Luck be a lady tonight!

Luck be a lady tonight!

-- Guys and Dolls

There's a reason why bankers play cards.

As noted before, your Grizzled Guru likes to play bridge and poker. Jane Street traders play 80 points. Michael Lewis goes on at great length about the Liar's Poker played at Solomon Brothers.

Even good old Machiavelli himself prattles on and on about Fortuna in The Prince.

We all wish we could control the winds of fate even when the underlying forces are chaotic. The inscrutable and non-superstitious Niels Bohr purported kept a horseshoe over his door. When asked about it, he responded, "I am told it works even if you don't believe in it."

The reason bankers care about luck, of course, is because

they ride the winds of chance in the market all the time. Quant strategies that seem to conjure profit out of thin air are really just statistical. Even with the best of strategies, however, the expected profits may be elusive. As John Maynard Keynes says, "Markets can remain irrational a lot longer than you and I can remain solvent."

Luck plays a large part in your job search and career as well. It surely isn't everything. My sainted mother would always wish me "Good Skill!" rather than "Good Luck!" because I could control the former but not the latter.

At the eccentric billionaire’s company, we used to say that interviewing there was a bit of a crapshoot. Because we had such high standards, we would routinely turn away insanely qualified candidates. With a different mix of interviewers, the candidate might just as easily been hired. Interviews have a strong luck component in them, it seems.

I've ridden a long string of luck to get to where I am today. Some of it good luck. Some of it bad.

Good luck is a lot more fun!

When I got out of the Air Force, still unclear as to what I was going to do; I went and stayed with my parents for a while.

I was out driving with my sainted mother who asked me why I didn't do some consulting? I told her it wasn't that simple. You needed introductions. You needed connections. You needed an in I explained. People don't just call you on the phone and offer you a consulting job!

We pulled into the driveway.

The phone was ringing.

It was a defense subcontractor calling to offer me a consulting job.

Score one for Mom (true story).

It was really a great opportunity. The contractor wanted to do some business with my former unit. They needed someone nearby that could parse the technical docs so they could make a bid. I had the skills they needed. I lived close enough to come in for a day a week. It paid really well for a starving grad student.

I ended up at the nuclear weapons lab because I ran across a poster in a hallway on the day I was sending out Ph.D. program applications. That was the first piece of luck. I didn't actually work on nukes though. I worked on much more mundane things like high-speed computer languages.

I got into nukes because I was down on my luck. My old lab job had disappeared in a funding cut. I was really desperate. It was my daughter's birthday. An old friend from grad school came. He mentioned he had a half time job available, would I like it perhaps?
That may have been the luckiest day of my life. That was the job where I learned Python. That led me inexorably into finance a decade and a half later.

The eccentric billionaire thing was another stroke of luck. My job was really crappy. The project was underfunded and oversubscribed. It was doomed. I needed to get out, but I wasn't sure where to go. Out of nowhere, I got an email from an East Coast headhunter. It was a perfect fit! I waded into the interviews oblivious to the fact that only one person in a thousand was hired. I got an offer. I didn't realize how long the odds were until after I started!

I won the annual work poker tourney a few years back on an outrageous bluff. It was that same old bad luck, a bit of boldness, and some good luck. I though I filled the nut straight. I bet with cool confidence and ran the pot up. When I rechecked my cards, it wasn't the nuts, it was perhaps the worst possible hand! I had misread one of the cards!

Disaster!

With my luck gone, my mother's chant of "good skill!" rang out in the back of my head. So, undaunted, I charged ahead, keeping with the (now false) premise of a straight. My opponents folded, leaving me with a chip lead that I never surrendered. Sometimes, you just need enough luck to fake it until you make it.

Life is like that. Your job search is like that. Some days nothing seems to go right. Other days, the stars magically align.

Sometimes the luck comes out of the blue. Sometimes you have to manufacture it.

In the midst of a great flood, a guy is trapped on his roof.

The fire department comes by with a boat and offers to take him to safety, but he says

"No, God will save me!"

The floodwaters climb higher. A helicopter appears overhead. The crew lowers a basket, but the man refuses to get in.

"It's OK, God will save me!"

The waters continue to rise and sweep the man to his death.

When he arrives at the Pearly Gates, he asks St Peter why God didn't save him.

Peter replies, "He sent a boat and a helicopter? What more did you want?"

The key is to be ready when the luck breaks your way. There comes a time when you have to be bold. To trust that things will work out. If you are too timid and don't trust your abilities, you can never ride a wave of luck to lofty heights.

Watch for lucky opportunities, and in the meantime,

"Good Skill!"