> who lucked into his current position
Which can be said for most of the survivorship-biased "greats" we talk about. Right time, right place.
(Although to be fair — and we can think of the Two Steves, or Bill and Paul — there are often a number of people at the right time and right place — so somehow the few we still talk about knew to take advantage of that right time and right place.)
it's weird how nobodies will always tell themselves succesful people got there by sheer blind luck
yet they can never seem to explain why those succesful people all seem to have similar traits in terms of work ethic and intelligence
you'd think there would be a bunch of lazy slackers making it big in tech but alas
I think you might have it backward. Luck here implies starting with exactly the same work ethic and abilities as millions of other people that all hope to one day see their numbers come up in the lottery of limited opportunities. It's not to say that successful people start off as lazy slackers as you say, but if you were to observe one such lazy slacker who's made a half-assed effort at building something that even just accidentally turned out to be a success, you might see that rare modicum of validation fuel them enough that the motivation transforms them into a workhorse. Often time, when the biography is written, lines are slightly redrawn to project the post-success persona back a few years pre-success. A completely different recounting of history thus ensues. Usually one where there was blood, sweat, and fire involved to get to that first ticket.
so you've moved the goalposts even further now and speculate that succesful people started out as slackers, got lucky, and that luck made them work harder
as an Asian, it amazes me how far Americans and Europeans will go to avoid a hard days work