Rich Hickey's advice is shaped from his experiences and following his advice can lead to his kind of career. Rich Hickey and Peter Norvig, although both success

Rich Hickey's advice is shaped from his experiences and following his advice can lead to his kind of career. Rich Hickey and Peter Norvig, although both successful, have different experiences and hence different careers. If you ask someone like Bill Gates, he'll have another much different twist to his advice. Each successful collection of skills (deep, shallow or mixed) will lead to certain unique career; which one you regard highly is up to you. Although an important caveat remember is, following some successful person's specific advice may not even work for you if there's a big difference in your basic brain circuitry compared to his/her. Your best bet, IMO, is to commit to the projects you feel 'hell yeah!' for and say no to the rest (more about hell yeah vs. no here: http://sivers.org/hellyeah http://sivers.org/hellyeah). The bottom line is: Never ask advice of someone with whom you wouldn’t want to trade places.