Outliers: Malcolm Gladwell

a review/ish

I think the best way to summarize or review this brilliant book is through Bill Gates’ story.
To be as rich and successful as Bill Gates you need two things:

First: 10000 (ten thousand) hours of programming: this is how many hours Bill Gates had by the time he founded Microsoft. That is  approximately 4 hours a day, every day. It is hard work, but doable, if you have the determination and will you should do it, and if you do, you will succeed.

Second: You need to be born in 1955. It is not a coincident that Microsoft founder was born in 1955, Paul Allen, the cofounder was born 1953, Apple founder was born in 1955, Bill Joy who wrote Java and almost all the codes we use now and founded Sun microsystems was born 1955, and so the other cofounder s like Andy Bechtoisheim.

In 1974 the personal computer entered a new age with the production of a $350 kit called Altair 8800. Suddenly it became in reach of every tech lover, not just big companies and institutions.

So why 1955? Because when you are 19/20, old to understand but not working for any company and moulded into whatever the companies do, but not too young so you can start a business; that is the right age.

Malcolm Gladwell argues that for success you need hard working and determination, but also factors that way beyond your control, most of the time it is the date of birth, your race, heritage, or religion that will decide if you have a chance to succeed in this world, and often it is not necessarily in the way you think.

To be successful hockey player in Canada you need to be born in the first two months of the year, Jews were not allowed to own land in Europe, so when they migrated to the US they had the advantage above many other immigrants of being skilled craftsmen and traders.

On a personal level/ example: In 1997 British people elected a Labour government, which published a white paper to improve the NHS. Part of that improvement plan was recruiting nurses, eventually the decided to recruit from oversees. In 2000 they reached to Jordan, at a time where I had enough experience  to apply and travel to the UK. If I was few years younger I won’t got that opportunity, which was not a result of my hard work and dedication, but rather a political event that I had no influence or even knowledge of at the time.
This is not to undermine hard work, talent, determination or dedication, but you could have all of that and still not succeed, because the external factors were not in your favour.
It is a great book, there is much more than what I listed here and I would say it is a must read.