[sharkfish]

It kills me how the Gladwell book brought this out of Joel. Nobody wants to be told their success is a good part luck and timing. They all want to believe it is because they are smarter and worked harder.

So suddenly the software world's number one anecdotal blowhard decides to slam another blowhard. Okay. Whatever.

[spolsky]

Um, lemme see if I understand here, what you're saying... Are you claiming that (a) I'm successful, and (b) I think that I'm successful because I'm smarter and worked harder and (c) Malcolm Gladwell thinks I'm successful because of good luck and timing and that (d) therefore I'm mad at Gladwell's new book and that (e) therefore I decided to slam it? Is that your theory?

[pchristensen]

You've worked harder than most people I know, but didn't you a) get the first PC in Israel, b) go to Yale, c) get early '90s Microsoft stock, d) have a house you could use as an office when you started your business, e) define the category of software blogging by getting there first, and f) start a profitable company during a tech slump, giving you an advantage in hiring?

Joel Spolsky: Hard work + good luck = success! You could be Gladwell's next anecdote.

[neilk]

Hang on a minute. Gladwell's book is not about mere ordinary successes, but outlier successes. Like Michael Phelps or Bill Gates. (Joel, I hope you will forgive me for calling you an "ordinary" successful person).

I think you can see the effects of luck and diligence in just about everyone's life. That's not at issue. Gladwell is suggesting that to be a Bill Gates requires a good amount of diligence (10,000 hours of practice) and also utterly ridiculous good luck. That is, the skill component stops scaling really quickly, but there's no limit to how lucky you can be.

The critics are proclaiming this to be both unsubstantiated and a truism. But I think Gladwell is onto something, because certainly our culture treats successful people differently. Think about all the successful businesspeople invited to Davos. Maybe future generations will look at that and wonder what we were thinking. Like we gathered together a lot of people who won the lottery, in the hopes that they'd win the lottery again?

[thomasmallen]

If I saw a rabbit right now, I'd certainly give chase.

[sharkfish]

1. I'm saying your timing is suspicious. 2. My own anecdotal experience tells me successful people want to believe they earned their success through brains and hard work 3. Gladwell states that a good portion of success is due to hard work but that you have to be lucky enough to be able to put in the 10,000 hours at the right time and of course, have the luxury of putting in that kind of dedication

So bottom line, he really flatters successful people on the surface, while making the successful folk equal to the rest of us.

I don't think you are "mad" at Gladwell. I just think the motivation is strong and possibly an unconscious aversion to accepting that your success may be in huge part due to luck.

But then. Take with a huge grain of salt some asshole spouting off on a forum.

Believe it or not, you are one of my heroes, and I never seriously expected YOU of all people to be reading this.

Cheers to you and don't stop doing what you do. We are a better field because of it.

[gjm11]

Consider the following two propositions.

1. When someone "successful" criticizes Gladwell's thesis, it's suspicious because maybe they just don't want to hear that they weren't really smarter than everyone else.

2. When someone "unsuccessful" criticizes Gladwell's thesis, it's suspicious because maybe they just don't want to hear that their lack of success simply shows that they didn't work hard enough.

#1 is your argument; presumably you find it plausible. It seems to me that #2 is about equal in plausibility to #1; and #1+#2 would say that anyone should be viewed with suspicion, as probably motivated by something other than honest intellectual inquiry, if they criticize Gladwell's book. Which seems ... unhelpful.

It also seems curious that you describe someone as (a) "the number one anecdotal blowhard" and (b) "one of my heroes". Why should the rest of us take any notice of someone who knowingly takes an anecdotal blowhard as a hero?

[markessien]

Joel did get ahead by being smarter and working harder. He was doing the blogging/article thing back before everyone was doing it, and it takes some smarts to be the first. He also kept it up on a regular schedule, and that needs some discipline.

So people like 37signals had a good pinch of luck thrown in their pot, but Joel, I believe, actually got to the top rung of the internet food chain by persistence and hard work.

[davidw]

I'm not "successful" (beyond having a wonderful wife and daughter), but I find Gladwell sort of light in the same way Joel does. It's entertaining reading, but like most business books, the meat of it, sans anecdotes, could fit in a few pages. And sometimes the 'meat' is sort of dubious in any case.

... and thus... Squeezed Books :-)

[planzero]

Your data is correct, but you've got it backwards. People who believe they can be successful by working harder generally do become successful. The inverse holds as well.

Aside: watch for when people say "whatever." It means they care very much about something.

[Hexstream]

Whatever.