Bill Gates didn't get rich as a programmer. He got rich as a business man and negotiator (QDOS, IBM). He got stinking rich as a monopolist. (Interesting note: Bill G's father was an anti-trust defense attorney.)
The Beatles did not get rich as live musicians and were never considered a great live act. They made it big as a studio band. I fail to see how cranking out the same songs over and over again for 10,000 hours in Hamburg builds your studio composition chops. Especially when it didn't even seem to lead to great live performance ability.
Haven't read gladwell's book, but it smells like a sloppy pile of misleading anecdotes from here.
What original arguments Gladwell makes are clearly speculative, but it's inherently sloppier to attempt to refute an argument whose reasoning you can only speculate about.
Your arguments about Bill Gates and The Beatles are themselves flawed and classically oversimplistic. Bill Gates didn't get rich as a business man / negotiator / monopolist: he got rich as a programmer business man / negotiator / monopolist. Hard to believe a regular on HN could fail to see how Gates' having serious technical chops was essential to his success.
As for The Beatles, I'll leave it to you to actually read the book.
Bill Gates didn't get rich as a programmer. He got rich as a business man and negotiator (QDOS, IBM). He got stinking rich as a monopolist. (Interesting note: Bill G's father was an anti-trust defense attorney.)
The Beatles did not get rich as live musicians and were never considered a great live act. They made it big as a studio band. I fail to see how cranking out the same songs over and over again for 10,000 hours in Hamburg builds your studio composition chops. Especially when it didn't even seem to lead to great live performance ability.
Haven't read gladwell's book, but it smells like a sloppy pile of misleading anecdotes from here.