign of survivorship bias for second. I watched one of Ludlum dares one time and one thing I saw was discipline. There is no other way to make a complete game in ~48 hours without it.
Early rising isn't so much what time you wake up as it is waking up early enough so you have time to yourself before you have to go into the office or start your day job.
The important thing is your first few hours after waking go to your most important goals.
> The important thing is your first few hours after waking go to your most important goals.
Why? I find I'm often more productive at the end of the day than the beginning. And more productive late at night than early in the morning. I find the obsession with waking up early very strange (and often counter-productive).
I originally thought I was a night owl as well. I think it was for other reasons though and there is a legitimate benefit that is unique to mornings. It has a lot to do with lifestyle.
It's not an exact science and there's not a lot of literature on it yet but some variables to consider:
Are you referring to mornings working on what is important to you personally, or are you referring to mornings at a day job that you're just punching a clock? Motivation and interest are going to play a key role here.
Are you consistently waking up at the same time or are you thinking about a few times you woke up and were tired? It must be consistent for circadian rhythm to adjust.
Do you have time alone to yourself in the morning or are other people already up and around you? Depending on lifestyle, people often have more time to themselves at night than morning so that might be part of the reason.
Do you have a routine to wake up in the morning? Certain triggers like sunlight, drinking water for hydration, electrolytes, and moving around, don't happen for the majority of people until much later in the day. Without these people are not going to be at their best. Many people who are early risers incorporate these and other types of rituals (exercise, cold showers, meditation). Without them, their mornings would not be as productive.
Are you giving yourself enough time in the morning to be at a relaxed pace without worrying about the clock or is it a rush to get to work?
I suspect it's individual - I've always found myself more productive at night, to the point where I can be sleep deprived and borderline passing off, but I know if I make it another few hours (to around 1am) I'll start waking up again (then start falling asleep again as the sun comes up).
Is the idea that working on your “important goals” in the first few hours after waking is more effective an evidence based opinion?
I can’t imagine myself performing my best at any task I do the first two hours after waking, and that certainly seems to be the case for almost all of my colleagues too, if early AM meetings are any indicator.
Not sure about references but the general consensus I have seen and heard, and is congruently in my own life as well, is that willpower is at its strongest in the morning and as the day goes on we experience "decision fatigue" that drains us mentally.
Additionally, there seems to be some kind of slowdown that necessitates sleep. There have been studies (sorry don't have references handy) that show people who are sleep deprived are less likely to exercise self-constraint.
I would recommend the book "Miracle Morning" if you are interested in more.
As to not being productive in the morning, there is a consistency of waking up at the same time that needs to happen. In my experience, it takes 10-20 days before you can function well at the earlier time period.
Also, there are things you can do to increase alertness. Sunlight, drinking water (dehydration makes you tired and mentally sluggish), electrolytes, exercise (just a minute or 2 to get heart rate up), cold shower. All of these wake the body up and increase mental alertness. I frequently use them before I start my day and it makes a big difference. You can't just wake up and start working, you have to have a consistent routine that is aligned with human physiology.
It takes about 30 minutes after getting out of bed before I reach peak alertness.
Ego depletion and decision fatigue suffered pretty badly in the replication crisis, although I have no idea what the current consensus is. The key phrase to search for is "ego-depletion RRR", if you're interested.
Also, meetings first thing in the morning isn't exactly a productive, mind engaging activity. That would make pretty much anybody want to go back to sleep. It has to be something that benefits you that you are excited about achieving.
Get up and work out. Afterwards your mind will be clear and ready to work. And, as a bonus you'll have a few hours before anyone else shows up to bother you.
It's not an exact analogy but if you start with the idea of "Characteristics of lottery winners." As the base and make it entirely up to the author to show with evidence that their content is actually better than that when they discuss CEOs, you'll avoid a bunch of total BS.
Rsing at 4:00am is more likely to either be the symptom of someone addicted to their work above all else but it also probably shows the fragility of life at the top! If you were Tim Cook, what would you do next in a company with billions of spare cash to keep the investors away from your door and without losing focus?
Could also just be a circadian rythm thing. I’m sure there are many otherwise normal people who’s biological clock would prefer to sleep early and wake up at 4.
So the article starts out by saying that you won't be successful just by emulating Tim Cook (rises early) or Jeff Bezos (putters in the morning).
Shouldn't the author have just ended it there by concluding that neither one of these habits is necessary in order to be successful, rather than going on complaining?
I wouldn't call Tim Cook an effective manager though. He centralizes decisions on himself and had been turning Apple's reputation and Halo-effect into cash rather than innovation.
Have you ever worked for Apple? What you see and reality aren’t always the same.
As far as innovation, have you used Apple Watch? Have you used CoreML? ARkit? Has any other company shipped a 7nm chip? Do you know the products in the pipeline?
It’s pretty easy to snipe when news reports are your only source. It isn’t like Tim Cook publishes meeting minutes or Craig F or Eddy Cue are sitting around discussing Tim’s management style.
iPhone or iPad wouldn’t have been possible without Tim because he created systems to actually produce and ship the thing. Look at the efficiency of Apple’s supply chain — nobody else can come close. That success is the very definition of “effective manager.”
If we want to talk of inept managers, we would have plenty from which to choose, but Cook isn’t one of them.
CEO biographies are interesting just like any other biography, I suppose. But never once have I heard/read, "I read this other CEO's biography and decided to copy their habits, and that was my secret."
You do read, "My success happened because of an inspirational encounter with this other revered CEO (whose own book was a best-seller, hint hint)" but that's such compelling marketing that I wouldn't bet on there being any reality behind it.
But, as a matter of fact, it is rather common to underestimate the importance of external forces in individual successful stories. It is very well known that intelligence (or, more in general, talent and personal qualities) exhibits a Gaussian distribution among the population, whereas the distribution of wealth - often considered a proxy of success - follows typically a power law (Pareto law), with a large majority of poor people and a very small number of billionaires. Such a discrepancy between a Normal distribution of inputs, with a typical scale (the average talent or intelligence), and the scale invariant distribution of outputs, suggests that some hidden ingredient is at work behind the scenes."
I would highly recommend people here to take a look at: https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.07068