I don't know how to be successful on that level, but I've a hunch that paying more than the slightest attention to things like "job", "resume", etc severely lowers your chances. Also, one thing I noticed while reading Coders at Work recently: while some people are brilliant, some seem like they're merely good, and happened to make the right decisions. Those decisions always seemed to be the risky ones, but we don't see what similar decisions they went the other way on, nor the hordes of similar programmers who were cautious or unlucky.

And maybe there aren't such hordes. I dunno.