Comment You Make Your Own Luck (Score 1) 438
I believe in luck, but I do not feel it comes about purely as a result of random chance. I believe you can make you own luck (or dramatically skew the odds in your favor) by your actions.
I dropped out of college and immersed myself in the technology world after 17 years of professional foodservice (which I did enjoy, and did quite well in) and through lots of reading, practical hands on experience, and enormous amounts of networking I managed to rise to CIO of a mid-sized private company (actually 2 companies owned by the same person), and then left to start my own business. I now consult for multi-billion dollar publicly traded companies and earn far more than many of my friends who finished college (but not all of them).
I did not waste a lot of time going out drinking, boating, and golfing during this time. I went to tech conferences (many of them are free to attend) and met many people and pursued the relationship. I joined standards and regulatory groups (i.e. NIST groups) and listened in, and then contributed. I networked my ass off, and got lucky a lot more often than others I knew.
I dropped out of college and immersed myself in the technology world after 17 years of professional foodservice (which I did enjoy, and did quite well in) and through lots of reading, practical hands on experience, and enormous amounts of networking I managed to rise to CIO of a mid-sized private company (actually 2 companies owned by the same person), and then left to start my own business. I now consult for multi-billion dollar publicly traded companies and earn far more than many of my friends who finished college (but not all of them).
I did not waste a lot of time going out drinking, boating, and golfing during this time. I went to tech conferences (many of them are free to attend) and met many people and pursued the relationship. I joined standards and regulatory groups (i.e. NIST groups) and listened in, and then contributed. I networked my ass off, and got lucky a lot more often than others I knew.
