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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.

5 of 247 comments (clear)

  1. insightful revelation by spune · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  2. Success is a choice by tsa · · Score: 2, Funny

    Success is a choice. Everybody knows that.

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    -- Cheers!

  3. Port 23? by IceCreamGuy · · Score: 3, Funny

    At first glance I read "Success Not Just a Matter of Telnet..."

  4. time-space continuum by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    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.

  5. Re:Success is being in the right place at the righ by ultranova · · Score: 2, Funny

    That depends on how you define success...

    If you feel the need to argue about the definition of success, the chances are that you don't have it ;).

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    Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.