As a contractor I work indirectly for the government, but I am not an official DOD employee/GS grade employee. Those jobs are harder to get. They have hiring freezes all the time. Also there is a one year "probationary period" where they can fire you at any time, but it's rare in my field of expertise. I know exactly one guy who never made it through his first year, but believe me he was incompetent and had it coming. That said once you get past your first year it takes a harder to get fired/the job is stable. One downside to being GS is you might get transferred - no thanks to that! Disclaimer the GS rules might have changed in the past few years. I lost touch with a lot of the guys from work who took GS jobs and I'm going by how it was for them at the time. I do know all of them started out at GS-11 with a couple of them starting at GS-12.
Guilty! No shame in my game. That is the first graph I've seen that looks like land-navigation training (which is awesome and useful, at least to me).
The point is, your job is specialized, it's in a specific area (not throughout the US like McDonald's or Wal-Mart), and obtaining that job can be difficult. So, it's not just about your choices. While they did come in to play, you also lucked out in many ways.
Yes luck is often a factor in success. But luck can't kick in unless you set the stage for your success, and be prepared as much as possible and take advantages of the opportunities prevented to you along the way until your luck kicks in, or even after your luck kicks in. Luck can't exist in a vacuum if that makes sense.
That's it right there. That's the part you are not getting. Those advantages and opportunities do not present themselves to everyone. So, while you lucked out, others were not so lucky. That is not a character flaw. That's life.
That was the game changer for me on the economics side. That, on average, the economy does better under Democratic governments than Republican. Well, and we've been waiting for the trickle down for forty years and I'm still waiting on my trickle to start while the rich have gotten exponentially richer. Edit to add: I don't begrudge Jeff Bezos for being rich. But, I do begrudge a poorly planned, poorly implemented regressive tax structure that allows the ultra-rich to pay what amounts to pocket change in taxes. If I have to pay 30% of my income in taxes, so should he. Period. Full stop.
My point is quite often opportunities do present themselves but people don't take advantage of them, or never recognized the opportunities, or didn't want to take a risk. Did you ever notice how "good luck" happens to people who are working the hardest and more often than the average Joe? In other words for people that can never catch a break if you asked them "did you try X? Did you try Y? Have you considered Z?" you might find holes in their career/life strategy.
No, actually, quite the opposite. People who have "lucked out", generally say they did nothing more than anyone else did, that they acknowledge that "hard work" wasn't an issue. Same with me. I totally lucked out being where I am. People who "worked hard" and did everything the boss said, well, they all have lost their jobs to outsourcing. I'm only still employed because my previous bosses didn't like me and chose me as the one to move when shit was about to go down. I can name on both hands the people who kept their jobs because the boss wanted to "save them" and now both them and the boss are gone. Everyone one of those people would tell you that I did not work hard and that they did.
A winning lottery ticket is "lucking out." For everyone else, it's a hard slog toward possible success, depending upon what your definition of "success" is. If it's sending out 10-15 resumés a month and finally getting a response (Note: Not a job offer, not even a "you need to spend the next three weeks going through our rigorous vetting process" reply), but the Second Step, which is usually "Hey, we got your resumé, here's what you need to go through to earn more than McDonald's would pay [with benefits, which we do not offer]," which is not followed by the "Thanks for trying but fuck you anyway" email but "Yeah, ooookaaay, we'll hire you, but we're offering less than we promised on the job boards...", that's a success. Doesn't pay the rent, but whatayagonna do?
That's pretty much human nature. Everybody thinks they did more than you and deserve what you have more than you do. Some people do truly get lucky sometimes, but nobody is lucky all of the time. Garamet mentioned winning the lottery. It might seem like a lottery winner is "lucky" but for all we know that person might play the lottery constantly. Odds are they will "get lucky" before the person who only buys one lottery ticket every few months. My point is luck comes and goes at random. But if you don't set the stage and prepare for when luck does hit you can't take advantage of it. We can't control when luck (good or bad) will hit but we can control our attitude, work ethic, tenacity, discipline, etc. so we are in a position to jump when good luck says "go!" If luck were a seed, would it grow and produce in good well prepared soil or neglected soil? I guess that is one way to think about it.
Actually, the odds are that they will lose a lot more money over the years than the person who only buys one lottery ticket every few months. Buying lots of lottery tickets is not a good strategy, so if it happens to pay off for you, then you were lucky. Very lucky.
You missed my point. Okay I'll use another example: deer hunting! Some deer hunters seem to "get lucky" more than others. But if you research further those hunters just plain outwork the average hunter. They do more off season recon, they spend more time in the deer stand in all types of weather, they constantly practice with their weapons of choice, etc. etc.
No, I didn't miss your point. Your post about deer hunting makes the point. Your point about the lottery doesn't. That's why you pay attention to illustrations: sometimes they just don't fit. And by the way, I agree with your point in general. "Luck" favors (somewhat...) those who are making a serious effort and doing the things that are the most helpful. But buying lots of lottery tickets is not "the most helpful" if your goal is to come into a huge amount of money. That's why garamet's point was absolutely correct: there is such a things as plain luck, and if you win the lottery, then that's all there is to it. But she, too, is agreeing with your point that, other than in cases like that, "luck" usually involves a lot of effort and perseverance. You just tried to make the principle too general by claiming that the lottery is not necessarily an exception, when it is. Always.
It would depend on the lottery. I personally know folks who have won the smaller amounts (2K or 5K dollars) more than once. Granted not many people win a multi-million dollar lottery more than once but it's not unheard of.
Luck. Being n the right place at the right time. Having the necessary skills when opportunity presents. Those are all variations of luck. Not hard work.
"Having the necessary skills" is rarely a matter of luck. If you don't put in the hard work and try to keep your skillset expanding and maintained to a high level but your peers do - any guesses who will end up being in the right place at the right time more often?
Great analogy! Take two hunters who want to catch deer who put in equal time, effort, and money. One lives near you, the other near me. Which would you expect to have the best chance of catching deer?
in the off chance that you are not trolling or just trying to get a rise out of me, let me clarify - try to keep up: two hunters living near me are hunting the same square mile under the same State Of Georgia hunting regulations, have the same amount of free time, and have the same budget to spend on trail cameras, tree stands, guns, archery equipment, camo clothing, etc. One hunter spends every spare minute engaged in preparing for or actually in the stand hunting, but the other hunter only puts in a fraction of the effort. Over several hunting seasons which hunter will consistently harvest more deer and/or higher quality deer (older smarter males with larger antlers)? Does this make sense to you? In other words it's an apples-to-apples comparison with the only variable being who takes hunting more seriously/puts in more time and effort.
Then why did you mock my first hunting analogy? I thought it was a given that we are comparing people in similar situations, not outrageously dissimilar.
The House has voted to override Trump's veto of the NDAA. Looks like even a bunch of Republican representatives from the Deep South weren't willing to go along with Trump's Confederate worship in this case.
Why don't you share with us your knowledge of the other issues? Oh, that's right - you're afraid to share your opinions.
I believe the other one was his temper tantrum over Twitter putting notices on his disinformation, which had nothing to do with defense appropriations.
To be fair you can only say they are the two main reasons for Trumps veto if you read what Trump has given as his two main reasons for vetoing.
"Naming Items of the Department of Defense..." made me wonder if there was any current kit named for a Confederate. The last vehicle named that way that I can think of would be the M36 Jackson tank destroyer, but like all US tanks/tank destroyers that they used during the war, the British actually named it. US nomenclature during the war wasn't "Sherman", "Stuart", or "Lee". It was "M4 Medium", "M3 [or M5] Light", and "M3 Medium". The names didn't get used here until after the war.
hmmm....I'm surprised that nobody has complained about the Confederate soldier's graveyard here at (what is still) Fort Gordon.
