My dad was able to pay for me to attend the University of Minnesota.
More importantly though was that my parents fed my childhood fascination with computers, making sure I had the opportunity to learn to code early (a volunteer at my school taught me BASIC at age 8; my parents bought me a PC so I could continue experimenting) and then they gave me a lot of free time to spend building things and learning. After I graduated my mom let me spend a couple more years in her basement just working on open source software projects. These are certainly privileges that wouldn't be possible if my dad didn't have comfortable income.
I got into Google by applying on the web site and showing them my projects.
You are likely engaging as a good sport (and the anecdata are fun) but you don't really need to explain yourself, if that's what you are trying to do.
Life is all shades of precarious, unfair, galtonboard-ish, windfall-ish. Pareto-powerlaw-nonergodic-pissed off pikachu-ish. Have fun. Somebody's got to.
Cant always say its hardwork... As a people observer there seems to be a lot of people coasting, or doing as little as possible, and yet get promoted, or they get into really high paying positions. This is far more common in larger corporations, where the visibility is lower.
In smaller companies the people are definitely worth their weight in gold as if they are not doing the work its very visible.
