You're also using a limited angle of success (Larry and Sergey's business success via google). Many of the other "best programmers" on your 1000 person list may have non-commercial success (their creative project leads to a highly cited paper for example).

If you just took the top 1000 programmers (again assuming you could) in 2003, it's unlikely that Mark Zuckerberg would have been one of them. Not that he wasn't a great hacker, but what metric could have demonstrated his creative/business abilities as an undergraduate?

Of course luck is involved in anything. Einstein was "lucky" that he happened to be obsessed with the relative speed of light to different parties at a time when we knew a bit about how light/gravity etc worked. Perhaps if he'd been born in Newton's time, his style of intellect would not have had the same impact. Nonetheless we can, in hindsight, only measure someone's achievement, not his/her luck.

No doubt hyper-achievement (like Einsteins' or Zuckerbergs') is evidence that the achiever possesses a high degree of work ethic AND talent with at least a bit luck thrown in. No doubt that you would agree Hyper-achievers are a subset of "Potential Hyper-achievers" (those with talent & work ethic) and someone's level of achievement will roughly correspond to his/her personal characteristics.

In a particular poker game, it's mostly luck whether you come out ahead, but over time (as in life) those who practice harder and play smarter will (usually) come out on top.

I would argue luck does play a big role, and that they weren't lucky enough to be born into a country with the standard of living, educational resources, and number of tech jobs that Americans have is the major differentiating factor.

Also it is a bit of a logical fallacy to say just because luck is not the main factor in success that being unsuccessful means you are lazy or dumb rather than unlucky.

You can take the luck argument too far though. You were lucky to be born as the you that you know because there were millions of other sperm competing to fertilize your mother's egg.

But honestly, I came pretty close to "winning" by the time I was 10 years old. I was born in one of the richest countries of the world, to well-off parents who were science/technology-minded, attending a good school district, etc. I also happen to have computer science as one of my strengths from a young age, partly due to foresighted parents who sent me to an after-school Logo program, and partly due to what feels like natural affinity. That pays well, while I could just as easily imagine being gifted in something less-lucrative, like music or history (I'm personally completely in awe of people who have perfect pitch and what seems like an innate sense of rhythm). I had to do relatively little on top of all that to succeed, at least compared to what other people would've had to do to succeed similarly. Basically had to not completely fuck it up. (And I assure you I am lazy as shit compared to a lot of people doing less well.)

When I see "fail fast", what I really think is: "increase your sample size".

But you can't directly control luck. You can directly influence the other factors, and while luck does play an important role, so do other factors. To borrow a quote, "The harder I work, the luckier I get."

In this view, the lucky may not have recognized opportunity better, just created better opportunities for themselves (through hard work). Even if this notion isn't completely correct, I like how it incentivises working rather than waiting.

Edit: corrected my phone's overzealous auto-correct.

ps. huge fan of Empire! thank you sir for working on that game. i think Sid Meier cited it as a design influence for Civilization as well.

"In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind."