I'd add to this that I've met people with high levels of achievement and competency, and they are inspiring in some ways, but I don't hold them up and herald them like this. They're just people, they have people problems, nobody is really exempt from that. They can be alcoholics, they can go bankrupt, they can go out of fashion and get old, they can break bones, their dogs can die, their cars can get broken into, their partners can leave them or they can be virgins who never figured out human interaction. If you're getting robbed in a sketchy part of town, you can't yell out "but.. but I'm an L9 engineer at Google" and somehow get out of it, unless the guy robbing you is a homeless junior trying to enter the industry and since you got in 20 years ago when there were only 2 rounds of interviews, one of which was to estimate how many windows there are in Seattle, maybe you can get them in.