As usual I think it is combination of skill, luck and hard work. There are people who do enormous hard work but just do not have skill to create impact. And there are many highly skilled people but not motivated enough or likely they just not in right place at right time to create consequential things.
> I fear the current state of our industry eliminated the possibility for not-great, not-skilled juniors to embark in these journeys
It is just that industry would be 100 or 1000 times larger than it was in 70s or 80s. Now not-great not-skilled people can get IT jobs in Accentures/IBMs of today which pays well enough for mediocre computer skills. When thousands of new PhDs in Computer science, electronics and semiconductors etc are available every year it is infeasible that mediocre folks can land in hardcore engineering roles.
> I fear the current state of our industry eliminated the possibility for not-great, not-skilled juniors to embark in these journeys
It is just that industry would be 100 or 1000 times larger than it was in 70s or 80s. Now not-great not-skilled people can get IT jobs in Accentures/IBMs of today which pays well enough for mediocre computer skills. When thousands of new PhDs in Computer science, electronics and semiconductors etc are available every year it is infeasible that mediocre folks can land in hardcore engineering roles.