How Much of Your Success is Luck and How Much is Skill?

Do not trust anyone who refuses to admit that part of the reason for their success is sheer, dumb luck. Some people are born on third base and think they hit a home run.

Luck comes in many ways. I'd say it's honestly 60% luck, 40% effort. But the harder you work, the more chances you have to become lucky.

Around 50/50 - but as said above, the smarter*/harder you work rather non-coincidentally the luckier you get I've noticed.

The other aspects of luck include good timing on opportunities, having the right connections at the right time, etc.

A portion is luck for sure but I wouldn't have been able to take advantage of the opportunities Ive lucked into if I didn't work my ass off to develop the skill set I have.

IE starting company X didn't look like an opportunity to most people but it did to me because I had spent time in the trenches to really learn the industry.

Kind of a bullshit question, IMO.

Luck is just a concept that can be applied to pretty much everything, it pervades everything in your life. The only reason you have any of your skills is because you don't have downs and weren't a blowjob.

I think a better question would be more along the lines of 'how much of the deciding factors of your life were pre-planned and achieved vs came to you out of the ether as black swan events?'

In the end we're never going to know, and we'll never be able to control external factors for better or worse.

All my success is 100% skill that I got by luck.

Edited

I'd say 85 % chance and 15 % skill. I like the idea someone presented on this forum about life "as a market". Most of your success is due to beta. More than a few of my friends from middle school and high school ended up in banking or other finance roles and I don't see myself as some prodigy. I took the chances that were given to me and it certainly didn't come without work, but don't think I could have made it if I was born into poverty.

70% persistent effort towards a clear set goal/dream, 20% raw drive to live a good life and 10% sheer luck. May vary for different individuals. Just my observation. Thanks

Not sure but the more skill I have the luckier I seem to get.

Honestly, for 98% of smart/intelligence people it's mostly luck.

But for a select few people that I've met, they would probably be in the same position no matter what, i.e. savant types like Terence Tao.

As someone part of that 98%, I think luck is about 60-80% of it.

I think it's 90%+ luck. I've worked hard for what I have, but I'm not going to ignore the fact that I was born into a family that valued and enforced academic achievement, was raised in a safe suburb, and didn't have to pay for college; all things that are outside of my control.

I can't say for certain I would have what I have now if any one of those things were different, and I really think more people need to take a look at their own advantages before telling the poor that they just need to "work harder."

There are people who work a lot harder than I do who still have a lot less.

This is something I've been pondering lately (btw I dont think there's ever a real answer unless someone hits some sort of lottery).

I've now achieved some level of success in Corp Fin that some would admire. I come from a middle class background, was an average student, went to a crappy school, but sort of made it. I attribute my success to: - A few key decisions: 1. realizing I was going to get a shitty job out of my undergrad and going to grad school and 2. A semi-risky career move leaving a stable job in a pharma company for a potential of more upside in an industrial company (both F500). - Hard work and reliability. I am NOT a 100 hour a week guy, but I am a hard worker and I am 100% reliable. Example - I left at noon on Friday, but something popped up over the weekend so when the kids went to bed on Saturday night I spent an hour taking care of it. My last boss said that my position was overpaid for the hours and work I did, but that he needed someone that could take care of anything that would come our way and be 100% reliable - that is me. - Smarts. I am no genius, but I am intelligent and pick things up fairly quickly. In Corp Fin we don't need rocket scientists, just guys relatively smart that can get shit done. Again, fits me to a T - Personality. I'm not overly outgoing, but pretty easy to get along with. My bosses really like me (most important) and coworkers and employees seem to like me too. - Asking for what you want. This is where I think a lot of people fall short in Corp Fin. After 6-12 months of good performance I sit down with my boss and ask for feedback. When that feedback is good, I follow it with "my goal is to be promoted after this roll, is there anything you see that would hold me back from that". This hasn't failed me yet. - Luck. There is certainly luck involved - having a good boss, right place/right time, risks paying off, etc... but after much thought, I'm still not sure what % I'd attribute to luck

This is ten percent luck, twenty percent skill Fifteen percent concentrated power of will Five percent pleasure, fifty percent pain And a hundred percent reason to remember the name

75% luck 25% skill

50% luck, 30% skill, 40% SEX DUNGEON.

luck is preparation meeting opportunity

Well, I was born in America so I already won the lottery and am very lucky. That's gotta be at least 75% of my success right there.

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Mostly just dump luck.

Barely got into my major, fucked around there, and got hired during a very booming time. You could be in coma and still get hired.

Then said industry took a very ugly hit, and no-one hired anymore. Got into Business school due to work, and from there things rolled further.

Basically, if I were to repeat what I did, I would absolutely not manage to reproduce the results. So, probably 80% luck / 20% hard work.

I see fresh grads with 3.3 and up GPA's, leadership experience, internships, and what not trying to land the same jobs that I stumbled into.

But you know what? That's just how it is. During bull markets and industrial booms, companies will hire anyone that breaths, as long as they have the correct diploma. And once you're in, you can play your cards to your best advantage.

Unfortunately, a lot of things in life boils down to having the right background, at the right time.

We're kinda going through the same thing in data-driven industries today, where anyone with a couple of classes in programming, statistics, machine learning, and math can land very lucrative and "hot" jobs. You could be dumb as a rock, but companies are desperate...Once you're "in", the only thing you need to do is not to fuck up too badly.

I also think that having the right upbringing and family goes directly under "luck". If you had well-off parents that pushed you through school, hired private tutors, sent you to prep-school, then that's a boatload of luck from your side - even if you didn't apply yourself - but also great planning from your parents side.

Or maybe you grew up with supportive people around you, people that cheered and complimented you, in essence boosting your confidence. That's also luck from your side.

It's basically like being given a treasure map, with a big fat cross where treasure is hidden, and a dotted line that leads to said treasure. Sure, you have to walk the distance yourself, and do the digging once you get there, but you're still in a much better position than someone who were just dropped off on the same island, and given vague descriptions "Maybe it's over there, or over there, who knows. You gotta find out yourself".

I think very, very few people are 100% "self-made", and no mater how spoiled or coddled a person is, they did do something themselves. So it's not a binary case, but more on a spectrum. The likelihood if a person succeeding in life def. depends on many socioeconomic factors. And that involves a ton of luck.

In terms of success, I want to separate business success from investing success, and focus on the latter. The reason for that is I've been spending a fair amount of time reading stuff from Buffett and Howard Marks on investing.

The overriding message that both of them proclaim is that there's a lot of luck in being successful in investing over the long-term, but the biggest differentiator is not doing stupid things when everyone else is. In other words, we only get a certain amount of great ideas in a lifetime, so success is based on being able to recognize and act on great ideas, and then avoiding all the other crap in between.

I find this wisdom to be extremely counter-cultural in type-A environments in finance where everyone is trying to justify their existence by being busy all the time. Ironically, it's the pressure to do deals/make investments/deploy more capital mantra that ultimately results in returns becoming average or downright lousy. Fortunately, you don't lose your job by making the mistake that everyone else makes, but it's what'll prevent you from becoming one of the greats.

I wouldn't say "Skill," but rather, "Hard Work" or simply willingness to grind. In high school, I signed up for some courses I definitely didn't think I could handle (AP Chem in 10th grade, AP CS in 10th grade despite not knowing how to code) - simply approaching these ostensibly impossible with a growth mindset allows for great things. Just think about it this way: holistically, what you are about to undertake may seem difficult, but just take it step by step, quiz by quiz, lecture by lecture, and STUDY.

to answer your question, probably 40 luck/60 skill

In my case, it's 99% luck, 90bps personality and 5bps of skill.

PS. If I had 10bps of skill, I'd have stayed in rates instead of switching to vol

I think certainly you can make a conscious effort to put yourself in the places (locations, around the right people etc..) that increase your chances for success.. hard work will always be required unless in the rare case of pure nepotism.

Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success. Scott Adams

This is ten per cent luck, twenty per cent skill Fifteen per cent concentrated power of will Five per cent pleasure, fifty per cent pain And a hundred per cent reason to remember the name

I think about this a lot. If we limit the consideration to career success (and making money), then I would say it generally boils down to 70% luck and 30% skill/hard work. Luck is an essential element to any success story out there, and anybody who claims otherwise is likely drunk on his/her own ego. Sure, some luck can be manufactured through skill and hard work; but there are limits to that.

There is likely a distribution in the mix of luck vs. skill/hard work that equal success. I struggle to identify a success story that is 100% attributable to skill/hard work and no luck at all, while we can all point to a few examples of complete buffoons who are multimillionaires for which nearly 100% of their success can only be attributed to blind luck. Personally, I just work hard and continue to learn every day in hopes that I make myself essential to others. However, I have to acknowledge that my paradigm could change due to factors outside of my direct control at any time such that skill and hard work are no longer enough.

Mostly luck, the long tail is then hard work, determination and grit.

Luck determines your intelligence, where you're born, who you're born to, what kind of opportunities you have in life, who you meet, what you end up learning, etc etc. Once the opportunity set is there though, you have to be prepared to seize it and run - not everyone can do that.

fellatio is 95% skill so mostly skill i'd say

95% assuming some base level of intelligence. Being born in the DR of Congo over the past couple of decades versus the US is very different in guaranteeing some level of success between war and disease (Ebola and Aids). It's not really comparable, and you have zero control over where you are born.

Guess it would depend who you ask. I might say 50/50 but as I sit an think, I go back an forth on my answer.

I have one friend who looks at my situation as pure luck because I got my job offer after a flight cross country.

The other friend chooses to look at it as the right place, right time, but because of my hard work I was able to showcase myself in that situation.

So much luck, but also risk taking. I stepped into a seat two senior people said no to simply because they thought they were being put there to take the fall. I was young and took the opportunity.

To them, it was entering the game in the last minute of the 4th QTR, last day of contract, while being on the bench for the past 5 months. Mess up, you're done. Succeed, stay alive.

To me, it was bottom of 9th, 2 outs, 3 people on base, down by 3. Go in for the grand slam.

I hit it, and moved up.

I prefer the term, "When hard-work meets opportunity".

Always weird to think about. Of course I think that I worked super hard, but always wonder, "What if that first MD didn't take me under his wing?"