COcheesehead
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Everybody should read the book Outliers.
How many have read Ringworld by Larry Niven? A risk adverse alien is building a team for a potentially dangerous task. As part of the team, he wants someone who is very lucky. However, he cannot get or often even find the candidates that are deemed to be the very most lucky. (They are too lucky to get involved in a dangerous venture.)
Luck plays a huge part, no question about it. Two people can have the exact same skill set yet one is lucky enough to work for a company whose stock options pay off 1000x and the other has their company go belly up.
This may not be the best example. I think it would be up to the other one to leave a company that wasn't compensating him well enough for his skills. There's 'exact same skills' and then there's ambition.
If I felt underappreciated by my company, or in a loser company, I would go find a company that did rather than blame my bad luck. Actually, that is exactly what I did way back when.
"Life isn't fair. It's your job to go to where it isn't fair in your favor" (anon)
How many have read Ringworld by Larry Niven? A risk adverse alien is building a team for a potentially dangerous task. As part of the team, he wants someone who is very lucky. However, he cannot get or often even find the candidates that are deemed to be the very most lucky. (They are too lucky to get involved in a dangerous venture.)
Non of the many “lucky” advantages, such as being born in America, are not enough to prevent you from having a pretty crappy life, if you do not take the right steps to avail yourself of them.
Most of this type of talk is political, and another way to increase “resentment against achievement”... read the book of the same name, by Robert Sheaffer.
You are likely fooling yourself the same way a market timer fools themselves if you think you can reliably predict the success of a company even while working there. It also sometimes is not super easy to just pick up and leave after you have settled down, bought a house, etc.
Did no one read the study the OP posted:
"...Taking these sort of findings seriously, the European Research Council gave the biochemist Ohid Yaqub 1.7 million dollars to properly determine the extent of serendipity in science.
Coming up with a multidimensional definition of serendipity, Yaqub was last seen boarding a plane for South America. When he was later apprehended in Belize in his mansion with in infinity pool, Yaqub was quoted as saying he was demonstrating in a very personal way of how luck played an important role in life outcomes. The European Research Council declined comment on study and said it was reviewing it's grant screening process"
And now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Luck is the intersection of opportunity and preparation.
Everybody should read the book Outliers.
I've always believed to a large extent one makes their own luck, good or bad.
Why? His parents happened to live next to one of the few universities that had a computer and he got a job there. Yes HE coded till his hands hurt I am sure, but would the opportunity even existed had his parents chose to live somewhere else?