The Talent Myth: How rank and fire destroyed Enron

More insight from Malcolm Gladwell. Check out his discussion of Outliers [<a href="http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/index.html</a>] too. Software entrepreneurs may find this interesting: "I actually have a lot of fun with birthdates in Outliers. Did you know that there's a magic year to be born if you want to be a software entrepreneur? And another magic year to be born if you want to be really rich? In fact, one nine year stretch turns out to have produced more Outliers than any other period in history. It's remarkable how many patterns you can find in the lives of successful people, when you look closely."

I get the feeling that this really shouldn't be an indicator for "talent" in a technical setting. This study really seems to relate to executives and not the type of "talent" that we talk about here.<p>One of the telling things is the people in the studies reluctance to take on hard assignments as it would damage their reputation. Most great programmers are the exact opposite.<p>These are the big quotes that tell me to ignore this one for developers / engineers: "The talent myth assumes that people make organizations smart. More often than not, it’s the other way around."<p>"Those praised for their intelligence were reluctant to tackle difficult tasks, and their performance on subsequent tests soon began to suffer."