The article isn't wrong or incorrect in itself, but since the definition of "doing great things" once again centers on extreme Bill-Gates-level success, I take issue with two points:
In these extreme examples (Gates, Bezos, Musk, etc) the environment is the true differentiator to go from success to extreme success. Not talent, not working hard. Doing the right thing at the right time in the right environment creates the snowball effect. It still requires hard work, but hard work is not rare or unique. Bezos is about a 100.000 times richer than a "plain" successful millionaire, so surely hard work is not the game changer here.
Success requires hard work, extreme success requires luck or foresight. In the case of Gates clearly luck, as he pretty much missed every single tech trend in the decades to come. He has zero foresight, but I'm sure he worked hard in his most energetic years, like pretty much everybody.
I protest against leaving out the luck factor as these people and their admirers truly believe they are some god-like character, a 1000 times smarter than everybody else.
There has been an entire industry trying to replicate the success of Jobs, for example. As if you can replicate that. You can't replicate any of these outcomes as they are time-bound. You can do exactly what Jobs did and the outcome would be shit, no matter your talent or how hard you work.
The second part of my protest is completely leaving out the enablers of your success: workers. 99.9999% of your wealth in the case of extreme success is delivered by them, not you. Not even mentioning that is classic hero admiration. And this doesn't even go into how often the relation is highly exploitative. We know the issue with Amazon workers, as well as the true reason of Microsoft's success: the merciless elimination of competitors in criminal ways.
In these extreme examples (Gates, Bezos, Musk, etc) the environment is the true differentiator to go from success to extreme success. Not talent, not working hard. Doing the right thing at the right time in the right environment creates the snowball effect. It still requires hard work, but hard work is not rare or unique. Bezos is about a 100.000 times richer than a "plain" successful millionaire, so surely hard work is not the game changer here.
Success requires hard work, extreme success requires luck or foresight. In the case of Gates clearly luck, as he pretty much missed every single tech trend in the decades to come. He has zero foresight, but I'm sure he worked hard in his most energetic years, like pretty much everybody.
I protest against leaving out the luck factor as these people and their admirers truly believe they are some god-like character, a 1000 times smarter than everybody else.
There has been an entire industry trying to replicate the success of Jobs, for example. As if you can replicate that. You can't replicate any of these outcomes as they are time-bound. You can do exactly what Jobs did and the outcome would be shit, no matter your talent or how hard you work.
The second part of my protest is completely leaving out the enablers of your success: workers. 99.9999% of your wealth in the case of extreme success is delivered by them, not you. Not even mentioning that is classic hero admiration. And this doesn't even go into how often the relation is highly exploitative. We know the issue with Amazon workers, as well as the true reason of Microsoft's success: the merciless elimination of competitors in criminal ways.