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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.
No, Bill Gates is an aberration both in terms of the sheer luck, and his ruthless exploitation of it. When you talk about the most successful few individuals in the world, you talk about people who encountered (and engaged) the best opportunities in the world. But when you talk about success in a slightly less rarified sense, those opportunities are all over the place, and hard work is a MUCH more significant differentiator.
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.
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