I think this is a good mental model to employ, but also has the potential to poison positivity.
Hard work and perseverance can (and IME often does) lead to success. There's this attractive narrative that any outlier success is entirely built from seedy/unethical/immoral/corrupt acts. This narrative helps to justify and excuse mediocrity. Instead, we should be asking the hard questions which may encourage harder/smarter work and perseverance.
Doing well and creating great stuff can be due to hard work but raising to certain positions of power definitely requires gaming the system in ways that can be seen as anti ethical or at least counter to the alleged ethos of the company, group, etc.
People in different hierarchies end up optimizing for their careers and detract from any Analysis that will conclude otherwise, putting themselves in positions where they have always someone to deflect to and focus on personal branding over real results because, in the end, it's what allow them to also have real results some times.
It's an "end justifies the means" and "it's the name of the game".
It becomes more and more buteocratic, political and networkey the higher you climb/interact.
Those will be very interested in talking abour merit ( pretending others are "mediocre") and fairness while playing under different rules
I agree with you - not all success can be achieved only through hard work.
I feel that our (societal) culture is all about bringing down those who achieve success by vilifying them for specific actions. My purpose of my post was purely to shed light that carrot problems are not as common as one may think and that they are only part of the story.
Said another way, the article is right that what is said about success and how it was achieved is often a marketing oriented autobiography. That doesn't necessarily mean that the lies and embellishments conceal insidious actions.
I find that people place too much emphasis on "hard" work and not the "right" work. Personally, I know too many people who have worked their butts off... on the wrong problems.
It's quite simple to continue sweating on the same path, if not easy. But it feels like people prefer difficulty to complexity.
Of course, even working hard on the right problems carries no guarantee. Yet, life isn't about guarantees, but about rigging the dice in your favor.
If hard work and perseverance are your North Star, I kinda assume listening to VCs and famous people's success stories won't bring you much in the first place.
Hard work and perseverance can (and IME often does) lead to success. There's this attractive narrative that any outlier success is entirely built from seedy/unethical/immoral/corrupt acts. This narrative helps to justify and excuse mediocrity. Instead, we should be asking the hard questions which may encourage harder/smarter work and perseverance.