So, his two examples of people who weren't experts but succeeded were Larry and Sergey, two PhD students from Stanford studying search algorithms, and that doesn't qualify them as experts?
Or Joel, who was a program manager at one of the most successful and selective Software companies on the planet?
No, it DOES NOT qualify them as experts by the definition given by this latest 10k hours craze.
Sure it does. The computer science curriculum at top schools like Stanford probably requires about 30 hours a week of time devoted to computer science. At 52 weeks per year, this puts the number around 6.5 years. After 4 years undergraduate computer science and his master's degree and Page's statement that he got into programming/CS at around 12 years old, we can deduce that 10,000 hours is probably a completely reasonable amount of time.
I think the point is we should be questioning the field of expertise which lead a company to success. Google has become a success not because it introduced advertising, but because it was a a great and simple search engine (with ads at first, btw). Thus Larry and Sergey were experts and their example in the article is bad.
On the other hand there are probably other examples out there that may prove the point. So, like Forrest Gump said, I think maybe it's both.
Or Joel, who was a program manager at one of the most successful and selective Software companies on the planet?