The mistake is that 1 every N waves of hype are in fact monumental shifts and it makes sense to embrace as soon as possible. Also being early to the right thing can have massive implications in appreciating the shift before the general public, which is upstream from making smart resource allocation (investments, career choices). I have a friend that went to super early OpenAI as a designer. He has more equity than most AI researchers there and made a 0.001% amount of wealth. Being early does very much matter in the right conditions.