This strategy is rare ex ante because it's irrational for most young people to follow. Explore/exploit advises us to start out with a vast swath of interests,

This strategy is rare ex ante because it's irrational for most young people to follow. Explore/exploit advises us to start out with a vast swath of interests, and then to home in ever deeper on whatever seems to provide the most bang for our buck -- the problem is, being inherently interesting is its own reward, and a terribly powerful attractor for the youth in particular. Just because you know that e.g. there are only maybe 50 IAM architects worth their salt in the entire Northern European area doesn't mean you can capitalize on it if you think AuthN and AuthZ are dull as dirt. (Which I don't! But I'm also not willing, or even really sure of how to go about acquiring the necessary years of practice to get there. That's part of what the problem feels like on the ground!) Nevertheless, I love getting into the weeds of boring niche topics. From a business perspective they're a pretty good deal once you start to get older and have dealt with the surfaces of some of them out of necessity.