While skill etc. certainly also played a part - I'm not in any way suggesting that luck is sufficient -, my point was that most of these were intertwined in a way that meant they were dependent on that first domino. I probably would have done fine without it, but it'd have looked very different.

Even though my skills certainly also played a role, I could also have been equally skilled and taken another job and missed out on meeting the right people and ended up with far less satisfying outcomes. And many do. Or I could have been born somewhere where I wouldn't have had the same opportunities.

Luck and skill amplify each other, and a problem is that people often want to think it was all down to their skills. A lot of subsequent failures happen when people fail to learn the right lessons because they don't understand which parts of their earlier successes were down to luck and so try to copy the same approach in different conditions.