Characteristics Of Steve Jobs

In the book, Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcom Gladwell intended to teach the readers about the many different rules that he discussed in his book, to help with the understanding people have of success. Gladwell defines outliers as “men and women who do things that are out of the ordinary” (Gladwell 17). Gladwell accurately applies the rhetorical techniques of logos, exemplification, and repetition to effectively employ how highly successful people are outliers.

Success is a concept that is constantly altered and has a different meaning from person to person. The stereotypical definition of success would be someone who has a high-paying job or is in the upper-class. Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Outliers: The Story of Success, approaches the concept of success in a different and unique way. Gladwell discusses how opportunities, cultural legacy, and hard work all coincide with each other to produce real success. He uses mostly logic and multiple unrelated anecdotes to support and provide evidence for his statements. Gladwell's main argument is that although hard work and talent are essential for success, one’s given opportunities and cultural legacy is what really

Malcolm Gladwell insists throughout his book, Outliers: The Story of Success, that the recipe for achievement is not simply based on personal talents or innate abilities alone. Gladwell offers the uncommon idea that outliers largely depend upon “extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies” (Gladwell19). According to Gladwell, successful men and women are beneficiaries of relationships, occasions, places, and cultures. The author draws on a different case study in each chapter to support a particular argument concerning success. Despite his indifference and suppression in regards to counterarguments, Gladwell’s claims are effective for many reasons, including through the accounts of experts, tone and style of writing, and the

Success is measured differently by every person and each and every culture. The journey to success in most cultures, however, is generally idealized in the same way: one person working harder than everyone else to achieve his or her goal with their own merits as their only advantage. In Outliers: The Story of Success, the author, Malcolm Gladwell, argues about how wrong that ideology is and the truth behind successful people. Throughout his guide, Gladwell employs the help of many argumentative techniques to convince the reader of his message.

Is it coincidental that Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Bill Joy and many other multi-millionaires were all born within a span of 3 years? Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Outliers, suspects that there is something more behind this occurrence than just a simple coincidence. He asserts that there is no such thing as a self-made man and success does not come from natural talent, rather it comes from extraordinary opportunities and hidden advantages. In Outliers, Gladwell attempts to debunk the myth that people are successful because of themselves, and not because of other factors. Even Malcolm Gladwell acknowledges that passion and hard work are required to succeed. However, he believes that this passion and time to put in the work would not be possible without the aid of extraordinary opportunities. Gladwell prepares a firm set of logical arguments, including the advantages of birth dates, cultural legacy and family backgrounds, to guarantee that his audience will be convinced of his conviction.

Purpose: The purpose of Outliers, was to show that success doesn’t just come from hard work and dedication. Gladwell shows that there are special advantages and opportunities for certain people that few others have. This book shows it’s readers many prime examples and statistics of distinct advantages originating from of birth date, family legacies, and many other

In Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, his central premise is that success is not obtained the way most people think it is. We are often told that success come from sheer luck, or a triumphant rags-to-riches story. In Outliers Malcolm Gladwell tells the story of many successful outliers such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, The Beatles, and many more. He breaks down each story and points out what actually made that persona successful. While breaking down the story her also introduces the reader to what he believe are the actual keys to success. In the book he talks about The Matthew Theory, The 10,000 hour Rule, Practical Intelligence vs Analytical Intelligence, and Demographic Luck.

While I definitely agree with this claim, I was disappointed by Gladwell's exceedingly fallacious reasoning. In Outliers Gladwell often cherry-picks only information that reinforces his thesis, uses generalization, and is very narrow-minded when it comes to his idea of what “success” is.

Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story of Success. 1st ed. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008. Print

In Outliers, Gladwell attempts to answer, What makes some people successful while others cannot seem to realize their full potential? In U.S. society, people are considered successful when they have traits and characteristics: self-sacrifice, intelligence, talent. However, He says that the conditions and circumstances surrounding our lives are the significant influential factors that determine our success, not our inner ability or talent. These talents and abilities allow these people to be separate from society.

“Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities.” As seen above, Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers revolves around success and the constituents influencing it. His quote above wraps up the overall theme that drives this book; success and the things that make success happen the most. Gladwell argues in Outliers, that success can be derived mainly from opportunities that the everyday person does not encounter. For example, bill gates creating microsoft, athletes becoming famous because of the month they were born in so on and so forth. To me, success does not rely on one’s opportunities. Instead it comes directly from individual merit.

There are tons of people in our world today who have become very successful and these people find success in different ways. Some people work hard their whole life to achieve success and others just seem to be born talented in

While the author, Malcolm Gladwell, does not dispute that hard work in a necessary component, we learn that many factors, lucky breaks, and some coincidences all occur in making high achievers into true outliers. We also learn that many of the richest, most famous, and most successful people in

In addition, throughout “Outliers” it becomes apparent that the circumstances people have been born into assists them to surpass any competition. For example, technology legends such as Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt, Vinod Khosla, and Steve Jobs were all born in a one year time span. What a crazy coincidence that four of the most successful men in technology were all born so close to one another. The truth is that certain opportunities arose for all of them in college: easy access to computers. If they had been any older or younger, they would have missed on the opportunities to use the new technology due to being stuck

In Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers, Gladwell defines success as hidden advantages and “social predestination” as stated by critic Michiko Kakutani. Kakutani argues that Gladwell’s hypotheses are not cohesive and are selective to support his idea. I concur with Kakutani. Gladwell does not provide adequate examples and counterarguments to give his theory a concrete foundation. This creates a very unconvincing argument. Gladwell asserts that success comes from factors and advantages that are mostly overlooked such as birth dates and cultural backgrounds; however, his ideas are loosely based, overly generalized, and unreliable.