A friend of mine pointed out the vast number of questions on Quora that are seeking the "magic" that is going on to make money, or make a company successful, or to be highly skilled in a discipline (e.g. "What should I know to become a millionaire by age 30?" or "What do I need to say to get VC funding?" or "How do I get hired as a software engineer by Google?").

I wish I could point them all at this answer describing the hard work that translates into the illusion of competence. My personal sports analogy is in biking - I've seen questions on a biking list I'm on where somebody asks for the secret to doing a climb of 2000 vertical feet. And there is no secret - you get on your bike, and you climb as far as you can, and you take a break, and you keep going. And the next time you can get a bit farther before a break. And eventually you can do 2,000 (or 10,000 or 20,000 vertical feet). But there is no secret other than continuing to go out there for years trying to improve. Or maybe that is the secret.