I think it is very important, but it is not everything. Some people who work very hard think that is the only thing that matters. It is like a degree from a good school. Hard work increases your chances and without it you have no shot. However, there are other factors that come to play. I think if you're shooting for $1mm/year income - hard work (assuming basic but not extraordinary other things like being somewhat smart, middle class upbringing, sociable, etc.) is attainable through hard work. However, when talking billions - it can be intuition, luck, connections, and more.

 
Predilection:

I think it is very important, but it is not everything. Some people who work very hard think that is the only thing that matters. It is like a degree from a good school. Hard work increases your chances and without it you have no shot. However, there are other factors that come to play. I think if you're shooting for $1mm/year income - hard work (assuming basic but not extraordinary other things like being somewhat smart, middle class upbringing, sociable, etc.) is attainable through hard work. However, when talking billions - it can be intuition, luck, connections, and more.

One could argue that connections/relationships are built through hard work. A very basic example of this could be college students networking with professionals. A more advanced example would be salespeople, such IB VPs, striving to build a strong network.

 

True. If the hard work is not seen in the childish way of just school and putting your head down then you're right. So the better analogy would be that of an investment. You invest your energy and time but have to choose well (or be lucky) to hit it big with an extraordinary return.

 
Best Response

Philip Falcone, Harbinger capital's founder said in a testimony to a congressional committee on hedge funds that one of his investors told him "I can't guarantee that if you work hard you will be successful but I can guarantee that if you don't work hard you won't be successful" that is as true a statement as they come. There are many other factors such as luck, upbringing and overall intelligence that may contribute to success but if you don't work hard you will not harness those other factors to their maximum potential.

 
NYC KID:

Philip Falcone, Harbinger capital's founder said in a testimony to a congressional committee on hedge funds that one of his investors told him "I can't guarantee that if you work hard you will be successful but I can guarantee that if you don't work hard you won't be successful" that is as true a statement as they come. There are many other factors such as luck, upbringing and overall intelligence that may contribute to success but if you don't work hard you will not harness those other factors to their maximum potential.

That's a great quote.

I think people underestimate how hard the top tier guys work.

People don't see the work that Kobe Bryant and Lebron James, entertainment people, entrepreneurs, and successful money managers actually put in to achieve their success.

I think one of the more eye-opening things in actually maturing is noticing and understanding how the top tier guys in whatever industry operate in life. Those cats really go hard for their craft.

 

I think that focus plays a major role in success. Most people think as long as they are working hard they will be successful; which may in turn open the door for such things. However, when I am focusing on something completely, I find that success will inevitably come from what I am entirely focusing on.

“Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws.” Mayer Amschel Rothschild Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.-John D. Rockefeller
 

There's a distinction between working hard and working smart. As an analyst, just putting your head down and cranking out as much work as possible is a recipe for burnout and disappointment. Working smart means making sure you're on the most important projects, ensuring your work is always top quality and making sure you keep your sanity so you can continually function at a high level.

A former CEO of a now-defunct investment bank (the successor of whom is a frequent poster on this forum) once told me he attributes his success to 2 things: luck and his desire/ability to out-learn everyone. Obviously you can't control luck, but to me out-learning everyone is a combination of a few key traits. You need the grit and determination to sacrifice your social life to acquire new knowledge, the brains to actually acquire and apply that knowledge, and the political prowess to put your new knowledge to work to maximize the benefit to yourself. I think this is a pretty wide-reaching framework for those who want to succeed in a corporate environment.

 

Success is pretty much 99% luck. That said you need to unequivocally create your own luck through hard work. There are tons of smart hard working people that just don't get that break.

Interestingly enough read this this weekend - Cornell economics professor on how success is determined by luck.

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/05/why-americans-ignore-the-role-of-l…

 
ke18sb:

Success is pretty much 99% luck. That said you need to unequivocally create your own luck through hard work. There are tons of smart hard working people that just don't get that break.

Interestingly enough read this this weekend - Cornell economics professor on how success is determined by luck.
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/05/why-americans...

99% luck eh?

 

In my short experience in the job market, I came to believe that success depends on luck, producitvity and how you market your product/results and ideas:

1) Luck, either you have it or you don't in a given moment of time. It's pointless to try to guess how much of the success was caused by luck, since it's not under control.

2) Productivity is the secret, but to get there, you're going to have to practice a lot and polish your skills. It's a time consuming, social life stealing, highly dependent on discipline process. As a result, "hard work" starts even before the actual work and keeps happening during and after it.

3) The amount of value perceived by humans may not be the actual value delivered in many cases. That's true in the products and services markets and also in the job market. It doesn't help too much to work long hours if no one (especially your boss) realize what you're doing and how good for the company it is.

"The curious task in economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design" F.A. Hayek "What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?" Adam Smith
 

I've thought a lot about this, because new brokers will ask me (not just me, other people too) how to be successful, and I usually find myself saying "work hard," without giving it much thought. here are some things I think about hard work.

  1. there is absolutely a luck component. if you were born into an upper middle/upper class family with caring parents who can fully fund your education, you are immensely better off than the majority of the population. that's not to say you're spoiled, just that you had nothing to do with that result, that's luck. if you have a family member in the business, that's lucky (for you). sure, maybe they hustled their way to the top, but that puts you so far ahead of your competition, it can't be anything but lucky for you. if you were a legacy at harvard for many years, I'm sure you had to work hard to get in, but the sheer fact that you're a legacy was lucky. guy spier is a great example of this, he's a wonderful bottoms up value fund manager. he got a top notch education, jobs at BBs in NY before starting his fund, and has absolutely crushed the market (until recently when ZINCQ fell off a cliff). his family is worth 8-9 figures, that was lucky. he had the seed money at the thanksgiving table. it was hard work and skill to beat the S&P for over 10 years in a row, but it was lucky to start a career in that manner. I'm not faulting the guy for having a wealthy family, but know the difference between luck, skill, and hard work.

  2. most people I've seen fail either were lazy or didn't do the right types of activities. too many people confuse hard work with long hours. there's a bill gates quote out there that basically says he'd rather have an engineer who's lazy because he'll solve problems quicker than one who wants to bang out 100 hour weeks. I think the same holds true in a lot of different areas. you could send your resume out to 1,000 different companies but if you're not networking or honing your skills, it's useless. same thing with my work and other sales jobs. you can build lists all day long, have the best website and linkedin, but if you're not building relationships with clients and solving problems, you're worthless, no matter how long your hours are.

  3. I also think that successful people don't focus just on one thing at a time. the best MD at your bank doesn't have just one client he's trying to please, because it's a binary outcome: elation or depression. successful people know the importance of having a pipeline of things that could help meet their goals. if you're job hunting, maybe this is interviewing at multiple places, if you're in sales, it means having several prospects in your pipeline, because if one doesn't close, that doesn't kill you, just like if you get rejected from one place, it doesn't kill you, because you have other lines in the water. your hit rate (closing a M&A deal, getting a job offer) will eventually get above 0, and when it does, people could say you got lucky or that you work hard, I think it's really both. you work hard to have a lot of options at your disposal, naturally you're going to be more polished and organized than the competition who has all his eggs in one basket, which makes you more likely to be chosen.

I think that regardless of how you define hard work, luck, all of those things, if you don't work on the right things, you are nearly guaranteed failure. I can't tell you what the right things are for your objective, but you can think of plenty of examples. the guy who's a junior anthropology major at southern bumblefuck state with a 2.8 that suddenly decides he wants to go into finance should NOT focus his efforts on gs/ms/jp, he should learn the accounting (biws, wso, etc), consider retaking some classes, or getting into a great MSF school. the analyst at a macro fund or a top down multi manager like skybridge should not spend a week developing a long thesis for VRX. either one of those would be hard work, but focused in a completely irrelevant direction. I hesitate to say working "smart," because people who use that phrase are usually lazy, but I think you get the idea.

in summary, hard work alone will get you nowhere, but if you don't work hard in the right activities, you're destined for mediocrity.

see howard marks for more: https://www.oaktreecapital.com/docs/default-source/memos/2014-01-16-get…

 

Preface to this: I am still in college.

I think it all comes back to working smarter, not harder. From what I have learned in my limited experience in the real world (applies to college and all of life as well) is that you have to consciously position yourself to move forward in your career by knowing the right people, etc. And you must do all of this while seeming sincere and acting as though you are not purposely positioning yourself to move forward. In short, you must have a plan and act as though it is coming natural to you.

I have learned in my short 22 years on earth that no matter what industry or job or club you are involved with IT IS STILL A DOG-EAT-DOG WORLD!!! The only person you can truly count on is yourself (and MAYBE, but HOPEFULLY family and close friends).

[quote=patternfinder]Of course, I would just buy in scales. [/quote] See my WSO Blog | my AMA
 

This is why there is nothing better than performance-based compensation, like trading. No one can hold you back, and if your boss pisses you off, you just take your show on the road.

You guys might scoff at the 100% commission guys, but I promise you the good ones don't give a fuck what their boss thinks and most of their bosses kiss their ass all day for making it rain.

 
Edmundo Braverman:
This is why there is nothing better than performance-based compensation, like trading. No one can hold you back, and if your boss pisses you off, you just take your show on the road.

You guys might scoff at the 100% commission guys, but I promise you the good ones don't give a fuck what their boss thinks and most of their bosses kiss their ass all day for making it rain.

Would you guys agree that this is also part of the benefit of being an entrepreneur or working for a startup?

 

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