I wouldn't say it oozes with "survivorship bias". Clearly by your logic, any possible advice given to anyone oozes with survivorship bias, which is silly.

I would argue the tech industry is more egalitarian relative to other industries, which makes it possible to become successful without having a formal education. Sure it'd be difficult, but it's not impossible compared to another industry like finance.

Do you think the theory would bear contrasting to passionate college dropouts who have not become successful, comfortable software engineers? Because we need to consider those too, to avoid the survivorship bias. Unless you believe there simply are no such people.

> Being a successful coder because you have passion for it still requires a lucky break somewhere along the way to discover that passion and/or have someone else recognize that passion.

Many passion-stories involve someone growing up in an environment in which key figures around them - like one of their parents - encouraged or enabled them to do certain things, and they happened to also really like - or grow to like, naturally without any push-back - that same thing. So then they get the chance to develop their abilities from some young age, like say 8, and are naturally quite good at it when they reach college-age.

Now even if they don't "fit into the school system" or whatever, it isn't a story of 'life's ups and downs' - it's a story about them being incredibly, incredibly lucky in that they just fell into their passion straight from the start. Dropping out of second year of college becomes a minor nuisance in the grand scheme of things, for them.