Malcolm Gladwell is the quintessential professional sophist. I remember attempting to read 'Blink' after it was recommended, and I could not force myself to finish it. His (continued) popularity taught me a deep lesson regarding humanity at the time.

Gladwell’s stuff can make for entertaining reading but he’s fundamentally at some level a writer looking for views and not a scientist looking to drill down on the details to fully understand something. A lot of what he writes sounds great but doesn’t really survive a deeper dive into the subject where his core arguments start to unravel as inconvenient details he glossed over or didn’t mention at all come to light. Not saying I still don’t sometimes read his stuff, but I take a big grain of salt when doing so.

The sort of thing he’s getting flak for here is right up that alley… preaches about how working from home is terrible but forces his colleagues to adjust to his desire to not work from an office.

He's an entertainer, not a scientist. His stuff is definitely entertaining and thought provoking, but he does make some "Gladwellian leaps" to gloss over some inconvenient facts to get to his ideas.

I use one of his books to even out a broken chair I have.