There is no suck thing as luck. There is opportunity and the people who take advantage of it.
A "lucky" person is just someone who takes advantage of the opportunities they make for themselves.
For example, when I see someone who might be interesting to talk to, I walk up and talk to them. CTO of Amazon? Go up and say hi. Then suddenly I'm "lucky" enough to get this: http://aws.amazon.com/heroes/usa/jeremy-edberg/
So you had no advantages in life whatsoever except the ones you created for yourself? Everything good in your life is entirely your own doing? Really, there's no such thing as luck?
I was born in a wealthy country, to sane and supportive parents. I was born with a talent for mathematics and technology, and am reasonably intelligent. I had a family that encouraged learning. With the exception of some run-ins with addiction and mood disorders, I still have my health, despite my best efforts to destroy it while an addict. I am sober now partly because of the efforts of others.
I have managed to grab onto some awesome opportunities that have rolled past now that I'm healthier, and am currently working at a shockingly successful startup, but it was not strictly my own doing.
I don't disagree with what I think you're really getting at - take opportunities that present themselves, "luck is when preparation meets opportunity", don't wait around for things to happen, make them happen, and so on. I just think it's a bit of a stretch, and frankly a bit smug, to declare that there's "no such thing as luck."
It's a good attitude that seizing opportunity is something you could always try to do but it's certainly arguable luck plays a HUGE role in which specific opportunities show up.
There are countless examples and very famous and successful people will often point to all the luck in their lives. To name just one example Ed Catmull, president of Pixar and Disney Animation points out all the luck in his life in his Creativity Inc book.
Luck that Lucas decided to sell Pixar, Luck that Jobs bought it before it got disbanded. Luck that Jobs failed to turn Pixar into a computer company like he tried to do for a couple of years. Luck that Jobs was willing to sink so much money into a losing company IIRC 57 million before they switch to animation.
"Luck" is based on probability and chance, which are definitely not things that you have direct control over. Yes, you can make decisions based upon a good understanding of probability and can even often do things to improve the odds in your own favour, but only up to a point. There is a very big difference between making the most of the cards you are dealt, and choosing your own (and your opponent's) cards.
I think you are referring to attitude prior to the roll of the dice and interpretation of the outcome of the roll of the dice, rather than being able to influence the roll of the dice itself - with a positive outlook you can appear or feel more "lucky", and that is generally a good thing.
I completely agree though. There is a famous quote that goes something along the lines of "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity". If you want "luck", you need to go out and meet people! Go out and cast the net of opportunity!
Funny you linked to that exact AWS page, since I was just on there an hour ago. I was reading AWS for Dummies to prepare for an upcoming interview at AWS. I know you handled reddit's EC2 traffic. What advice would you give to somebody looking to get into a career with AWS? I'm a senior in EE at college with a background in networking and I see Amazon's cloud services only growing in the upcoming decades.
> What advice would you give to somebody looking to get into a career with AWS?
I'm not sure what they are looking for, but I'd say learn your distributed computing theory. Most every person I talk to there is quite competent in that aspect of CS.
You should be learning about things like hashing algorithms[0][1], bulkheading[2], backpressure[3], caching and cache invalidation and coherence[4], and eventual consistency[5], among other things. Start with those and you'll have a good foundation for your interview.
Heck, if you just read the pages on those topics you'll be way ahead of the game, and if you follow the related links, you can give yourself a solid foundation in a day.
There is no suck thing as luck. There is opportunity and the people who take advantage of it.
A "lucky" person is just someone who takes advantage of the opportunities they make for themselves.
For example, when I see someone who might be interesting to talk to, I walk up and talk to them. CTO of Amazon? Go up and say hi. Then suddenly I'm "lucky" enough to get this: http://aws.amazon.com/heroes/usa/jeremy-edberg/