[josephorjoe]

> I wish we as a culture/society, acknowledged the luck and timing factor more as a factor in career development.

How's this?

I'm a self taught programmer who did not start to learn programming til I was in my 40s. It was not super easy to get my first full time job.

One day, I went to a tech meet up. Got a t shirt.

Six months later, I wore that t shirt to a hiring fair. Someone recognized the t shirt because he was at that meet up too. We started talking. I end up joining the start up he worked for.

Two years later I'm looking to leave and start job hunting but completely fail on my first phone technical interview. Decide to study some more "interview questions" before applying to another job.

Find out the next month our start up is in acquisition discussions with Big Tech Co. Decide to stop job hunting.

The acquisition happens. I now work for Big Tech Co. They never would have hired me if I had applied cold for the job. I'm doing well there.

So, the secret to my success: a t shirt and flubbing an interview.

[AlwaysRock]

Great story. I think a lot of people would have a similar story if they cared to analyze their success a little more critically and be willing to give a little more credit to luck rather than their own efforts.

[throw_nbvc1234]

The other perspective of this is that luck is "hard work meets opportunity" or that "you make your own luck" or "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take".

There was a conscious choice made to go to a meet-up (networking) and going to a career fair (or conference or further meetups) where you could run into people you've networked with in the past. Without that choice, none of the downstream lucky events would have mattered. So you can acknowledge the role of luck in those uncontrollable downstream aspects (T-shirt, career fair meetup) while also acknowledging what OP's role in creating that situation.

You're not "unlucky" if you had decided to play video games instead of going to either the meetup or the career fair. You could be unlucky if you did both of those and the opportunity never arrived. The former is (bluntly) making excuses about somebodies lack of success.

Or you can just say that someone was lucky to not be born in a country where they're forced into military conscription as a child at which point everyone is back to being lucky. It's all a matter of what you decide to focus on and what perspective you bring into things looking forward or backwards.

[ibeckermayer]

When I read a story like this, I don’t think mere luck/timing.

You taught yourself programming in your 40s. That’s hard work and discipline to gain a skill. There’s plenty of other stuff you could have chosen to do with your time, but you chose to do this instead.

The very fact that you were going to meetups is a sign of diligence and eagerness, which are both conscious traits that can be consciously nurtured.

Yes, there’s an element of chance involved in that person recognizing your shirt and him having a job to offer you and that company getting acquired. But you put yourself in the position to take advantage of that serendipity through working hard at your skills and spending your time wisely at meetups.

There are things we can control and things we can’t, and both play a significant role in our outcomes.

[rufus_foreman]

>> Six months later, I wore that t shirt to a hiring fair. Someone recognized the t shirt because he was at that meet up too. We started talking. I end up joining the start up he worked for

And if that hadn't happened you would have just.....given up?

[ssully]

Maybe I am missing the sarcasm, but this sounds exactly timing and luck.

[Noumenon72]

"How's this?" meant "How's this for an example of acknowledging timing and luck?"

[josephorjoe]

no sarcasm intended

i know that timing and luck really helped me out and i am grateful for it.

so when people say "wow, you taught yourself programming and now you work as a software engineer at Big Tech Co -- that's impressive" i don't think "it is because i'm awesome!".

i think "i did work hard to get here but i sure had some lucky breaks along the way and if the timing had been different i could be in a very different spot right now".