Luck Surface Area

I’ve had a stressful yet astonishing last two weeks, and the aftermath of it led me to write this post. Two weeks ago, on a Tuesday, the CEO of my company, Refraction AI, announced that we were unable to secure any funding and that the company had to shut down. I was sick, so I left home a little early that day and joined a video call to hear this news. My brain couldn’t process the information at that moment, but I knew it was bad—actually, the worst news I could hear at that time. First, it meant that all the work and effort I put into the startup was gone. Was all the hardware I built and software I wrote just wasted? (I’m still wrapping my head around this). The more stressful part, though, was that I was on an H-1B work visa, which started on October 1st—the very day the company shut down! This meant that I had just two months to find a new job if I wanted to stay in the U.S.

It’s no surprise that the current job market is abysmal. Finding a job is incredibly difficult, which only adds to the stress. Most of my friends were quick to offer referrals at their companies, and the professors at Refraction, along with my boss, were eager to use their connections to help me out. Still, the situation felt overwhelming and worrisome.

Flashback to Friday, September 27th, when my coworkers and I attended a startup fair. One thing that really caught my eye was a FIRST Robotics team. As we walked past them, I thought to myself that I should circle back and check them out. On our way back, though, they were nowhere to be found. So, I said goodbye to my coworkers and decided to make one last pass to see if I could find the team. Luckily, I did! I visited their spot and even ended up becoming a mentor for the team! I had great conversations with the other mentors and made some new friends along the way.

Fast forward to the present: feeling stressed about finding a job, I let the FIRST Robotics team know that I wouldn’t be able to mentor them that weekend. But then, something amazing happened! One of the team mentors was the CTO of Torc Robotics, he reached out and offered to help the whole team with interviews and job placements—it felt like a miracle! I can’t express how grateful I am to him. He even created jobs for us, even though they had nothing posted on their website. The interviews went really well, and most of us ended up landing jobs there. Within just a week, I went from having no job to securing a position in a job market that was at an all-time low!

Looking back, I can’t help but wonder: what if I hadn’t gone back to meet the team? What if I hadn’t even attended the fair? What if I had just met them without offering to mentor? There were a million ways things could have gone wrong. But, like in the Avengers, the one scenario that needed to play out did! Now that I have a job offer and feel much calmer, I’m reminded of the concept of the "surface area of serendipity" that I came across in one of Ali Abdaal’s YouTube videos.

You can’t control your luck, but you can definitely increase your chances of experiencing good fortune. I really resonate with Codus Operandi when he says, “The amount of serendipity that will occur in your life is directly proportional to the degree to which you do something you’re passionate about, combined with the total number of people to whom this is effectively communicated.” Many people pursue their passions but hesitate to share them with others. Creating a website, writing blogs, working in labs and joining clubs can all help increase the serendipity in your life. Success isn’t just about hard work; it’s also about luck, and you can take steps to create your own luck! 🙂 Also definitely read Codus Operandi's post, he explains stuff much more clearly. This was just an example of how it worked out in my life :)