This isn't one of Philip Greenspun's better articles, but it's a deliberate troll of the Gladwellian kind to make you see that your assumptions of success may not be entirely accurate. Where he makes assertions, most of them are factually correct. The rest is a trolling frame to get you to think about the question of Microsoft's management and decisionmaking as a strategy for success. Which you may be doing.
This is from 1998, if not sooner. I remember reading it back in the 20th century. Definitely written before Gladwell was a name at all.
(I remember being so edgy in 1996 that I had the Bill Gates Wealth Clock as my start page. And a few years later my screensaver was "don't touch anything in Bill Gates's half." Fun times, fun times. 1999-me wouldn't believe my current opinions of Gates vis-a-vis Jobs.)
Indeed. he was a interesting blogger while running ArsDigita and I likes his photo.net too which I think may still be going, and then apparently some idiot VCs hijacked his Arsdigita and ruined it
http://waxy.org/random/arsdigita/
I read Outliers and got a similar impression. It's definitely indisputable that the vast majority of successes come from an established platform of advantage, but it shouldn't totally demerit their accomplishments.
