I think the confusion here is in part because success is so nebulous a term.

Consider success in the stock market, that’d be getting significantly better returns than the vast majority of people. Success in general is the same thing. If you don’t “beat the market” ie the average by a significant margin, you don’t really standout from the crowd as a success. Like the stock market: there is not general recipe that when followed will make you successful. That doesn’t mean there aren’t general things you can do to improve your odds of success, a simple proof of this is considering the negative: if you killed yourself youd lower your chances of finding success, so not killing yourself helps. Same with not getting locked up in jail, not murdering people, etc

Another fact is: success is not entirely luck else rich people (if that’s what we’re calling success) wouldn’t have so much in common. That doesn’t mean rich people and poor people are two different species, but clearly there are traits and behaviors that tend to increase your success odds.

If it’s a recipe you’re looking for, not that I’m all that successful, I’d say: know what you want to achieve, and devote significant time, effort, and thought towards achieving it, taking advantage of every opportunity you can, learning as much as possible, deliberate seek out luck filled situations like meeting new people, and be adaptable. If you do that for long enough and you aren’t successful, then a revolution is called for.

The bill gates example always gets rolled out for some reason, he's an outlier. For most people, if they are at a good university, doing something they are good at, then graduating is probably a good idea. Bill gates made a calculated decision, Paul Allen persuaded him that they were about to miss out on the micro computer revolution. If you look at what bill gates accomplished as an under grad, there is a strong argument that he wasn't going to gain anything from staying on (Google the pancake problem bill gates). One of his professors remarked to a colleague that some kid bill is probably the smartest person he has ever met.

In short defining bill gates as a college drop out is a ridiculously narrow view. I'm guessing most people who drop out aren't on a path to success.

Wasn't his very affluent private high school one of the first schools in the nation to have a computer at the time? Again, this kind points back to something another post said about how one's success (in terms of monetary achievement) is strongly correlated to one's parental success. I mean, his mother held a high position in IBM at the time, and his father was a very successful lawyer while living in Seattle, Washington (a then, current affluent area of the US).

I'm not saying he wasn't some genius, or wasn't driven, or wasn't better than most in some way.

I just notice the part about Gates growing up in the ghettos of Baltimore or growing up in a trailer park in the deep, rural South, working multiple jobs while in high school just to survive, etc. is missing for him success story. Same goes for Musk, Jobs, etc.. Wealth doesn't guarantee success, but...

Wealth => greater % of better opportunities => greater % chance of being successful.

Luck plays a large role -- lucky to be intelligent, lucky to be rich, lucky to be in good health, lucky to be born in the right place, etc.. People hate to admit it because it takes away from their egocentric identities, but if Gates grew up in a poor rice farming village in Vietnam at the same time he grew up, we wouldn't be talking about him right now.

It's an outlier, but Gates is far from the only prominent figure in tech who dropped out. It's a whole dang cliche at this point- Jobs, Zuckerberg, Ellison, Dorsey, Dell, Kalanick, Gabe Newell, Jan Koum of WhatsApp all dropped out. Even Page dropped out of his PhD program! Not to mention dropouts from other industries, from Richard Branson to Henry Ford.

This reoccurring pattern in tech is probably why Thiel came up with his whole "don't go to college" narrative.

If you're talking about "success" as in getting a job, having a gapless resume, good background check, good credit, fitting the corporate mold, becoming the "organization man," etc., then you need to a college degree.

However, this is not a path to the _kind_ of success Bill Gates had, which has to do with getting in early on some new field's new monopoly.

And watching that new field like a hawk, and outcompeting all the other hawks.

A lot the "outcompeted" still left with billions.

Focus on the common traits not a few outliers. Also some people had success despite certain behaviours they engaged in, or started those after reaching success.

> Many guitar gods use drugs

After becoming guitar gods, yes.

These responses just make me laugh. Do you really think you're going to improve your odds of success by failing to complete high school? from prison? desperately searching for your next drug fix?