> and yet there are all these people out there that make more than 10x or even 100x their annual income
Where by "all these people" we mean an extremely small fraction of the population. If I think about things honestly, I'm paid more than almost everyone I interact with regularly. Many of these people aren't lazy or stupid or dropout or what-have-you. They also went to good schools and got good grades and are excellent at what they do; but it turns out that the "brick wall" in their field is a fraction of what it is in the tech industry. So, yes, I know a few people making more than I do, mostly in jobs I don't want to do, with working hours I wouldn't tolerate; but I'm not feeling too sorry for myself.
The average person can probably name more movie stars than high school classmates. It's really easy to hit a number that 'primitive-monkey-brain' starts treating as 'many'. Reasoned reflection will reveal how silly that is, but we get to deal with primitive monkey brains with Dunbar numbers full of incredibly rich people, and things like math are very low on the method resolution chain.
And a good fraction - maybe 20-25% - of the people I interact with have more money than I can contemplate. I work with a fairly large number of pre-IPO Googlers, plus here in Silicon Valley, you're always running into people that sold their company for $20M and are starting a new one.
I think that was the point of the article. If you actually get close to the brick wall in your profession, you'll meet people who've gotten past it. And suddenly, what seems like an enormous amount of money is just the tip of the iceberg, and you're left wondering what these people have that you don't.
Where by "all these people" we mean an extremely small fraction of the population. If I think about things honestly, I'm paid more than almost everyone I interact with regularly. Many of these people aren't lazy or stupid or dropout or what-have-you. They also went to good schools and got good grades and are excellent at what they do; but it turns out that the "brick wall" in their field is a fraction of what it is in the tech industry. So, yes, I know a few people making more than I do, mostly in jobs I don't want to do, with working hours I wouldn't tolerate; but I'm not feeling too sorry for myself.