Career Success -- A Lot of Luck?

[rousseau]

The Role of Luck in Life Success Is Far Greater Than We Realized - Scientific American Blog Network

The article then continued with discussion of some recent research into simulated people with different levels of ability, people who experience a random assortment of lucky and unlucky events. If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance. - MIT Technology Review also discusses that work. After mentioning the notion that our society is some meritocratic utopia,

The work: [1802.07068] Talent vs Luck: the role of randomness in success and failure

In particular, we show that, if it is true that some degree of talent is necessary to be successful in life, almost never the most talented people reach the highest peaks of success, being overtaken by mediocre but sensibly luckier individuals. As to our knowledge, this counterintuitive result - although implicitly suggested between the lines in a vast literature - is quantified here for the first time.

None of this strikes me as measuring success or lack thereof, it's measuring people who attain extreme wealth. Those are two different things.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Related: To a large degree "luck" isn't:

http://nautil.us/blog/-the-key-to-good-luck-is-an-open-mind