ROFL, I wish Pike had known what he was talking about. /s ;)

Rob Pike and I (and probably most of us) work(ed) on different kind of things.

Notice my use of the word "Novelty".

I get hired because I'm very good at building specific kinds of systems so I tend to build many variants of the same kinds of systems. They are generally not that different and the ways in which the applications perform are similar.

I do not generally write new algorithms, operating systems, nor programming languages.

I don't think this is so hard to understand the nuance of Pike's advice and what we "mortals" do in or day-to-day to earn a living.