Outliers Gladwell Analysis

The Right Place At The Right Time The book Outliers written by Maclolm Gladwell is a book about success. Throughout the book he gives numerous examples of how people have achieved and in some instances, not achieved success. Popular belief would suggest that people who are considered outliers have gotten there through hard work and innate talent. Gladwell however, suggest that something is contributing to people being able to seek the levels of success that would make them an outlier. Gladwell believes that hidden advantages, extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies are the main factors of predicting success. Gladwell makes strong arguments to back up his claims chapter after chapter in the book. While I was reading Outliers one
Joy was not from a prominent family. The book did not give much insight into Bill Joys upbringing. I would assume that he was from a middle class family as his family was able to afford tuition to the University of Michigan. Nobody will deny the fact that Bill Joy was talented, after all the book says he got a perfect score on his SAT. While Bill Joy at this point in his life was gifted he wasn't an Outlier. The book even goes onto say that Bill Joy was one of the type of gawky math wiz's that schools like M.I.T attracted by the hundreds. What set Joy apart from those other students was that he was in the right place at the right time. Not to say that he didn't work hard, Joy put in countless hours programming. However he would not have been able to do so if he was not taking computer science classes at the University of Michigan 1971. It was at that time that the computers switched over from using punch cards to
2 sharing and University Of Michigan was one of the few colleges in the country that had one of these computers. On top of that, since it was so early in the time-sharing era of computers Joy was able to find a bug that allowed him to practice programming without spending a dime. Granted, this was at a time where where it was extremely expensive to program on any computer. This bug allowed Joy to receive far more practice time then almost anybody else in the world. His hard work and dedication payed off as now Bill Joy is one of the most powerful people in the computer industry as a Founder of Sun Microsystem. Joy's being at the right place at the right time with the desire to learn how to program was a huge advantage in him getting ahead. If for whatever reason Joy did not end up at the University of Michigan in 1971 one could make a good argument that he would not have become an outlier; there is a chance that he might have turned out just like Chris