I think the criticism is not so illogical. Let's just assume your company has a 5% chance of wild success and you can double it by working insanely hard (I think these numbers are likely generous, but easier to take round numbers for the sake of argument). It is in this case simultaneously true that it's in VCs' interest to convince you to work very hard and also that it's probably not in your interest. It only makes sense for them to promote because the one or two lucky groups will make up for all the duds.
I don't think the point is "hard work has no effect on outcome", but rather "for nearly all people who end up successful, luck played a very significant role which is often minimized", and as a corollary "hard work is not a sufficient condition for success, but successful people tend to portray it as such".
For a good summary of this argument, I recommend the (fairly short) Veritasium video that has been posted several times already in this discussion: https://youtu.be/3LopI4YeC4I
Perhaps this point is a bit too anecdotal, but I've certainly encountered the "just work hard and you'll make it" attitude a lot. And its inverse, people assuming that unsuccessful people must be unsuccessful because of their personal flaws.
In any case, that's the corollary, not the main point. Which is:
> I don't think the point is "hard work has no effect on outcome", but rather "for nearly all people who end up successful, luck played a very significant role which is often minimized"
You ever read jwz’s “Watch a VC Use My Name to Sell a Con”?
>
I did make a bunch of money by winning the Netscape Startup Lottery, it's true. So did most of the early engineers. But the people who made 100x as much as the engineers did? I can tell you for a fact that none of them slept under their desk. If you look at a list of financially successful people from the software industry, I'll bet you get a very different view of what kind of sleep habits and office hours are successful than the one presented here.
> So if your goal is to enrich the Arringtons of the world while maybe, if you win the lottery, scooping some of the groundscore that they overlooked, then by all means, bust your ass while the bankers and speculators cheer you on.
The controversy is that while it technically increases your chances, increasing infinitesimal chances to slightly less infinitesimal chances isn’t necessarily worth your health. But if you have a stake in tons of companies hey, one of them will probably pay off if everyone is sacrificing everything for them.
I still don't understand what is so difficult about this. If you work hard, you're more likely to succeed. Not guaranteed to succeed. Luck still matters, although a lot less than people think.
Whether or not VCs are justified in earning their returns is a completely different issue. This has nothing to do with hard work and everything to do with investment and dilution.
The "controversy" is this online meme that everything is just "random" and "luck" and no one, anywhere, can ever do anything to be successful. The entire world is nothing but a Vegas casino.
It's just rationalization for laziness and frankly, it's completely uninteresting. No one who has actual business experience thinks this.
Expand on this and taboo the word 'lazy' or the insult it comes with? "It's a rationalization for understanding that you aren't going to be Jeff Bezos. Unpicking the cultural idea that the more you suffer, the more you gain, and stop ruining your physical and mental health and social connections in a frantic all-out hard work obsession. Rebalance, and learn to be happier with the very ordinary non-millionaire life you will almost certainly get regardless of how hard you work".
> "The "controversy" is this online meme that everything is just "random" and "luck" and no one, anywhere, can ever do anything to be successful."
That is not the point of the meme. The point of the meme is to counter the "you Amazon warehouse worker, fast food worker, retail worker, call center worker, teacher, shouldn't expect a living wage or a pay rise or a better minimum wage, or a home, or medical cover, etc. because you are lazy. We know that because if you were working hard you'd be rich. Since you aren't rich, you must not be working hard. QED." norm.
Jeff Bezos packed boxes by hand using a door as a makeshift table at the start of Amazon! Well, a hundred million factory and warehouse and commercial kitchen and food processing plant workers are looking at that story with annoyance. It's not because they think Bezos didn't work hard. It's that they work equally hard at the same kind of work, for a lot longer, and nothing like the same return. And buried somewhere in the side comments "Jeff Bezos' parents invested $250,000" in mid-90s dollars. Yeah, sure, it was the hard work packing boxes on cheap homemade tables, that's the spin y'all put on the source of his success? It's not luck that he chose to start a company instead of working in a factory, but if a truck driver from Iowa tried to start an online bookstore in 1994 with no computer science background from Princeton, no wealthy parents, no background in a Wall Street firm known for "developing mathematical models to exploit anomalies in the market", no access to a home with a garage to work from, how much value is this "if you don't make it, it proves you're lazy" rhetoric adding to the world?
The meme is unpicking the logical fallacies "if hard work -> success, hard work is inherently virtuous, then success implies moral virtue (regardless of cause of success), and absense of massive success implies moral failure and laziness".
"Lazy" is a cheap dismissive non-explanation insult.
Nothing of what you wrote here relates to this link by PG or to what I wrote. Thinking that hard work is good and should be encouraged does not mean you think working class people shouldn’t have healthcare or that class mobility shouldn’t be easy.
This is really the fundamental issue I alluded to. Long political screeds filled with emotional appeals that have little to nothing to do with the topic.
Do you think "you could be Bill Gates, Lionel Messi or PG Wodehouse or Patrick Collison", "you could do great things!", counts as an emotional appeal? That's the carrot PG is dangling in the essay, and it feels more emotional than logical.
>That is not the point of the meme. The point of the meme is to counter the "you Amazon warehouse worker, fast food worker, retail worker, call center worker, teacher, shouldn't expect a living wage or a pay rise or a better minimum wage, or a home, or medical cover, etc. because you are lazy. We know that because if you were working hard you'd be rich. Since you aren't rich, you must not be working hard. QED.
I think the fundamental confusion is that this meme itself is an misrepresentation and strawman used in the ideological battle between right and left politics in the US. Nobody is claiming that blue collar workers are categorically lazy, especially not populist right politicians courting their votes.
Reasonable people across the political spectrum can agree that financial success is combination of hard work + aptitude + luck. They are likely to differ on the relative impact of each factor, and the degree to which the government should act as a equalizer to correct for aptitude and luck. It is a major problem that both sides choose to fight this issue in the context of extreme outliers and apply the conclusions to everyday situations.
Personally, I think the meme of emphasizing luck to the exclusion of hard work is destructive. When the belief is taken to the extreme and hard work doesn't improve outcomes, the path to improving your situation changes from being more productive and improving yourself. Why bother learning a new trade, relocating for a better job, building something, or taking risks if there is no payoff.
It is as though you are not reading what I'm saying. Let's try analogy. If you work really hard at it you're more likely to become an NFL quarterback. Does that mean it's a good idea to neglect everything else to chase that dream or that Roger Goodell would suggest that to you out of careful consideration of your welfare?
