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I did not enjoy this book so I did not finish it. Cal Newport had one point to make (being highly skilled grants you more opportunities and control in your career) and fucking repeated it over and over and over again. I don't tend to read self help books because I usually get it and don't need to be walked laboriously through an entire explanation of a concept. Newport, however, takes it a step further; he repeated the same singular point over and over again with such fierce repetition it was like sitting for a tattoo. I would've been able to tolerate it until the end (I threw in the towel in the middle of chapter 12 but I was getting serious reader's malaise by chapter 7) if it hadn't been for the language used. This book took itself soooooooo seriously and spent its time alternating between pretentiousness and capitalist sack licking, this guy LOVES venture capitalists. While this book did not make me dislike Cal Newport, I thought it was clearly written and he maintained a good authorial presence through the entirety, it did make me want to never meet him.
So Good They Can't Ignore You was very well structured, but it did not need to be a book, because there was not enough ideological content to keep me engaged as a reader. It begins with a deconstruction of the "passion hypothesis" and establishment of Newport's response, the "craftsman hypothesis" which I found engaging and fun. However, after this point there are no new ideas, just a laborious (often unpleasant for those of us who dislike pretentiousness) repetition and exploration of a pretty fuckin simple concept. The examples Newport used of successful people were suspiciously male (and every man seemed to be intelligent, thoughtful, so cool, the most capable smartest coolest guy I, cal newport, have ever met), and the 4 women mentioned before I gave up had several glaring differences in portrayal than their male counterparts. Woman #1 quit her marketing job to start a youth yoga program, then failed (her standing in line for food stamps is contrasted against her male counterpart xc skiing on his 100 acre retreat). Woman #2 quits school to ????? (unicycle across australia is listed as a goal) and fails to support herself through blogging. Woman #3 is a freelance software engineer and the first successful woman we meet, but as opposed to her male "maverick" counterparts, she's portrayed as an abrasive risk taker who knows her worth and does what she wants. I gave up in chapter 12 when we meet woman #4 who is a biologist at harvard who is praised for having hobbies and not being a workaholic (yes, the word bitter is thrown out). The hero of one chapter is a venture capitalist (there are several) who uses a "mental algorithm" (only do things in your career that people will pay you to do) and is happy because he exerts lots of control. This guy is a fucking asshole and reading newport salivating over him made me embarassed. Reading this book gave me the distinct impression that Newport lives in boy world and is a big fan of boys.
Overall I did not like this book for many reasons. First, as a woman I found it LAUGHABLE that the main assertion was success stems from skill and competence, and I don't even want to expand on this point because it's so exhausting to defend. Second, I found the language to be too pretentious and self serious for my taste ("we need a more nuanced heuristic, something that could make clear exactly what brand of control trap you're facing. As you'll learn next, I ended up discovering this soution in the habits of an iconoclastic entrepeneur, someone who has elevated living his life by his own rules to an art form." [aforementioned mental algorithm guy]). Third, Newport's one point is very correct if your life's framework is being an educated man who wants to work and has no domestic responsibilities, but I do not fit into this framework and I found his advice grating and not very useful. I would recommend So Good They Can't Ignore You to your pretentious boyfriend who takes himself a little too seriously (and maybe should work harder at anything), but if you're a girly autist like me skip this one in favor of a book that makes several good points and is enjoyable to read.