I learned this lesson kind of by accident. I've told this story before but I think it's relevant.

When I dropped out of college the first time around in January 2012, I assumed that my career options were extremely limited. I knew I needed a job, so I applied to pretty much every wage-labor job I could find: McDonalds, Lowes, Starbucks, Aldi, Publix, etc. Almost as a joke to myself, I sent exactly one application to a software developer position on Craigslist for a Flash, Foxpro, and Coldfusion developer position.

The only company that called me back was the software job. I interviewed there, got the job, and thus my career as a software engineer was kicked off.

In hindsight I realized something: the less qualified you are for a job, the more likely a company might be to overlook a lack of qualifications. McDonalds and Aldi and Starbucks have lots of qualified people applying for these positions, meaning that they can be very picky with who they hire.

Now compare this to Flash/Coldfusion/Foxpro developers in 2012. I didn't know any of these at the time particularly well...but to my benefit neither did anyone else! As a result, they didn't get a ton of applications meaning their selection pool was tiny, meaning that they basically had to take whomever they could get.

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tuktkyk 2 hours ago | parent [-]

no realization in hindsight about luck? lol

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tombert an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Absolutely luck as well. No argument there.

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Noaidi an hour ago | parent [-]

If any of your success was determined by luck than 100% of your success was luck.

	▲	xboxnolifes 44 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That is simply not true. If 6 completely qualified people make it to the last stage of an interview based on their qualifications, but the final chosen person was done by die roll, there was still non-luck involved. No amount of luck would have gotten you to the last stage in this example, and the only way for luck to have mattered is if you also put in the leg work.
	▲	tripledry 42 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		At least they sent the application, that was effort. So it can't be 100% luck right?
	▲	tombert an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Even if I agree with that characterization, I don’t see how that changes anything from what I said before. I am sorry if you got “my success is purely because I am a hyper-talented genius” from my anecdote there, because that certainly wasn’t intended. There was absolutely luck involved, no argument, but my point about “applying to a job I wasn’t qualified for” still can hold.

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stronglikedan an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

no realization that luck is involved in every opportunity that crosses your path so there's no realizations to be had regarding luck