Around 2008, as a young consultant, I was looking for a technical area to focus on for the next 2-3 years. Ruby on Rails was beginning to gain a lot of steam back then - in comparison, my C# .Net 3.5 stack looked clunky. So I went and asked my mentor if Ruby would be a good area to specialize in.

Here’s the advice he gave me:

If you want to swim in a small pond, you’d better be the biggest fish in it.

“Ruby is great but the market for it is really small. On the other hand, the .Net market is a vast ocean. There’s a place for everyone there. So choose where you wanna be.”

I stuck to my .Net domain. At the time it felt like I’d chickened out. In retrospect, it has turned out to be sage advice.