Mark Cuban gives advice about following your effort over passion and people listen because of his success and authority. Dick Bolles sells millions of copies of What color is your parachute? and people listen because, well, a lot of other people are listening. The idea of social proof continues for Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha, both successful entrepreneurs who promote a start-up mentality to work and life fulfillment.
Everyone's right in some way. All these perspectives are vetted, come from credible sources and help people get jobs. The authors though have differing opinions when it comes to passion v. effort in deciding which career path to pursue.
It's similar to love v. arranged approaches to marriage. Going after your passion is a strong Western sentiment. Love comes first and effort maintains it. Arranged marriages are set on the opposite premise. Put effort into a relationship you may or may not have passion for. It develops over time the more you work at it. Mark Cuban support this mentality when it comes to careers. Often love of work comes directly through the effort.
The hybrid approach to marriage also seems to be gaining popularity. You have a short courting phase where you test out the potential relationship and eek out whether personalities will jive. Then, after a period of 2 weeks to 3 months, you decide to get married and put in the effort.
Extrapolate to the job market and it looks very similar. You try out a job for a few months, perhaps through an internship, freelance work, informational interviews or mentor shadowing. You gauge whether it's a fit with your personality, work ethic, lifestyle balance, income needs, etc. Then you solidly give it your all.
It should be noted that he hybrid analogy breaks down when you look at the structure of the market. Though the changing nature of arranged marriages may harbor greater equality in decision making for future partners, in the job market employers still have much more power than applicants. Most are not lenient to a courting phase. They have the ultimate hiring power. This isn't very beneficial to either party as employers hire employees with good skill sets but poor fit and employees struggle to find power in a one-sided dynamic.
Regardless, the approaches to discovering one's career path are diversifying, sending a strong signal that the status quo is shifting. It's not so much that Reid Hoffman's advice is better than Mark Cuban's advice or that there's one right way.
It's once again a matter of what fits you in particular. Some people would find a passionate approach more suited to them and others would prefer an effort-based approach. For some, testing the market through a hybrid method might work.
It's not so black and white. There's never one prescription that works for everyone. By writing this post, I too am giving advice. And in a world of advisers, being a cautious judge is a necessary skill, perhaps the one skill that will determine personal fulfillment.