Slashdot Mirror
Success Not Just a Matter of Talent
NinjaCoder writes "The Guardian has an interesting article based on a new book (Outliers: The Story Of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell) which examines some persons of interest to computer technology (Bill Joy, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, amongst others). It examines reasons for their successes and strongly suggests a link between practice (10,000 hours by age 20 being the magic milestone) and luck. This maybe an obvious truism, but the article does give interesting anecdotes on how their personal circumstances led to today's technological landscape. It points out that many of the luminaries of the current tech industry were born around 1955, and thus able to take advantage of the emerging technologies.
No shit. Turn on your favorite pop radio station and you have your thesis. Collect grant, profit.
.... Marketing.
And most of my profiles are on people born around 1980, able to take advantage of the emerging internet technology.
I heard his next book is going to be an analysis of the power of hand-washing to prevent disease!
The only internal thing about extreme skill is that someone is so interested in something that they would spend many hours on something and still be interested in it.
When I was a kid 7-8 to 10 years of age I loved to copy cartoons. I spent many hours doing this for no reason other than love of it. When ever I was in art class I also seemed to be one of the best, the student the teacher always had the most respect for. I got an A at GCSE level (16 years of age), without even trying. Seeing as I never drew after the age of 10 in my own time this skill must have come from when I was young.
Who would have guessed that individual circumstances play an important role in success? It certainly had never occurred to me that who you know matters more than what you know.
Success is being in the right place at the right time. That's 50% of it. The remaining 50% are 30% hard work and 20% talent. The point being, unless you're in the right place at the right time and you see the opportunity, your hard work and talent are unlikely to pay off.
Is there a 500-word essay out there that you cannot turn into a book? He needs to write a popular (how does he do it!? he must be a maven!) book on that!
Within the next 2-3 years (if it hasn't happened already) we should be seeing plenty of 20 year olds with at least 10,000 hours of World of Warcrafting under their belt before their birthday.
I guess there are going to be a lot of highly successful World of Warcraft experts in society.
Is that success is often not merely talent and hard work, but having talent and being in the right place at the right time.
How many /.ers could have been Bill Gates?
Yet, only Bill Gates had both the contacts at IBM and the luck that IBM didn't can the PC project.
Also, what the laissez-faire business proponents often fail to realize is that the markets are often structured in such a way as to preclude everyone with the talent from actually competing. Consider the network effect on operating systems, for example. Even though you and I could write our own operating systems, the fact is that once one is written, it can be distributed and sold for a nominal cost; Microsoft has already amortized a large part of the cost of the Windows operating system, meaning that they can sell it for far less than it would cost me to write my own. In other words, in spite of the amount of talent out there, there's only room for one Bill Gates. And the laissez-faire economists often miss this point.
The consequence, of course, is that while many people could have made as much money as the star players in the technology game, the market will tolerate only a few super-millionaires. The rest of us - despite our talent - either never had the opportunity, or chose to forego it for other, more important reasons (such as spending time raising a family). This notion that anyone can become rich in the tech sector is not entirely false; provided that you understand that not everyone can become rich. The rest of us with the talent of Steve Jobs or Bill Gates will have to sign our inventions over to our employers and settle for a middle class lifestyle.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Too bad there isn't any market demand for guys who masturbate :-(
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Success is a choice. Everybody knows that.
-- Cheers!
That depends on how you define success...
If you define it as being a CEO of Top XXX or earning millions per year, or being known by many thousands of people, ya that's probably the case.
Even launching a terrorist attack as a result that the attacker to be known by the public takes a whole lot of luck.
"Success is being in the right place at the right time. That's 50% of it. The remaining 50% are 30% hard work and 20% talent. The point being, unless you're in the right place at the right time and you see the opportunity, your hard work and talent are unlikely to pay off."
This is the excuse I have heard from un-successful people that don't want to put the time and effort that it takes to actually be successful.
We have potential opportunities that pass by us every day. Without the proper knowledge or experience, these opportunities will just continue to pass by.
I would say it's more along the lines of 10% finding the opportunity (right place, right time) and 90% knowing what do do when you get it (talent and experience)
It doesn't hurt to have very well-to-do parents.
Bull. It's more like 10%, with the rest being split between skill/intelligence and perseverance/hard work--with that split, I think, varying somewhat with the type of opportunity. Life is full of opportunities, and many people just don't take advantage of them.
They were all white men too. go ahead now, mark me down as flamebait, but do it knowing it's true. Some people are just born "lucky." The rest of us actually have to work.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
You forgot the other 70%: Looking good.
Give yourself the name "William" (popularly known as "Bill").
"I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." -Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)
df -h
may have something to do with the fact bill gates basically would line himself with a company and then fucking steal their code and sue them for using code he stole. his practice of forcing PC sales company to sign exclusive distributorship contracts forbidding the sale of other OS systems.
So you think that success of Bill Gates is attributable to skill, not to the fact that he was in the right place at the right time to trick IBM into distributing the operating system he was in the right place and at the right time to buy for $50K?
So lets say it takes 10,000 hours to master a complex ability. What about simple ones? It takes about 3 months of working to become a master fry cook, 480 hours. That means every day you spend frying after that is essentially wasted human potential.
This is the excuse I heard from unsuccessful people who think they can be successful just by putting in the time and effort.
Truth is, if you're doing something on your own, being timing is crucial. eBay was in the right place at the right time. They weren't particularly talented and now you can't do another eBay. Same with PayPal. Same with Google. Same with Yahoo. Same with just about any truly successful company out there. Perhaps the most vivid example of this is early Microsoft. Their success was built on the software they didn't even write.
No matter how much time and effort you put in today, you will not replicate the success of those companies in their respective niches. Solely because you're not in the right place at the right time.
"Bill Gates .. Brilliant young maths wiz .."
..
The Pivot Table
"The whole idea of time-sharing only got invented in 1965"
timesharing John McCarthy 1957
davecb5620@gmail.com
Examining their lives and actions one cannot find that they owed anything to fortune but the opportunity which gave them matter to shape into the form they thought right. Without an opportunity, their abilities would have been wasted, and without their abilities, the opportunity would have arisen in vain. -Nicollo M.
It does help to be in the right place at the right time. But you get to pick where you are. Moving from New York to Silicon Valley in 1974 worked out very well for me.
Twentysomethings who went to San Francisco in 1998 for the dot-com boom did OK, although not for long. Between 2000 and 2005, the number of twentysomethings in SF dropped 40% when the dot-com boom collapsed.
You can work hard and still guess wrong, though. If you thought that fusion power was going to be big, and spent the necessary years to get a doctorate in nuclear physics, you're probably not working in that field now.
There's nothing right now that looks as promising as the great booms of the past - railroads, automobiles, electricity, radio, aviation, plastics, computing, the Internet. The smart young people I know seem to be going into either biotech or law, but neither field is really booming. I have hopes for robotics, but it's not having a boom yet.
I guess there are going to be a lot of highly successful World of Warcraft experts in society.
Do you think the Chinese will take a trillion in WOW gold instead of US dollars?
Deleted
At first glance I read "Success Not Just a Matter of Telnet..."
Success is a mental transformation.
A. Vayner.
PS. Impossible Is Nothing!
Access to funds/influence is usually a non-trivial prerequisite for success. Did Gates or Jobs have "connections"?
No slur or sneer at them if they did, but that tends to help a lot.
These days with the internet it's much easier to get an idea out and looked at.
The other day I looked at a book entitled "What would Machiavelli do?". In the back it said something about people not achieving success despites their talent. The book then asked a question: Why is it that some people who are not as talented, obtain success? Are they smarter? Stronger? No. They're simply more evil.
I'm sure Bill Gates read that book and applied it accordingly, screwing the lives of everyone just for his personal gain.
It's more like 10%, with the rest being split between skill/intelligence and perseverance/hard work
For very large values of 10? Sorry, but looking at the history of most very successful people, I beg to differ. For example, the summary mentions Bill Gates. His dad was loaded, his mom got his school an early computer to play with, he got into the right part of the business at the right time, and he generally had good fortune. Do you really think we'd have Microsoft if Gates hadn't been, well, lucky? I'm not saying he didn't work hard, find opportunities, and use skill, and I'm not saying hard work won't take one far, but to get into the big leagues, it would appear that Lady Luck has a tendency to be a key player in the stories of most very successful people.
So blacks, women, and people under the age of 40 just aren't working hard enough? Because those are the people that are most likely to be making less than average wages, more likely to be working without benefits, etc. You call it an excuse, but for people who have poured their heart and soul into their work year after year and realized nothing from it, they call it prejudice. And it's just self-serving crap for you to say that "proper knowledge or experience" is the only pathway to opportunity when every day on the news we read about Haliburton and kickbacks, slush funds, and back room deals.
Intelligence is a bell curve, but almost 80% of the wealth in this country is concentrated amongst 5% of the population; And most of that held by white men who are over the age of 50. I don't suppose you're willing to say that this is because that's the only group that works hard.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Bill Gates is William Henry Gates IV. His father, Bill Sr (born "III") was one of America's top corporate lawyers, as was his mother. That's why Microsoft was able to outmaneuver IBM on a one-way exclusive contract for PC DOS, and later even weasel out of the "landmark" US monopoly judgement (the senior Gates' lobbying lawfirm Preston Gates & Ellis was where Republican uberlobbyist Jack Abramoff got his start until Bush's "Justice" Department took over the "penalty" phase).
I'd rather be lucky than good any day. For Bill Gates, that's his birthright.
--
make install -not war
"Success is being in the right place at the right time. That's 50% of it. The remaining 50% are 30% hard work and 20% talent. The point being, unless you're in the right place at the right time and you see the opportunity, your hard work and talent are unlikely to pay off."
This is the excuse I have heard from un-successful people that don't want to put the time and effort that it takes to actually be successful.
We have potential opportunities that pass by us every day. Without the proper knowledge or experience, these opportunities will just continue to pass by.
I would say it's more along the lines of 10% finding the opportunity (right place, right time) and 90% knowing what do do when you get it (talent and experience)
I think more accurately than that is this:
If you prepare correctly, you can make your chances of "right-place right-time" moments a lot higher. Part of getting into any line of work isn't just knowing how to do what you do, but it's knowing how to get work doing what you do.
once I get my 10k hours of slashdot...
how long until
.
There can't have been anyone in the tech industry who wasn't aware of Microsoft before 1980.
Microsoft was selling BASIC to customers like General Electric as early as 1976. The MBASIC interpreter became the de-facto standard for the eight-bit micro.
It had compilers for MBASIC, FORTRAN and COBOL on the market no later than '77-'78.
In 1979 Microsoft 8080 BASIC is the first microprocessor product to win the ICP Million Dollar Award. Traditionally dominated by software for mainframe computers, this recognition is indicative of the growth and acceptance of the PC industry. Microsoft Timeline
DR in those days was still Intergalatic Digital Research. and ambling along like a one-man band.
Not the best image to project when negotiating with IBM.
Why should I respect him as a businessman? He missed the Internet. He missed search. He missed ad-funded business model. He missed digital music. He let Win Mobile to stagnate for years. He's overseen the Vista debacle. He got into Xbox business and sunk $6B into it so far with no prospect of ever recouping that loss.
A smaller company would have died after one of these.
It's kinda hard to fuck up much worse while running a company with unlimited financial resources, employing some of the brightest minds on the planet. That said, Steve Ballmer has been outdoing BillG's fuckups in every respect.
I respect the guy as a philantropist, hats off to him for that effort. But as a businessman in high tech? Not so much.
"Bull. It's more like 10%, with the rest being split between skill/intelligence and perseverance/hard work..."
Depends upon definition of success. If success is defined as being lower middle class or better, yes you may be right. If success means being Bill Gates, then you are incorrect.
People greatly overestimate their input in success and greatly underestimate chance. Laborers work harder than CEO's but get paid much less. You rarely get to be a CEO based on talent alone.
Complete crap.
If you put in the hard work, you'll know where the right place and time is. It's 90%+ hard work, good decisions, and having someone to bankroll you in the early stages. It's less than 10% luck.
Wasn't it Feynman who said something along the lines of "You only discover America once"?
To me there's always a new wave to surf. I had a friend waxing bitter in about 1996 about how he'd missed the golden age of garage innovation. That there was never going to be another Apple. There hasn't been, but there was a Google.
The 10,000 hours number seems weird ... I tell beginner musicians that there is a certain amount of pain and boredom before it starts to get fun. I usually randomly pull a number between 10 and 25 hrs out of the air.
So 4 hours a day on the piano is 2,500 days. Round up to 7 years. Sounds about right.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
I agree and disagree. "Knowing what to do when you get it" is IMO not that related to talent and experience.
The people who are successful are those who have the most business sense. You can have all the opportunities and talent and experience and you'll be on the payroll of someone who makes the actual money. Or you'll produce a great freeware product that will make many people happy but will not make you very successful (as things are measured).
If you're not the kind of person to drive yourself into the public light and stay there, talent and experience will get you a job that will possible make you comfortably wealthy, but it will not bring you to the level of these people.
How many hours do the Slashdot dupe checkers have under their belts?
Table-ized A.I.
I'm still posting on slashdot
Molecular nanotechnology. That will be bigger than the industrial revolution, easily.
Don't be so insecure...
æeee!
Define what you mean by "right place". Often the right place is in some affluent suburb while being in the wrong place is often being in a ghetto. It wasn't always this way but it has been getting worse.
There is definitely something about being in the right place at the right time.
But often if you take a closer look, you will find that those people were in *more* places at *more* times than anybody else.
You can't make lightning strike. But you can make sure you're the tallest tree around.
And we all know that the guys who make multi-million dollar bonuses on Wall Street earn every cent of that money by working far harder then the rest of us. They work much longer hours than those lazy people on the poverty line with two or three jobs. And its very responsible work. And they're very responsible people. And you have to pay a premium for that responsibility. otherwise, I dunno, you might end up with a bunch of hacks crashing the market. Which would never, ever happen with our guys.
Eric Baird
I've always heard it as:
10% luck
20% skill
15% concentrated power of will
5% pleasure
50% pain
100% reason to remember the name
(Apologies to Mike Shinoda)
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
How many hours do the Slashdot dupe checkers have under their belts?
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
Most guys (at least non-nerds) measure success by the number of pretty girls they get to bang. Where are the studies of this?
Table-ized A.I.
The guy (Malcolm Gladwell) conflates (at least) being rich, being talentuous / a genius, being well-known (successful), being born at the right time...
Ensues a complete mess he can only sort out by carefully choosing his examples to fit his opinion.
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
who you know matters more than what you know.
I know Bill Gates and he knows me too!
(Through six degrees of separation.)
His dad being head of the secret police and their assets to be able to bribe and payoff and blackmail and otherwise compromise people probably had more to do with it than anything. And him getting to become president was also from that, ronnie hated the sob, it was forced on him at the convention. And it still goes on to this day, witness firebrand rookie legislators that within a few months of being in office turn into establishment toadies. The shadow government behind the scenes in the spooks/military/pharma/industrial establishment have a lot of pressure they can apply, at whim. Ike warned about it, then it was promptly forgotten about because the controlled media is part of it, and to this day people still think their vote matters. No it doesn't beyond the most local races, your so called different candidates in the alleged different parties that get pushed at the highest levels are on the approved and thoroughly compromised and controllable list. Including the latest fascist masquerading as some sort of reformer. Oh ya, he's gonna reform, in the same direction we have been heading, a global fascist police state, because that is what they want, and is part of this latest push (big crime) of easy credit for years, then slam the taps shut, leaving everyone "owing" them. This is an example of how they have been doing it for over a century now, goes all the way back to the criminal establishment of the Fed and ww1 and the great depression crime. Create a problem, get the reaction you desire from the serf populations, then offer the solution to the problem you created in the first place. The great heavy tanned hope is a dope (fiend) and has been long compromised, just his cultish true believers refuse to see it, just like the bushlerites refuse to see their golden boy was compromised (that whole family is fascist back to grand daddy), or the clintonistas failed to see their boy was compromised.
If you want to see who isn't compromised (a very small number), look to those that were constantly demonized or ridiculed or ignored in the past election of the candidates.
The key is being in the right place at the right time with the right bullshit and the right ideas.
So if 30% of the remaining 50% is hard work, and 20% of it is talent, what's the other 50%, IOW the last 25% of the total? :p
Then again, one of the recurring themes that crops up in Bill's earliest adventures with computers is the presence of his Mum. Which makes me wonder how much of the vision was actually Bill's and how much might have been his Mum's attempt to steer "little Bill" into some sort of useful niche business, if he didn't seem cut out for law.
Apparently, Mary Gates knew the head of IBM socially, because they served on one of the same committees. It's not outlandish to think that she may have decided that there was obviously a fair bit of money in this computing lark, and helped to encourage little Bill in that direction.
Eric Baird
You call it the American dream, I call it the American illusion.
Are you seriously suggesting that everyone could have a opportunity for success? I mean, you take 200 million people and you have like 190 million missed opportunities to become rich? Or even more, you suggest there are multiple opportunities for everyone...
The problem might be that when everyone is a millionaire, that just means a million is not worth very much. Or the problem might be that our civilization depends to a great degree on people who need a job badly enough to do the tasks noone wants to.
Bottom line: I can't even imagine how your idea of a world could actually work without assuminge that 90% of the people are lazy retards.
I would say it's more along the lines of 10% finding the opportunity (right place, right time) and 90% knowing what do do when you get it (talent and experience)
Also, apart of that 90% is putting yourself in situations that provide you with good opportunities.
>And most of that held by white men who are over the age of 50
Not quite, but you're almost there. Think subgroup of a subgroup.
Bull on your bull. If chance accounted just 10% of success, then 90% percent of the intelligent, persevering people would be millionaire.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Gates had a talent: Being born into a family that had the connections to let him broker a deal between IBM and the guy who wrote MS-DOS.
Gladwell is a sycophant.
Seastead this.
Bull on your bull. If chance accounted just 10% of success, then 90% percent of the intelligent, persevering people would be millionaire.
Who says they're not? (Or won't be eventually?)
Oh wait, I see you left out the bit about being willing to take on risk in order to pursue opportunity. Ahhh... Nice try...
But if you have more talent, you don't have to work as hard. I always look for potential employees who are good at a lot of tasks. I don't really care how "hard" they tell me they'll work if they get the job. People who claim to be hard workers are usually (don't kill me, I said usually) not very talented, so they have to work harder to make up for lack of talent. Actually, come to think of it, I think it's pretty good to have a few "hard workers" mixed in with the uber-talented guys because more good stuff gets done that way.
Luck certainly is a factor. But 10,000 hours of practice isn't going to do jack shit without talent. All it will do is take you to the limits of your talent. Again, that partly assumes you had some good guidance during that training. Which will be partly luck - you happen to be born in proximity to a good coach, or not - if that coach is scouring the area for talent and picks the best talent out of a group of children. An Euler may have had a Bernoulli for a tutor, but would Bernoulli have persisted if Euler had not demonstrated talent? Surely Euler was not the only student Bernoulli tutored.
Talent, practice and luck are all necessary conditions. None of them are by themselves sufficient. Although if you are naturally talented, it's easy and fun to practice. And with some brain, you can do some thinking to help put yourself in the right place so that you can be there at the right time. Google has also lowered the bar for successful autodidactism, making getting good tutoring less a matter of luck.
If this is book is anything like Gladwell's other PC apologetics, it will go to great lengths to avoid the links between outliers and talent, the notion that the will/love of practice can be considered a talent, and of course, the genetic basis for such.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
These percentage breakdowns entirely miss the point - part of hard work and talent is increasing the odds that you're in the right place at the right time.
Bill Gates III. The III should give it away. His father was a millionaire, one of Seattle's most prominent lawyer's and was instrumental in Microsoft's early success. Gates's mother was on charity boards with bigshots from IBM, which also helped Gates out. Forbes marks Gates as "self-made", in terms of its rankings, the half of their list who did not inherit hundreds of millions is self-made, the half that inherited hundreds of millions to billions is not self-made.
Warren Buffett - also marked as self made. His father was a Congressman and his family owned a number of stores in Omaha. He was born into Omaha's elite - of course, being part of Omaha's elite is not like being part of New York City's elite, but still.
Larry Ellison - from what I know, he is the first truly self-made person on the list. Like many on the list, he got rich by out-maneuvering IBM. He read a paper by an IBM scientists about how IBM was going to be making relational databases, and he quickly put Oracle together, beating out IBM's long drawn out development process. He also out-maneuvered competitors like Informix and Sybase.
The next four people on the list - Waltons - inherited all of their money.
One illusion of the list I think is usually self-made individuals are at the top. The four Waltons together are far richer than Bill Gates. David Rockefeller Senior, at the age of 93, is 144th on the list, but who has more influence, Rockefeller and the Rockefellers, or Gates? From listening to Gates's interviews recently, he almost sounds like he has no control over things like Microsoft's development of Vista any more, so if he can't even control that, what does he control?
So they leave, a little disgruntled, and make the next stop on their itinerary, Our Bill. They discuss a deal for Bill to supply a version of BASIC. This will let them tick the second item on their shopping list. Then, just before they leave they ask, "By the way, do you happen to know anyone other than DR that can do operating systems?"
Bill sees a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. As it happens, Bill does know someone that already has an OS that could be ported, and who could do the port. IBM probably ought to be talking to that guy. Bill probably ought to give them the guy's name. The guy will probably be very pleased with Bill for pointing IBM his way. But Bill realises that for these few precious minutes, he's the only person on the planet who knows that these two parties ought to be talking. As long as he can keep them away from each other, he can make a lot of money by doing deals with each of them individually, and making sure that neither of them is aware of what he's really doing.
The first stage in getting this scam to work is to ensure that the IBM guys don't ask anyone else about operating systems, and don't go back to DR. Bill has to get them to agree that he'll be supplying the OS, right now, without admitting that he doesn't actually have an OS to supply. But they've come here to make a deal about BASIC, so they "have their pens out". They've been told that Bill is the "go-to" guy for BASIC, so he has their confidence. They're asking him for suggestions. He has one.
"No Problem! We can do that for you too!".
The IBM guys had hoped to be making a deal on the PC OS, they're planning to make a deal with Bill on that day anyway, they have no reason to believe that Bill is bullshitting them, and so it's an easy sell.
Having got the deal, and stopped IBM from asking anyone else about OSes, Bill now has to put the second stage of the plan into operation. He has to go to "OS Guy" and nonchalantly enquire as to whether OS guy might want a bit of work, to port his uninteresting OS to another platform, and give Bill the rights to it on that new platform. Bill is careful not to let "OS Guy" realise that thus is a potentially huge contract, that IBM are involved, that Bill has naughtily already made a contract that depends on OSG's cooperation, or that that Bill stands a chance of getting filthy rich from the rights to his (OS Guy's) OS. If OSG knew any of these things, he could walk away, or ask for a lot more money, or decide to make his own separate deal with IBM. He'd have Bill over a barrel, because if OSG didn't agree, Bill would have no obvious way to fulfill his deal with IBM.
So the success of Bill's plan depends on a certain lack of openness: He has to bluff IBM, or he doesn't get the contract, and he has to be less than honest with the guy whose OS it is, or else he might not be able to fulfil the contract. Bill's only hold over OS guy is that he's not telling OS guy what's really going on, or why he wants the OS. OS Guy doesn't demand a huge amount of money, because he doesn't know that Bill has IBM for a client, or that Bill's effectively presold something that OSG owns.
OS Guy doesn't demand partnership in the IBM deal, because it's kept secret that there is an IBM deal. Bill later justifies the deception by pointing out that he was legally prevented from telling OSG what he was doing by IBM's standard "non-disclosure" clause. From Bill's POV, he's successfully delivered an OS to IBM as promised, so he hasn't conned IBM, and while it's possible that IBM might have gone to OSG directly and made HIM filthy rich instead of Bill, it's also possible that if Bill hadn't made such a determined play for the con
Eric Baird
I totally agree. If Java ( or Pyhton etc. for that matter ) were fast enough why did Google choose C++ to build their insanely fast search engine. MapReduce rocks.. No Java solution can even come close. I rest my case.
Google also uses Python for some of their other projects. GWT? Java. The concept of using the right tool for the job is nearly as important as knowing how to do the job in the first place - some might even say it's *more* important.
When one looks at the choice of tools - C, C++, C#, Perl, Python, PHP, or even bash/awk/sed, etc - one has to keep in mind what the product is going to be used for, and what sort load it will have to handle. Is the programmer time saved by coding it in Python worth the machine time spent running the product? For that matter, if it isn't, is it worth writing the slower code in C and in turn using that as a Python module?
This is applicable to Perl as well. Don't know about PHP, as I haven't written as much in it, but I wouldn't be surprised if it works the same way.
The wise follow a damned path, for to know is to be forsaken.
You won't want to hear this but is, statistically, women make less it is indeed because, statistically, they tend to work less. It is more likely that a woman will be the one in a two parent family to: Take time off to care for a sick child, take time off to give birth/have a safe pregnency, take years out of a career to become a housewife, or to stop working after they marry. When you factor in all that time off, career-hour for career-hour, women do as well as men. I haven't studied the black people and old people thing.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
The Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 1 computer had this as an option. It was written in Z-80 assembly language, 12Kbytes.
It supported an optional Disk Operating System (TRS-DOS), and contained hooks and vectors to make this possible. It was an impressive piece of work.
This was my first computer, purchased in 1978 (I was 11). I put in well over 10,000 hours by age 20 (although I wasn't born in the magical "around 1955" time period).
I've been writing computer games and embedded software since then.
I'm on the cusp of a breakthrough computer game (working part time, at home), working full-time at a rapidly-growing technology company, and preparing to file patents for a breakthrough technology that makes Electric Vehicles finally practical.
So I guess the article is mostly right!
"So blacks, women, and people under the age of 40 just aren't working hard enough? "
Yes. Blacks and women aren't working hard enough. What's the best job a black person ever got?
"So blacks, women, and people under the age of 40 just aren't working hard enough? Because those are the people that are most likely to be making less than average wages, more likely to be working without benefits, etc"
In truth, it is people that are about 40 that are having the hardest time of it. Having followed the Baby Boom the jobs were already taken. Further, because the boomers are not retiring, this age group was trapped into those entry level jobs because there was just no where, open, to advance to.
Now the are competing with people significantly younger without a significantly better resume. This is the age group that is going to be a disaster in America in about 30 years. They have no significant savings, because they never earned much money. They have no pensions, because they showed up in the workforce just as the pensions were being closed. And, no one is going to want to hire a 70 year old.
It's because 1955 is a center-point of the time-space continuum. We've known this since 1985.
Sheesh people, this isn't news.
Success happens when preparation meets opportunity.
It's not an excuse from un-successful people. It's a logical conclusion after going back through history and seeing all the people who actually did have superior ideas and talents but never got anywhere because other people were in the right places and times, with the right connections.
If you think of how our selective memory only remembers a coincidence and forgets all the times the coincidence didn't occur...so it is that many successful people are glorified by our society for their skills while we forget all the more talented people who just weren't as lucky in terms of location and timing. For example, Microsoft's success is due to luck and stupidity on the part of IBM in giving Microsoft a contract, not some amazing level of quality in Microsoft's software or even Bill Gates' business acumen.
If you want another example, look at the success of Miley Cyrus, who just so happens to be the daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus and thus had the entertainment connections to get a TV show started and a music tour. More talented girls without those connections aren't touring the country right now making millions of dollars.
Gladwell is saying that it's not just being in the right place at the right time.
First of all, in the examples he's citing, we're talking about EXTREME success. His examples are people who were able to take advantage of seismic shifts in an industry or the creation of whole new industries. The people who were best positioned to succeed in these new environments were the people whose youthful obsessions gave them the status of grizzled veterans in a completely wide open field.
So Gladwell is saying that it's being it the right place, at the right time (the dawn of a new industry or drastic change in an existing one), at the right age (early 20's), and with the skills of an expert, and you have to be lucky enough to be presented with an opportunity and smart enough to take it.
The key for me is that, except for the musicians, the people obsessively acquiring skills while they're young are doing it because they love it, not necessarily because they're planning to make a career out of it. Then the world shifts in their favor and they find themselves experts in a field that didn't really exist even five years previously. The flip side are kids who did something obsessively and gained skills, but they were skills the world already had in abundance or perhaps they were novel skills but the world simply didn't shift to their advantage.
The world is undergoing a seismic shift right now. I have the feeling that things are going to change dramatically over the next 5 years or so. What skills have the kids born in 1990 been obsessively acquiring? How will the world look when we emerge from the current economic crisis and what industries will be spawned or changed?
DD
"Can I finish? Can I finish?
I don't understand why this was modded troll. Health is part of the whole "luck" bit. If luck is the random tapestry of reality, i.e. who your parents are and who they know, the social and economic level into which you are born, and the health and physical qualities you have then the whole "self made man" thing is really a bit of a farce.
Still, whatever hand of cards you are dealt in life the choices you make obviously dramatically impact the final outcome and the point of TFA is that putting 10k hours into something seems to be a requirement to being the top of your game (all else equal).
Regarding health care, I think that, a society that invests in the health and education of its people will achieve more than a "you're on your own" society.
90% of the wealth is in 2% of the pockets. Bummer to be in the majority.
Intelligence is a bell curve, but almost 80% of the wealth in this country is concentrated amongst 5% of the population; And most of that held by white men who are over the age of 50. I don't suppose you're willing to say that this is because that's the only group that works hard.
As a white man over 50 I am willing to say that's the only group that works hard.
Or hardly works. One or the other. This English language can be quite confusing.
You are a product of your environment. --Clement Stone
Yes. Blacks and women aren't working hard enough. What's the best job a black person ever got?
Not to diminish Mr Obama's accomplishment, but it is really a situation of right place and right time. You couldn't with with a change message if everything was going well. Lack of experience would cause his campaign to sink like the Lusatania.
It's called The Man, the Method, and the Moment, and I think even someone called Shakespeare said something about success and the tide of events.
20,000 hours of practice; and what is required to achieve that?
Well, wealthy parents who can provide an environment in which to practice would help a lot, I think, and if they are intelligent and ambitious too, then all the better.
That isn't to say that a lazy, stupid fool would succeed without practice, but let's not forget the money factor, even if those who have benefited from it would like us to.
Steve Jobs is the wrong example. Steve Wozniak is the real counterpart to Gates and Joy, but Gladwell gives Jobs the credit. Jobs was the one who won by Machiavellian tactics.
I guess since Woz was born in '50 he was too old.
As I understand it, he never programmed very much, and was never especially good it.
"So blacks, women, and people under the age of 40 just aren't working hard enough?"
You should also look at other stats:
1) the percentage of blacks that are in college and in Jail, which would directly effect their earning potential. Or how about the percentage of single black mothers..which makes it 10X more difficult to make money.
The problem isn't racism..it's a culture that accepts the above as normal.
We just hired a black man as president..so really, there should be no more excuses.
2) The types of jobs women take (teachers, nurses, etc.). Most women are not interested in jobs that pay higher salaries and as a result, on average, get a lower salary.
"Because those are the people that are most likely to be making less than average wages, more likely to be working without benefits, etc. You call it an excuse, but for people who have poured their heart and soul into their work year after year and realized nothing from it, they call it prejudice."
actually, I call it bullshit.
"And it's just self-serving crap for you to say that "proper knowledge or experience" is the only pathway to opportunity when every day on the news we read about Haliburton and kickbacks, slush funds, and back room deals."
Knowledge and experience does give you more opportunities. This is one of the reasons why people get a higher education.
However, slush funds and back room deals do happen.
If you are going to mention those, I think you also need to mention the fact that people like Al Gore are milking the American people out of their hard-earned money by convincing them to purchase carbon credits (when it has not been proven that humans are the direct cause of global warming).
"Intelligence is a bell curve, but almost 80% of the wealth in this country is concentrated amongst 5% of the population;
And most of that held by white men who are over the age of 50. I don't suppose you're willing to say that this is because that's the only group that works hard."
90% of the people that are wealthy in the U.S. started out in the middle/lower class. The last 10% inherited it/got it through family.
I run my own business..and most people just aren't willing to sacrifice their free time to start a business and make it successful.
Just because you are intelligent..does not mean you will know how to use that intelligence to make money.
"Not to diminish Mr Obama's accomplishment, but it is really a situation of right place and right time. You couldn't with with a change message if everything was going well. Lack of experience would cause his campaign to sink like the Lusatania."
Also, if the country truly was still racist, he wouldn't have even made it past the primaries.
"Microsoft's success is due to luck and stupidity on the part of IBM in giving Microsoft a contract, not some amazing level of quality in Microsoft's software or even Bill Gates' business acumen."
People keep bringing up dos, which did give Microsoft its start..but keep forgetting about windows..which revolutionized the desktop computer industry.
Bill gates had the foresight to know the potential of the IBM contract. This was a very intelligent business move. IBM also needed an OS for their hardware..and MS provided it for them. At the time, it was win-win.
The people in the open source community have been trying for the last 15 years to make a GUI as good as Microsoft windows..and have failed miserably. Even OSX beat them out..and it has only been around for half the time.
Microsoft has to be doing something right when they can always beat out 1000s of individul programmers hands-down.
"If you want another example, look at the success of Miley Cyrus, who just so happens to be the daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus and thus had the entertainment connections to get a TV show started and a music tour. More talented girls without those connections aren't touring the country right now making millions of dollars."
The entertainment industry is almost always about who you know..it has nothing to to with knowledge or talent.
Of course, you fail to mention that... When it comes to having a family and taking care of others, men are so damned incompetent at it that they aren't expected to do so equally. Were it otherwise, then maybe you'd have something.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Yes, he was. Look deeply into Radio Shack Level II BASIC (I mean the real thing, not necessarily my comment above), and decide for yourself.
You won't want to hear this but is, statistically, women make less it is indeed because, statistically, they tend to work less. It is more likely that a woman will be the one in a two parent family to: Take time off to care for a sick child, take time off to give birth/have a safe pregnency, take years out of a career to become a housewife, or to stop working after they marry. When you factor in all that time off, career-hour for career-hour, women do as well as men. I haven't studied the black people and old people thing.
Of course, you fail to mention that... When it comes to having a family and taking care of others, men are so damned incompetent at it that they aren't expected to do so equally. Were it otherwise, then maybe you'd have something.
His point A has nothing to do with your point B.
Statistically, women take care of the kids. Sick kids = women not working and men working harder in the labor market.
You want to yell at the labor market for the masses not caring about other's people's kids, fine. What you did was needlessly man-bash for no useful reason. When women don't work, who pays the bills? Men - that's how they take care of their family, and that's why they die ~8 years sooner, on average.
I say this as a man who would likely be the one to stay home and take care of the kids if I were to have them with my girlfriend (after getting married of course, that OTHER social bias.)
Okay, I'll make it simpler for you: As long as expectations between men and women are equal, comparisons like this are meaningless. You're just using sexist logic here -- men work, women stay at home, and that's why women make less. Well, men should take as much time off as women do. Women should work outside the home as much as men do. But even when you adjust for this by looking at families where this is true -- women still make less because of those aren't the prevalent attitudes. Women would likely be making the same as men if these attitudes didn't exist.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Most of us don't work very hard, or (at all) smart.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Well, men should take as much time off as women do.
Huh, why ?
You yourself stated that women are better at taking care for the kids. Thats my subjective observation too, and i believe of bazillion of people throughout the history.
What is the problem of stating and accepting that two sexes indeed have a bit different roles in lives, like they have had for millenias ?
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
I can not find that documented anywhere.
Okay, I'll make it simpler for you: As long as expectations between men and women are equal, comparisons like this are meaningless. You're just using sexist logic here -- men work, women stay at home, and that's why women make less. Well, men should take as much time off as women do. Women should work outside the home as much as men do. But even when you adjust for this by looking at families where this is true -- women still make less because of those aren't the prevalent attitudes. Women would likely be making the same as men if these attitudes didn't exist.
There's plenty of objective literature explaining why women get paid less on average (for starters, they work fewer hours over the course of their working lives than men). It's clear that you dismiss that or nitpick on minor points because it doesn't adhere to your LifeTime Movie Network Original Man Bashing Movie watching zealotry though, so let's make it "simple" for the other viewers...
A works 2,000 hours a year in the labor market.
B works 1,992 hours a week in the labor market.
Since B works fewer hours, all else being equal, should B be paid less than A?
The popular and practical answer in anything resembling a market economy is yes. The next arguments vary from the pay being 1992/2000 times as much, or some other multiplier.
To keep it simple, A = men, B = women.
If you want to argue that men and women should be paid the same for equal work, that's fine. You have to understand that "equal work" is not "equal, unless my kid is sick and I can't come in for that day because even though it's a critical client meeting, my sitter canceled and I had no one to leave the kid with."
Make it legal to inquire about family status (any kids yet?) and whether or not a hystrectomy (sp?) has been had and then you may get statistical equality. I've got another harsh piece of news for you, single men with kids get screwed in the interview process too, as do both genders in the high stress, high paying jobs that distort the figure to the degree zealots like you feel the need to preach about them.
Okay, I'll make it simpler for you:
Here you imply that the topic is too difficult to understand for the person to whom you are speaking. What was the utility of that implication? Do you feel that implication strengthens your argument or was it a blatent ad-honiem attack?
As long as expectations between men and women are equal, comparisons like this are meaningless.
So you do not, in fact, want equality. Did I understand you right?
You're just using sexist logic here -- men work, women stay at home, and that's why women make less.
I fail to understand how less work, less pay, whether the worker is male or female is sexist. Are you saying that failure to treat women differently (better) than men is sexist?
Well, men should take as much time off as women do. Women should work outside the home as much as men do. But even when you adjust for this by looking at families where this is true -- women still make less because of those aren't the prevalent attitudes.
You are claiming that, on the average, a woman working x hours at x position will make less money than a man working the same hours at the same position, OR that a woman who devotes the same amount of time to her career will fail to achieve x position. I think you can't prove that. I think it is factualy incorrect.
Women would likely be making the same as men if these attitudes didn't exist.
You believe that "prevalent attitudes" are keeping women from making as much money, given the same labor, as men. Again I attack your premise. Do you have proof of these claims?
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
If you feel the need to argue about the definition of success, the chances are that you don't have it ;).
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Citation? The research I've read suggests that, when all other factors are accounted for, female directors work longer hours but earn 19% less. Note that this is comparing like for like - employees at the highest level of business. Women who take a few years out to have children may well be less likely to be promoted this far, but the fact is that these women have already achieved that, but still earn less than their male counterparts.
People bring up DOS because it is what gave Microsoft the distribution platform and cash to ship Windows, itself a really bad clone of MacOS. As for Windows revolutionizing the desktop computer industry...huh? Xerox and Apple handled that over a decade earlier.
The contract did not require foresight. It was dumb luck.
I'm not sure what any of this has to do with the topic other than as flamebait. I am unphased because I don't use an open source desktop.
Such applies to every industry, which was my point about Microsoft.
Insanely stupid.
Anybody dumb enough to believe women doen't get equal pay for TRULY EQUAL work (things like years on the job matter greatly, folks, long-term employees are far more productive) - go get rich and prove it! Real simple here. Hire an entirely female workforce. Pay them less than the equivalent men. Make TONS of money with the lower costs. Simple!
Of course there are no greedy people in the world, I guess. Else someone WOULD HAVE DONE THIS BY NOW!
Original AC here, and the same AC that debunked her on the parent level. Thanks for the backup.
Your x for x is argument is (falsely) assailable via a common straw man, but she's already moved on to other irrelevant posts to irrelevant topics...
Oddly enough, she's posting at 2PM during "work" hours too :) Can't imagine why she thinks women are paid less.
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1032209&cid=25789811
Hey GiT - THAT's how you make an ad hominem attack. Go look it up.
"People bring up DOS because it is what gave Microsoft the distribution platform and cash to ship Windows, itself a really bad clone of MacOS. As for Windows revolutionizing the desktop computer industry...huh? Xerox and Apple handled that over a decade earlier"
okay, then why didn't Xerox or Apple get the success that Microsoft had a decade earlier? It doesn't matter if they got the distribution channel. There was major skill and talent involved in creating windows (that neither Xerox or Apple possessed).
"The contract did not require foresight. It was dumb luck."
dumb luck was the guy that invented the pet rock.
IBM was in the same deal. If it was only dumb luck..why did they even sign the contract with Microsoft? Since no talent was involved, all of the executives should have known that it was going to make Microsoft into a billion dollar company. There were probably hundreds of IBM employees that were involved in the entire deal. Surely, one of them could have stopped it from going through.
"I'm not sure what any of this has to do with the topic other than as flamebait. I am unphased because I don't use an open source desktop."
It's called the truth.
"Such applies to every industry, which was my point about Microsoft."
I think the problem with your reasoning is that it not only prevents you from succeeding, but when somebody else actually does succeed..you discount as nothing more than circumstance, when in reality that can't be further from the truth.
If you want to live your life believing that success is obtained through dumb luck, that's okay. I will continue to make money and be successful with my talent and knowledge.
Reason 0: Bill's vision of the future market for PC (which neither IBM nor OSG had)
I'll also add quickness to recognize the opportunity (to your reason 3).
One critical phase is getting people to believe in your ideas.
:)
People like grandiose ideas to get behind and to believe in someone they want them to be in some way better than they are.
A woman can meet a man think his idea is brilliant (and of course she already thought of it) but that his testosterone is what will make it successful in the world.
There are probably many encounters where you simply need to sell your idea.
Coding for example, if you have more than one person working on a project the amount of work produced is usually more than 2x the average skill level simply because you get multiple viewpoints on problems and an extra encyclopedia of libraries to draw on. Other skill sets such as web design and marketing are often needed to launch a an idea, sometimes people are able to bluff these skill sets but they are competing against corporations that have people with different skill sets for exactly this reason.
The first time you sell an idea it's to other people who will be working towards it and there's only so many times you can presell half the profits.
If you have a "great idea!" you can try and sell it, if you have the charisma and a solid grasp of the core skill set you may be able to make it work. Otherwise just be available to edit or give your thoughts on the projects of others, it's a good balance between offering your skill set/insight and getting involved in a bunch of projects which are unlikely to succeed. If you are constantly available to edit and help others with their projects. You might find some that you feel you simply must get involved in.
I'll trade some editing for some project design advice if anyone is down
Whoaaaaaaaaa. Uncomfortably close to the truth.
Wow. Thanks for that!
Success is being in the right place at the right time. That's 50% of it.
That may be true, but do you think that successful people were in the "right place at the right time" because of dumb luck?
Personally, I was at the right place at the right time to achieve success, but that is only because I spent a lifetime figuring out where the right place was and what the right time was, and then I went there when the time was right.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
So blacks, women, and people under the age of 40 just aren't working hard enough? Because those are the people that are most likely to be making less than average wages, more likely to be working without benefits, etc.
Heh heh. I guess someone forgot to tell my wife not to be successful.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
But even when you adjust for this by looking at families where this is true -- women still make less because of those aren't the prevalent attitudes. Women would likely be making the same as men if these attitudes didn't exist.
This condition would tend not to exist in a free market. If employers could hire women more cheaply than men, a rational employer would hire the cheap women. This, naturally, would stimulate the demand for women, and increase their cost until they were on par with men.
At my company, women do not make less than men for comparable work. The oft-quoted figure is that women make $0.75 on the dollar with respect to men, but I just keep asking people the same question: "If men cost 33% more then women, why would I ever hire a man? I'd have to have rocks in my head."
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock