There are many way talented people unemployed because they didn't put in the effort it takes to get there.

How many people have talents that they are totally aware they have, but aren't doing, yet are making a decent living doing something they have much less talent for?

I can speak from personal experience for this one: My high school I.T. teacher said I'll never make it in technology and I should avoid it and do something else. My music teacher from high school and university poured every ounce of effort into my talents for music, but despite what they vocalized was a bottomless pit of talent, I can barely complete a Beethoven Piano Sonata or improvise a Saxophone Jazz standard, not because of a lack of talent or understanding, but because I didn't put in the miles to make it to the top. I poured all my effort into programming because I have an endless curiosity about how things work and programming is a bottomless pit of intrigue...

Could I have become the greatest pianist or saxophonist in the world? We'll never know. As soon as I figured out how to put notes together on a musical instrument, I was bored with it, the mystery was gone and now I just play for my own amusement or the amusement of my kids.

I'll be the first to admit, I'm far from the best programmer in the world, but I've managed somehow to be classified as a senior developer & architect by a jury of my peers. I've struggled every day to learn and master what it took to come this far and here I am. I will continue to struggle every day to learn and move forward to become the best that I can be.

Did it take talent for me to get here? Ha! I have zero talent at programming compared to those who graduated top of their class from MIT or their computer science class. I took a software engineering course that barely covered the basics and taught myself everything useful that I know. Sheer will and determination and it satiates my curiosity. So for me to say that work ethic and determination are the only useful factors worth considering, I'm not speaking without some experience on this topic.

People say it takes a lot of luck. In my experience, the harder you work and the more you put yourself out there, the more 'luck' seems to find you. In addition to this, there is always a door open somewhere - people claim it was luck that that door opened when it did. But more often than not, from the inside, it's not luck at all. You were looking at all the options in front of you and what seems like luck to an onlooker was not luck at all - the 'lucky door' was just the best option available to you at the time. You walked through the open door and stayed there until the next door opened, which once again to an outside viewer looks like luck, but really if another door had opened first, you'd have taken that one and that would have been considered the 'lucky' door - at which time you walked through that one and the cycle continues. It wasn't luck that got you got to the top - it was a million little decisions that picked one of a million routes that will get you to the top if you stick at it. It may have been appeared like luck that you got to the top, but really, it was the product of those million little decisions that marched you forward to reach your goal. But at the end of the day, it was the destination you kept your eye on, not the luck it would take to get you there. You take whatever route you have to achieve your objective and reach your goal.

If anyone successful thought they would only reach success by chance and luck, they'd never have set out on that path. They set out on a path because something about it calls to them, like sailors to the sea. They stuck with the path because they believed in their ability to do what they want to do, they made it because they were willing to do whatever it took to get there and it never occurred to them that they wouldn't be able to do it - while everyone else sat on the sidelines worrying about what would happen if they failed and saying "I could do that too if I had their kind of luck."