Malcolm Gladwell Success Essay

Essay 1

Malcolm Gladwell argues that the “Story of Success” is how a person comes to success. However, contrary to popular belief that someone’s success is determined based on merit and a stunning personality, Gladwell believes that an individual's background and opportunities give them an edge in the pursuit of success. When explaining the common misconceptions of success he says, “We want to know what they’re like....and we assume that it is those personal qualities that explain how the individual reached the top”(Gladwell 18). He then introduces his argument, saying, “We do owe something to parentage and patronage”(Gladwell 19). Throughout the course of the novel he folds many cases in to support his argument that successful people are

This is because almost all outliers success can be traced back to their roots and the opportunities they were given. By saying this Gladwell is trying to express to the reader that not all outliers have gotten there through incredible smarts or a great personality. He continually mentions this throughout all the examples of success he presents. In every single case, there is an advantage or disadvantage that is the root of why someone was successful. For example, in the first chapter Gladwell discusses hockey players and the effect that their birthday may have on their path to success. Through the use of tables, Gladwell shows that a majority of high level hockey players are born in the first few months of the year. The later born boy is often not on the all-star teams, “so he doesn’t get the extra practice. And without the extra practice, he has no chance of hitting the ten thousand hours by the time the professional hockey teams start looking for players”(Gladwell 41). This shows how the great hockey players who are seemingly above the rest, were given more opportunities when they were young due to their birthday. This shows how those once thought to outliers are not true outliers, their past led them to their later success. This can also be seen in the case of Bill Gates and Bill Joy, two programming pioneers. They were both born in the right years that would allow them to be young teens when programming began to rise in popularity. Due to this opportunity they both had an advantage over the average person who might be interested in programming. On top of that, they both had access to computers, which was extremely rare at the time. Bill Joy spent much of his time at the University of Michigan’s Computer Center, in which there was a bug on the time-sharing accounts which allowed the users unlimited time. Had Bill Joy not encountered this bug, he may not have become