Success = (number of attempts) × (probability of success each time)

I gave my first tech talk to ten people in a windowless room at a local meetup. I talked nervously about databases for 15 minutes, got sweaty, and nobody asked me anything at the end. The organizer thanked me with the kind of smile you give a child who performed in a school play.

Two years later, I gave a big talk to 300 engineers, got asked to speak at three more events, and got a promotion because my bosses thought I could be a leader. Same brain, same fear of public judgment, different outcome. I learned a simple rule: Success = (number of attempts) × (probability of success each time).

Most engineers obsess over the second variable. We practice coding problems, learn how to design big systems, and make our GitHub pages look cool. We act like every chance is an uni exam, and if we’re not perfect, we think we failed. But here's what nobody tells you: the first variable matters more.

After that first disaster, I spoke at ten more events over eighteen months. Company lunch-and-learns where I fumbled through slides about API design. Lightning talks at conferences where I rushed through my conclusions. Panel discussions where I said "um" more than actual words. Not because I liked embarrassing myself, but because I learned that confidence isn’t about being perfect one time. It's about being brave enough, often enough, until the math works in your favor.

The breakthrough came during talk number ten. I was presenting about incident response at a SRE meetup when someone asked how we handled our worst outage. Instead of deflecting or giving a sanitized answer, I told the real story. The panic, the wrong assumptions, the moment we realized our monitoring was lying to us. People laughed. Someone approached me afterward saying it was the most honest post-mortem they ever heard.

That vulnerability taught me more about talking to people than any teacher ever could. The speaking opportunities that followed weren't about technical expertise anymore. They were about connecting with other engineers who lived through the same chaos and wanted someone to acknowledge it out loud.

The tech world makes us believe there’s a perfect engineer who always passes interviews, and gets promoted because they’re super smart. Reality looks messier. The engineers who thrive aren't the ones who never fail. They're the ones who fail forward, fast and often.

I’ve seen smart engineers get stuck because they wait for the perfect chance, project, or moment to go for a promotion. Meanwhile, their not-as-smart coworkers get ahead by trying more things, asking for help, and making more projects. Not better projects. More projects.

The math is unforgiving but fair. If you have a ten percent chance of success on any given attempt, you need to make ten attempts to expect one success. But most people make two attempts, fail twice, and conclude they're not cut out for whatever they were trying to do. They optimize for the wrong variable.

This isn't about seeking out embarrassment or treating every stage like amateur hour. Each attempt should be genuine, thoughtful, and a little better than the last. But the emphasis belongs on "each attempt". Perfect is the enemy of prolific.

Now, when engineers say they want people to notice their skills, I don’t tell them to wait for the perfect talk or the best conference. I tell them to sign up for any meetup happening this month. Then sign up for another one next month. Keep speaking until their voice finds its power.

The math that actually matters isn't the complexity of your algorithms. It's how many times you're willing to run the program.

And again: Success = (number of attempts) × (probability of success each time).

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Until next time,
Adlet

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