I devoted myself to learning advanced math, coding and electronics. My plan was tonlearnbit, build something very impressive put it out there for free and use that to get my first job.
After years from a very young age studying around 14 in reached the point that was possible. I the developed a p2p algorithm with my own compression algorithm that was 100x faster than the best commercial options on the market. Beibgnonly 15 this made for an interesting news story so as a result I was getting a lot of news attention. Due to my abilities and the attention I got as a result of that I had about 20 different companies offering me jobs at that price range.
So very much as the result of hard work id say.