I read (and liked) Gladwell's book, but the point of it was really just that no matter what your natural talent for something, it takes the opportunity to do a

I read (and liked) Gladwell's book, but the point of it was really just that no matter what your natural talent for something, it takes the opportunity to do a lot of focused practice to become good at it. This is to debunk the idea that the wealthy are all members of a meritocracy; even if they do have some talent at whatever they are doing, they were lucky enough to get born into circumstances such that they were allowed to do whatever-it-was for long enough to become expert. Also, just because you're not great at something initially, doesn't mean you cannot become great, because it takes many thousands of hours of practice to become great. No doubt the 10k rule varies according to field, because some fields are new, and no one has 10k hours yet. There are programmers with 10k hours, but most of the professionals in the field do not have 10k hours yet, for example. The definition of "great" (and therefore the # of hours required) is relative to others in that field. I switched into programming in my 30's, when many programmers start to rotate out of it because they believe they are too old. I probably am not as good at certain things as others, but I also bring experience from previous careers to improve the odds that I am programming the right thing in the first place. If you switch careers, it will take time to become good at the new one, and you (and your finances) need to be able to accommodate that. But it definitely happens.