So to me - and not wanting to speak for the OP of course - but the way I look at this is that the simple encouragement of "I made it and you can too" is more motivating than "I made it but then again looking back I had a ton of lucky coincidences that you probably won't have so, sure, try it, but don't expect success" :)

It's good for motivation and ... less good for social policy.

For those struggling through poverty - one must know that one CAN succeed, or else you end up in a psychological hole waiting for the next nibble of luck. A tempered balance of both optimism and also a real social safety net seems like the best of both worlds to me.

I’m pretty sure things would be very different today if I didn’t have that hope. Don’t take the hope from people even if it’s a long shot.

For all those reading this who are in a bad place financially or otherwise - YOU CAN DO IT! Do not listen to nay sayers and just do your best (or better yet, do even better - you can never really know your own limits/potential unless you try). It’s not a done deal, but is better than the alternative.

Seems like such thinking is a symptom of our current political BS. Having experienced some pretty crappy times, would you honestly think I’d oppose NOT subjecting others to the same misery?! Of course not, no one should experience these and everyone deserves basic dignity.

For what it’s worth, I don’t actually know of an implemented system that is sufficient in preventing/mitigating enough of the poverty. (EDIT: if we had basic income, that would probably do it, without means testing/etc) US situation is unbelievable in that regard - not only do we not have a safety net to speak of, our medical care system is a fast track to poverty and bankruptcy.

This is something we as a society need to deal with, and not disregard a systematic problem with anecdotal success stories and saying "You can too!"

It is very sad if you ask me. Some people hold the worldview that becoming poor and staying poor are things entirely outside of one's own control. Success stories threaten that worldview, so people admonish those who "made it" and remind them that they are nothing but lucky.

Today I am forcing myself to go through the motions of an application - and I am constantly asking myself why am I doing this, because they will just find fault with me and not respond.

Most everyone in my orbit has improved their situation too. Sometimes that was with help from a family member, but generally things have gotten better for friends who were in the same circumstances I was.

The two exceptions are those who got into drugs and never got out (a few folks I know seemed to never have issues, but they're the exception and not the rule) and a single friend who has some non-drug problems that probably need counseling work.

IMO it was passion for reading and building things with our hands that that seperated our cohort from the rest - that and the bond between those of us who knew we hadn't much of a safety net to rely on.

Good books and good company were all I had and all I think I'll ever need - that and the satisfaction of a job well done be it a piece of code well written, a field well groomed and raked or a McDonalds well wiped and scrubbed.

Luck is important, but it’s a mistake to try to attribute the success of others purely to luck. Someone winning the lottery is lucky. Someone who gets hired because a company noticed their quality GitHub commits to a project relevant to their needs is also lucky, but their success isn’t the result of luck alone.

I think we’ve become so afraid of giving the impression of victim-blaming people who are down on their luck that we’re afraid to acknowledge that people can and do work their way into better life circumstances.

Even if we think of luck as the central determinant of a person’s success in life, then we still have to acknowledge that the person’s own choices and actions will pivot their destiny around that luck. Licking in to a dream job through connections and serendipity doesn’t go very far if someone decides not to put in the effort required to succeed at the job, for example.

I read this rhetoric constantly, then I look at a bunch of hard working people that I know, who are poor.

Luck is the opportunity to succeed, hard work is the way to capitalize on that opportunity. One without the other means no success. And on that same note, you can make "good decision" that cause you to miss out on amazing opportunities, and "bad decisions" that end you up in with great opportunities.

I've made plenty of decisions that I thought at the time were kinda dumb, but put me in serendipitous situations which ended up landing me great jobs. So really, the luckier you are, the more chances you'll have to escape poverty; if you're willing to work hard at those critical times, you'll actually succeed.

And probably and equal amount of decisions that could have turned out better.

So rather than being the result of one or two lucky or unlucky events, the final outcome is more likely to be the average of the quality of all the decisions over time.

for instance, consider success to be a knowable function (like y = ax^2 + bx + c ). luck would be like having high (initial) coefficients and constants through no effort of your own (e.g., being born into a wealthy, connected family). hard work and good decisions might allow you to increase (or decrease through neglect/bad decisions) these coefficients at the margin, but the relative advantage often remains many multiples of the disadvantaged.

E.g. I aced an interview question on GC design because, after doing some GC tuning for a web app at work I read GC docs and then a couple research papers at home to understand it better. After the (group) interview loop, someone told me they were asked a hypothetical SQL backend design question they had trouble with, and I realized I knew then how SQL Server solved that, for similar reasons, so I could have aced that question too. Sure, I could have gotten yet another design question that I knew nothing about ("unlucky"), but to even have a chance to get "lucky" you need to prepare... to win the lottery you at a minimum need to buy a ticket ;)

As for the luck of the birth, almost by definition, when you are poor you grow up surrounded by people in similar circumstances; if you "make it", it is very easy to judge those who didn't, because well, they were in similar circumstances to you and you saw what they did differently, often in detail.

"I made it and you can too."

Note that I emphasized "can" in that quote. "Can", not "will". This isn't a guarantee by throwaway-0987, it's words of encouragement to try.

On a forum that celebrates startup moonshots, I find it odd that anyone would piss on the idea that trying is worth while.

The thing is, socioeconomic status affects our outlook. It doesn't matter if you're poor, rich, or somewhere inbetween. A simple example is taking advantage of opportunities. You may be unaware that they exist, view them as being out of reach, or simply see the risk as being too high. Only one of those even imply that chance plays a role. It is also worth noting that values may play a role. Some people like to blame being poor on bad decisions. While it may be true that some decisions are bad in the sense of generating wealth, they may be good decisions in other respects. Many jobs serve have social value or serve the public good, yet are woefully under compensated. Some people will choose that path simply because they are more intersted in serving others and simply don't have the will to be selfseving.

I think the "can" is applicable here and can think that even while acknowledging there are people who can't physically work. I don't want to put words in your mouth, so I'll ask: is this the only reason you object to using the word "can"? What would be more accurate in your view?

[0] We're talking about routine success here, not Elon Musk. We're talking about avoiding poverty, not going to Mars.

But to see the world through the lens 'everyone van make it, just put effort and stop worrying' is simply absurd.

The concept of Talent Stacking: https://personalexcellence.co/blog/talent-stack/

Those who accrue and leverage a variety of skills tend to get 'lucky'. This is why you could strip most entrepreneurs of all their money and assets, and not be surprised to see them enjoying success in 5 years. You put into place a system that makes making the right decisions inevitable, and learning from the wrong decisions.

To believe that your success is out of your hands is incredibly disempowering. I understand it's primary function is to help you empathize with others, but it subconsciously has a hold on you. A very limiting belief, I'd 'yeet' it immediately.

Of course you need to put the work in, but the deck is stacked in your favor if your family is very well off (and frankly you need to do far less work, due to nepotism and everything else), and massively stacked against you if you come from a poor family.

The point isn’t that they’d be poor if you took away what they built... it’s that they succeed in building it in the first place! That process of building wealth in all its forms is the key.

It’s not easy. It’s definitely not fair. Some people start out way ahead. Some people start out way behind and don’t even have role models to show how it’s done. It always takes time. My view is that you just have to accept people where they are, respect their efforts, politely look past their structural (dis)advantages, and deal with them as human beings who deserve love and support for their own sake.

I find the developments of cheap solar power + low latency satlite internet + digital banking(access to stable currencies + inflation hedges + global transactions) as essential to deliver the services that the most successful and privileged have used, to the poverty stricken around the world.

As these people join the fold, do we prepare them documentation, do nothing, or set up roadblocks?

Sometimes they are able to do a minor hurt to a vast number of people (marketing, some sales, etc...) and they don't feel like they are doing anything wrong. Sometimes they are just conforming to the standards our society has set, (everybody is doing it).

I myself try to do the best, but I've discovered the only way to advance is to job hop my way to a decent salary. I'm sure this has caused problems for others, but it's accepted in this industry. I've seen others who won't job hop languish with much lower salaries.

If you study the right things, you'll get "lucky" in interviews because the more problems you've seen in the domain, the more likely you are to be tested against the knowledge you've already acquired. But that's clearly not luck - it's preparation. You won't ace every interview, but you'll do well in enough.

I made the wrong decisions several times. I lacked focus in and after university that cost me several years in my twenties. As soon as I made a plan to change things, the plan worked. When a plan goes wrong, you evaluate and make a new plan. Every idea doesn't always work - you just need one that does.

Sounds fortunate. This is one aspect where I too have been "lucky" in the past, but you have to be both lucky and good.

Some of the advice I wish friends would take is this: accept help wherever you can get it, as long as it won't distort your relationship or create an untenable dependency.